There was a time–about three or four months, I think, back in the closing days of the Carter Administration–when Sting was kind of a cool guy. Unfortunately, he’s spent the last three decades burnishing his reputation as the most insufferable twatwaffle in the entire UK. So it seems entirely appropriate that after all his endless yammering about rainforests and Tantric sex and I-don’t-know-what-all, he should get in trouble for sucking up to a tyrant. Apparently Sting made a million pounds or so last October performing for Gulnara Karimova, whose father, Islam Karimov, is the dictator of Uzbekistan. Karimov is somewhat nicer than those guys in SLORC who have been ruining Burma for decades, and that’s the best thing you can say about him. Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan agrees, and lately he’s been all over the internet ripping Sting a new one. In one of his milder comments, he wrote: “(Sting) got paid over a million pounds to play an event specifically designed to glorify a barbarous regime. Is the man completely mad?”
Most people in Sting’s position would plead ignorance and throw themselves on the mercy of the public. But Sting’s superhuman, near-Gwyneth Paltrow level of self-regard sort of forecloses that option. Instead, he explained that he performed for the spawn of one of the world’s sleazier dictators because he understands this stuff better than you do:
I am well aware of the Uzbek president’s appalling reputation in the field of human rights as well as the environment. I made the decision to play there in spite of that. I have come to believe that cultural boycotts are not only pointless gestures, they are counter-productive, where proscribed states are further robbed of the open commerce of ideas and art and as a result become even more closed, paranoid and insular.”
Just to put this “open commerce of ideas and art” in perspective, tickets for this shindig went for about US$2000 each “roughly four years” wages for your typical Uzbek. Kudos to Sting for moving out of the UK twatwaffle league and into serious contention for biggest twatwaffle in the northern hemisphere.
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I believe he is engaging a justification that boils down to “George W. Bush is the Antichrist, and this would probably cause him to have a stroke.” It’s slightly less ridiculous (in Sting’s case) when you consider that this seems to be the governing force behind current U.S. foreign policy.
Gulnara Karimova? She lost custody of her children in New Jersey and just absconded with them, that’s a great story! Then her new enterprise after becoming the owner of 80% of the gold mines in her country, thanks to her father, is to take the children of her father’s political prisoners and sell them as white sex slaves and smuggle them into islamic countries such as our allies Saudi Arabia, and of course our other friendly Dubai. Yes she is a sex slave ring leader and has been for years. She’s also a Harvard Grad. Reading about her leaves you needing a shower. She’s been given diplomatic immunity in some but not all European countries and she’s attempting to gain it to travel to the US, and that is really sad.
Twatwaffle.
Twatwaffle!