You know we give Irish rock musician Bono a lot of grief on this site for his attempts to reimagine himself as some kind of elder statesman and humanitarian, but in this commercial, which he narrates, to promote ESPN’s coverage of the 2010 World Cup – bar a few disagreements here and there – he is on point. The commercial is relatively straightforward. As U2’s “Magnificent” plays in the background, and with images from “the news” flashing on the screen (war, economics, protest, environmental disasters, mineral extraction, etcetera), Bono intones: “It’s not about politics, or religion, or the economy.  It’s not about borders, history, trade, oil, water, gas, mineral rights, human rights, or animal rights. It is not about global warming, global pandemics, globalization, GDP, NATO or Kyoto  . . . ” You get it. Bono concludes:  “This is about the one month, every four years, when we all agree on one thing. 32 nations, one world watching.  2010 FIFA World Cup.”

Just watch it. Tell me you’re not moved either way.

Fans generally agree. Like these on a U2 message board: “I don’t even like soccer football the sport, and this ad makes me excited for it.” “Bono could recite that over the intro in concerts and it’d still be awesome. and I don’t like soccer either.” One more: In a word, this is SPECTACULAR! Awesome matching of the graphics and narration to each part of the song- the moodier, searching intro during the depiction of the chaos of the world, then the talk of the World Cup and the explosion of the stadium lights as the uplifting main riff to Magnificent starts!”

ESPN has put a lot of money into promoting the World Cup, so it is also worth checking out the short “32 Teams, 1 Dream” videos they made, presented by Beninese actor Djimon Hounsou.

I particularly like the ones for the six African qualifiers: South Africa, Cameroon, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire (I know the myth of Drogbacite and the civil war continues) Ghana and Algeria. What is striking about some of the team profiles is how political, or left progressive, they seem to be: Take the Algeria one, where Hounsou brings up the Algerian war of independence, and in the Honduras video, where whoever wrote the script and produced it basically condemns the US-led coup against the democratically elected president.