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Letters & Responses
- Article from:
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Literary Review of Canada
- Article date:
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July 1, 2008
- Author:
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Copyright informationCopyright Literary Review of Canada Jul/Aug 2008. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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To the Editor:
Mark Frieds review of my recent book, Celebrity Diplomacy, provides a considerable measure of encouragement mixed with a dose of disappointment ("Politics as Spectacle," June 2008). From the first lines of his review, Fried drills down to the core of the book's argument: that the most sophisticated of these celebrity diplomats use a combination of buzz and bite to pursue their agenda. Everybody wants access to Bono, and Bono in turn uses that access as a honey-trap to push his agenda on development aid, debt relief and health.
To showcase this trend is not to suggest that celebrity diplomacy will be used only to advance an agenda for public good. As alluded to by Fried, the ...