on DISMANTLING an atomic bomb

the follow rant offered free and unsolicited:

why is it that in our sound-bite, sex and violence loving, context and content hating nation, we . . .

well, i've just answered my own question. because we are who we are (weeping, gnashing of teeth) a good many reviews of U2's new album titled how to dismantle an atomic bomb are titled in such a way as to use the bomb image, and not the dismantle image.

a couple examples among VERY many:

U2's 'Bomb' Explodes at No. 1 on US Charts
Reuters - NY,USA

'Bomb' flattens doubts about U2
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY

CD Review: U2's Latest Is More Dud Than 'Bomb'
Channel Oklahoma.com - Oklahoma City,OK,USA

U2's 'Bomb' lacks firepower
By DARRYL STERDAN
Winnipeg Sun

what is the issue with this? at the risk of sounding like a grouch, this band has been raising peace issues since day one given the context of ireland's conflicts and particular biographical things such as their school that brought together both Protestants and Catholics. and the album is about dismantling an explosive father - son relationship and as well the whole violent cold war ethos of that generation. and some of the songs 'peace and love or else' are strongly anti-war.

go figure.

anon, and +peace

Comments

[Beth]

So true. I was thinking about posting on the repetive titles, but you've put a nice additional spin on it: there is definitely more bombing language than dismantling language, and how inappropriate is that? Now if only we could also do away with all the articles on the band whose headlines contain the words "You Too...."

[Michael Kunz]

I used to be a newspaper copy editor, and included among my duties was headline-writing.

This is not to criticize U2, but it was almost a guarantee that an album with that title was going to show up in headlines with the "bomb" image rather than the "dismantling" image. Why? Because "bomb" is a shorter word and it fits, spacewise, in a headline where "dismantling" does not. And, of course, "bomb" is a more vivid image.....although if the word that meant "dismantling" were only four letters long and the word that meant "bomb" were 11 letters long, you might have ended up with a different result.

That being said, we could speculate that whoever does marketing for U2 knew quite well that when they put the word "Bomb" in the title of the album, that that was the word that was going to get the attention.

Maybe I'm just being cynical, but maybe I'm just being a realist....

Michael Kunz