Will Rogers Was Right

...when he said, "I can remember when politicians were generous with their own money." The same would seem to apply to aging rock stars.

The principle is a cynically apt one, but once you look at the net worth of some of these people, it becomes downright astonishing as well:

Apropos Mark Steyn's blistering column this morning, the question is why activists who believe so deeply in the virtuousness of African debt relief don't pony up their own money instead of insisting the G-8 governments do it with the average working person's.

Consider a glance at the net worth of just a few of the A-List entertainers from Live 8:

Paul McCartney - $885 million

U2 - $850 million

Elton John - $500 million (as of 2000)

Pink Floyd - $359 million

Madonna - $315 million

Sting - $143 million (as of 2000)

That's over three billion in accrued net worth, which would go a long way to erasing Zimbabwe's $4 billion external debt. Yet somehow I don't think Sir Paul & Co. will be eagerly lining up to transfer their hard-earned assets over to Robert Mugabe. [emphasis added]

Not to be a classist or anything, but why don't these long-haired plutocrats ever get soaked? Or, at the very least, put some more of their huge, enormous stacks of money where their big, fat, self-righteous, hypocratical, phony-baloney plastic banana mouths are - like Andre Agassi, for instance?