In defense of Bono’s Vanity Fair Africa Issue.
In other hot news, Ethan came out swinging on the post ‘Judging a magazine by its cover’, as did Sokari on ‘faking Africa and stories of vanity‘. Bankelele did a quick post on this VF issue june 6th.
I got a hold of 4 copies of Vanity Fair; yes indeed I am collecting all 20.
-Bono and Queen Rania
-Oprah and George Clooney
- Don Cheadle and Iman
-Oprah, Bill and Melinda Gates.
Of these, the only one i can dispense with is the cover of Oprah and George Clooney, sorry George, Don Cheadle and Bono are just waay too hot for me to give up. This aside, i have been reading the criticism of Bono’s work on this issue. I would urge you to go beyond the cover. Some of the content is superb, really it is, i enjoyed it. In the VF issue, I found pictures of people who were at TED Global in Arusha; if this issue had been on newsstands before June 4th when the conference started, it would have been perfect airline reading on the way there. It is still a wonderful read for the rest of the month in my opinion, and I think Bono did a great job on editing it.
Some of the people in the magazine were in TED Global Arusha, and the criticism that Bono should have included Africans on the cover, well, he hadn’t met the Cheetahs before TED Global and the editing of the Vanity fair issue. There is room for improvement as Ethan pointed out, but please allow me to be utterly shallow and point out some of the sections that might get lost in all the Bono bashing going on.
I choose to see this as an opportunity (thanks to TED bringing people together) for cover ideas like Erik Osiakwan and Bono as Ethan proposed. I would add that Andrew Dosunmu should do the photography since Annie Leibovitz had this issue how about Andrew doing a spread for Vanity fair? - Hey, do comment with which pairings would be neat. Ory Okolloh and Obama would be just wonderful wouldn’t it! She can whisper ‘Mzalendo‘ into Obama’s ear like Iman appears to Don Cheadle. (Eric Mwangi with Mrs Obama to make things even 
)
Ok, back to the VF issue… I will use some pics from TED Global to illustrate that Bono did include notable Africans in the VF issue.
Update: Everyone, please start on page 84
Binyavanga Wainaina has an awesome piece on ‘Generation Kenya’. (Could VF hurry up and make a link available online? please?) I am tempted to pluck the last line out of the piece, but that wouldnt be good, as you need to read the whole article, every single word of it.
Photo by Mweshi
Girls, start with page 184 for a spread of the gorgeous, sexy, African filmmakers including Newton Aduaka.
Photo by Andrew Heavens
Page 124, Uzodinma Iweala Acclaimed author of ‘Beasts of No Nation’
Photo by Jen Brea
Page 180, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Photo by Andrew Heavens
Rokia Traore is mentioned on page 174 by Youssou Ndour whose playlist you can check out here.
Picture by Soyapi
Other pages you could jump to…
Page 187, Picture of John Githongo and text by Parsalelo Kantai. (I have to inject the classic Kenyan tongue twister here. Kantai is pronounced phonetically like ‘can tie’. So - If Kantai can tie and untie a tie why cant I tie and untie a tie like Kantai can tie and untie a tie?! Try it!)
page 194 for the very photogenic networkers of the Africa Channel.
Guys, quickly turn to page 149 for a seductive photo of Terry Pheto the actress from Tsotsi.
Page 152 for comic relief from Chris Rock in the form of a diary from his last trip in Africa, asking Nelson Mandela whether he saw Richard Pryor when he was in Jail.
At the very least, this ought to be interesting, and serve as an alternative ‘table of contents’ to the notorious July VF Issue.
Caveat: The fact that Bono gave me a hug when in Arusha during the DATA tour of Kaloleni Primary School has absolutely nothing to do with this post. Nada, Zilch… the fact that he kissed me on my forehead does, just a wee bit.