Bono's awful new column

So I was feeling pretty crappy tonight about my writing, and told Julie I would really like to try doing something else, like cooking for a living, because that way I'd know I was doing something worthwhile, something whose value was measurable and concrete, instead of this half-ass crap I do.

And then I picked up my New York Times opinion section, and read Bono's new column.

It's really, really bad. I mean, college journalism bad. It's about life lessons from Frank Sinatra. Excerpt:

We had spent some time in his house in Palm Springs, which was a thrill -- looking out onto the desert and hills, no gingham for miles. Plenty of miles, though, Miles Davis. And plenty of talk of jazz. That's when he showed me the painting. I was thinking the circles were like the diameter of a horn, the bell of a trumpet, so I said so.

"The painting is called 'Jazz' and you can have it."

I said I had heard he was one of Miles Davis's biggest influences.

Little pithy replies:

"I don't usually hang with men who wear earrings."

"Miles Davis never wasted a note, kid -- or a word on a fool."

"Jazz is about the moment you're in. Being modern's not about the future, it's about the present."

I think about this now, in this new year. The Big Bang of pop music telling me it's all about the moment, a fresh canvas and never overworking the paint. I wonder what he would have thought of the time it's taken me and my bandmates to finish albums, he with his famous impatience for directors, producers -- anyone, really -- fussing about. I'm sure he's right. Fully inhabiting the moment during that tiny dot of time after you've pressed "record" is what makes it eternal. If, like Frank, you sing it like you'll never sing it again. If, like Frank, you sing it like you never have before.

If.

Um, fully inhabiting the moment during that tiny dot of time after I finished this howler of a column, I felt better. Cheap comfort is still comfort. Of course, I could work at it every day for a thousand years and never write a rock song as good as Bono's lamer efforts. So there you are. Still, as newspaper columns go, this is not-un-Vogon-poetry-like.

UPDATE: Dan Drezner is similarly moved:

And, I have to say, his debut column is a smashing success. In just his first effort, Bono has already managed to combine the worst tropes of Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd and fuse them together into some new alchemy of awfulness.

Drezner asks his readers to read Bono's column and explain its theme in 20 words or less. Save your trouble; his effort can't be improved on: "Did you know that I knew Frank Sinatra?"