I told you to send my royalty checks to the Netherlands!

U2 lead singer Bono contributed a desultory, barely intelligible guest column to the New York Times over the weekend, consisting largely of telling Americans what they believe, or stand for, or something. He also shares his cartoonishly simplistic pop-rock worldview:

Americans are like singers — we just a little bit, kind of like to be loved. The British want to be admired; the Russians, feared; the French, envied. (The Irish, we just want to be listened to.)

I won’t get into his bizarre, International House of Pancakes determinism for the attitudes of British, Russians, French or Irish. But Americans want to be loved? Are you fucking serious? That may be true for Alec Baldwin, Perez Hilton and the lead singer of the Killers, but I seldom meet anybody who who actually seeks to be loved by foreigners, unless they’re pathologically insecure.

Here’s another turd from the clueless rocker:

America is not just a country but an idea, a great idea about opportunity for all and responsibility to your fellow man.

I’m glad we have Bono to tell us what America is. (Now if only The Edge would advise me on how to run my small business…)

However, where the hell did he come up with the idea that America is about “responsibility to your fellow man”? That sounds more like Marx than Jefferson. It’s really not hard to ascertain that Americans are an individualist lot and such a statement is deeply problematic– but that might require Bono to doff his freaky ski goggles and look around.