Bono, Shakira, Alicia Keys & Bill Clinton Make Activism 'Cool'

On Saturday night, MTV held a roundtable forum at the Apollo Theater in Harlem to discuss activism, specifically how to get young people involved. Several big-time musicians and celebrities showed up to help with the cause.

Bono, who was (obviously) there as a speaker, talked about the importance of improving trade laws for African nations, saying, "Africans are a particularly noble people and they want to trade their way out of it. It's not charity, it's justice." If that sounds like a made-up Bono quote, it's not; he actually said that.

Shakira also took the stage, praising Bono and stressing the importance of youth activism before performing the hit song "Hips Don't Lie."

Others appearing at the forum included singer Alicia Keys and former President Bill Clinton. Comedian Chris Rock, who was also in attendance, summed up the message of the evening best with this quote:

I think we're trying to make activism cool again for kids.

Oh, those crazy celebrities. Activism was never cool. I mean, have you been to a protest rally? The guy to girl ratio is always terrible, you can't see over all the signs, and you gotta stand for, like, 7 hours. Lame.

Alright, I'm joking around. It is very important for young people to get involved with social issues. However, I think MTV is giving the youth of America a little too much credit. This forum was encouraging kids to get involved with any cause that they feel is important to them. Not that I think our country's youth is stupid or anything, but you need to give them a little more direction than that. Pick a cause, or even a couple causes. Give the kids somewhere to start, and let them go from there. Maybe start with flu shot awareness and eventually work up to global poverty. If you let kids support whatever causes are important to them, you'll see a hundred rallies protesting the fact that Best Buy didn't stock enough copies of Halo 3.

Because I really want to help out MTV, I'm going to offer up a few other suggestions to help get young people into activism. I was recently a young person, and I'm not yet a real man, so they may want to take this advice to heart.

Suggestion #1 - Get the cool kids involved, and it will trickle down to everyone else. It worked for Abercrombie, it will work for social activism. With that in mind...

Suggestion #1A - Don't hold a roundtable forum on a Saturday night.

Suggestion #2 - Get musicians to speak up, and be sure to incorporate their popular song titles in the speeches. For example, Shakira could say this: "Hi everyone, I'm Shakira. One thing my hips don't lie about is the spread of AIDS in Africa. Africans can get AIDS wherever, whenever due to the nation's rampant health issues and unsafe prevention methods. And that's not cool, because any man looking to get underneath my clothes needs to not have AIDS!"

Suggestion #3 - Make activism into a reality show. Kids don't care about activism, but if you can make them think they're competing in a "Real World/Road Rules Challenge" event, then they'll be all about it.

Suggestion #4 - Tell kids they're not allowed to help with activism, then they'll definitely want to do it.

Suggestion #5 - Get Dane Cook involved. Kids love that guy.

There you go, that should be enough to get started. Good luck, MTV, and keep up the great work. It's like my father always said, "Give a man a petition and he'll fight social injustice for a day, but teach a man to protest and he'll fight social injustice for a lifetime while smoking pot and staying unemployed." Or something like that.