Bono: All politics is shopping & Edun is "nudE" spelled backwards

In today's Los Angeles Times, an article about Bono's line of apparel, Edun -- that's nudE spelled backwards. Bono for president of world bank. Bono for Nobel Peace Price. Bono for Pulitzer. Perhaps Bono will develop a method for turning water into cheap free energy, or machine an internal combustion engine that runs on sand. If he puts his mind to it on weekends, he can probably work out an inexpensive global cure for pinworms in six months.

You too can wear Bono jeans

Excerpted to prevent development of mental illness:

Bono got up from his seat in a private lounge...Then he pointed to a few lines by poet Rainer Maria Rilke printed on the inside of his left pocket.

Bono and colleagues formed Edun -- that's "nudE" spelled backwards -- to provide employment for African garment workers whose plight has worsened with the end of the international Multifiber Agreement, which set textile quotas.

Bono, who has waged a high profile campaign to reduce the debt of Third World Countries, said he began looking into encouraging trade to help Africa's economy after talking with a U.S. Treasury Department official in the waning days of the Clinton administration. "The real scandal is trade," he said before his apparel party.

"There's a more mysterious thing going on with women than you see in shops," Bono said. "It's not outdoors, backpack, which is very cool, but you don't have to go there to have this return-to-nature aesthetic. You don't have to go there for the new kind of femininity."

"The college students and people we know are bored with club culture. They're going into the country on weekends to be with cows and deer and things. There's a new respect for nature. Whereas before they would toss their empty potato chip bag on a street in Manhattan, now they save the bag until the get to the Jersey pine woods. But it's very important to us that this doesn't veer into tree-hugging, sky-kissing, brown-ricing. This is fashion."

It's also an example of what Bono calls "conscious consumerism." ...shoppers are more concerned with who and what goes into producing their clothes.

Bono compared the change to the growing demand for organic food. "It's a shift in thinking," Bono said. "The idea that you might have a stake in the story of the clothes because you're part of the chain. Shopping has become politics. Shopping buys change and a smart shopper might even be able to help in finding a cure for African hemorrhagic fevers."