The New York Post’s Page Six reports that Bono , supposed savior of the world’s disenfranchised, has, through his private equity firm, invested in a video game which depicts Venezuela as a “banana republic led by a ‘power-hungry tyrant.'” According to Page Six, “Players assume the role of a mercenary sent to a fictitious Venezuela, where a dictator has seized control of the country and its oil. The gun-for-hire is instructed, ‘If you can see it, you can buy it, steal it, or blow the living crap out of it.'”

The Post story quoted some “lefties” who were annoyed about the game, among them Jeff Cohen, who criticized the game for glorifying “stale, old mercenary approaches.” Oh, is that the problem with the violent overthrow of other people’s governments? It isn’t fresh thinking! It’s so 1980s, like berry-flavored lip gloss. Jeff must have been a little jet-lagged when he made that silly remark.

Bono gets much humanitarian cred for campaigning for Third World debt relief. But it is disgusting to make a game out of the Bush Administration’s effort to undermine Hugo Chavez, a democratically elected leader, and one of the few living politicians today who are actually working to improve the lot of the world’s poor — the poor, whom the sanctimonious Bono claims to care so much about. If Bono is serious in his commitment, and not, as one frequently suspects, a vapid celebrity poser, he should immediately use his financial muscle to deep-six this horrible video game.