Lay off Bono and Bob already

#1. Rock stars should shut up and sing and not have opinions.

Firstly, their hearts are firmly in the right place no matter how ridiculous things get. They are fighting what they see as the good fight and I can't see them doing it for any other reasons than they believe it's the right thing to do.

Secondly, anyone who crosses genres gets ridiculed in popular opinion, yet we have managed to eventually accept Reagan as president, Arn as the Governator, Cate Blanchett as a serious actor and David Hasselhoff as a popular singer in Germany. Well, 3 out of 4 ain't bad at least.

Thirdly, you can only sing about it so long until it becomes either boring, uncommercial or preachy-sounding. How do you write lyrics about debt relief? Eventually, you have to put down the guitar and pick up the soapbox if you consider yourself a truly political person.

#2. Rock stars should not be entitled to opinions.

And neither should politicians, journalists, pseudointellectual criminologists, right-wing pundits, church bigots, neo-nazis and other racists of any form, corporate leaders (unless talking about the corporate sphere) and anyone else I didn't vote for personally, yet I am constantly subjected to the opinions of these people wherever I go, plus a few other random bigots whose presence I can't escape for one reason or another.

I'm soft on including journalists in this list, because you can only report on other people's opinions for so long before you begin to develop your own. I just think they need to be open about the fact it is their opinion, despite illusions of neutrality taught in journalism school.

#3. Leave the opinions on making the world a better place to the politicians.

That's worked well for us so far, hasn't it?

#4. They're just the guilty idle rich.

This is the best one I've heard so far, and it comes from the far left mostly, not from the opinion columns of, or letter writers to, major newspapers. I kind of agree. Problem is, no one in society's mainstream wants to listen to the unwashed poor at all. Certain members of the educated classes fare better at getting their opinions across, because of respect, fame, or the fact that our post-feudalistic society has pretenses of being a meritocracy and values the opinions of so-called experts above others.

But rock stars? Now those guys make history. A single lyric captures a moment everyone has felt, a sense of Zeitgeist, an opinion we share. David Bowie famously and controversially called Hitler the first rock star, a fact that Marilyn Manson has played with in his live shows.

I can see how someone might want a rock star to plead their cause, I can see how a rock star might think that massive fame could be put to a use. Rest assured, behind those rock stars are people who have worked for these causes for years, whispering lines in their ears to repeat to the media.

Guilty rich bastards? Well, yeah, Bono probably earns a large portion of the Irish GNP personally, but the Prime Minister of my country owns a shipping empire. No one in the mainstream seems to mind that nearly as much, but I find it far more worrisome.