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01/28/2006:

"Davos diary 2006"

By Gillian Caldwell
Executive director, Witness

OK so today is the celebrity blog, because I spent the last 24 hours being with and thinking about "celebrities" and the complexities of their engagement in the issues we work on.

As I mentioned, Peter Gabriel is our founder and we are truly blessed to have such a humble, imaginative, smart and generous soul on our side. Witness was his idea and his involvement has been critical to our creation and continued existence.

When Peter arrives in Davos, we tend to pal around together because I like him... and because the more time I spend with him, the more opportunity I can generate for our work and for the human rights organisations and issues we are trying to get focus on - issues like slavery in Brazil, child soldiers in the Congo, educational desegregation in Bulgaria, the militarisation of the US-Mexico border etc.

I met Angelina Jolie (Angie) last year with Peter, and she has since become involved in our work. We caught up yesterday and I met her partner Brad Pitt (as if I had to tell you, but I hold out some lifeless hope that the BBC audience is a little less consumer-culture oriented?).

Anyway, Angie and Brad are here, genuinely committed to learning and to trying to improve the state of the world. It's frustrating for me, knowing Angie personally and having seen first-hand how hard she works on a range of issues, to see people dismiss celebrity engagement as superficial, or worse yet a play for positive media attention.

The challenge of working with her or anyone at the megastar level is that you simply can't predict or control what the press will choose to focus on. For example, even when they promised us interviews focused on the issue of Sierra Leone at our December benefit in NY, the exclusive focus of the coverage was on whether or not she was pregnant ... and it appears all they were really after was a shot of her midriff!

It's frankly appalling with all that's going on the world and I think the press should stop underestimating their audience and start realising that Angie's enormous fan base actually does care what she has to say, for good reason.

Some high-profile people may dabble, but many others are well served by focused, informed engagement which gets pressing issues to a massive global audience. Bono is a perfect example. He spoke today on a panel titled What's Next for Africa, with the President of Nigeria and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown of Britain amongst others.

Bono is brilliant, funny, tactical, and he knows his issues of debt relief and trade inside and out. (By the way, in response to recent complaints that he shouldn't have accepted the Red card from American Express' offer of 1% of sales in Britain contributed to the causes he is involved in, he is reported to have said "we're not endorsing them - they are endorsing us!")

I'm not the type of person to go running around after celebrities and perhaps that's why I am getting along well with a couple of them. If they're committed, I've got plenty of time. Otherwise, I can't be bothered.

It was funny meeting Michael Douglas last night though - he is receiving a Crystal Award for his work on handgun control and nuclear proliferation. Being just as media-saturated as the next red-blooded American, I confessed that all I could think about when I looked at him was that boiling bunny (for those of you recall Fatal Attraction).

Anyway, we got passed that and I talked the poor man's ear off for a while about US foreign policy... and asked him what fed his soul, which is always of interest to me as my staff will tell you.

And, to conclude my musings on celebrity, I was approached on my way through the metal detector just now by a man I had never met before (Danny Quah from the London School of Economics) who said "Oh, Ms. Caldwell, I love your BBC blog!" I was amazed and responded to say I was rushing to write another entry just now on celebrity - and that his introduction was giving me my first personal insight into the genre!

PS: I forgot to mention that I got Peter signed up to be the musical director for Mel Young's Homeless World Cup which will being teams of homeless people together from more than 40 countries in South Africa in September (he won't be paid to do it, of course).

And I had a good conversation with Gavin Newsome, the mayor of San Francisco, who said he was absolutely committed to transforming the city's juvenile justice system this year and had already allocated the money to do it!
bbc.co.uk

Gosh! What super-yum fun! Who knew that fixing the world could be such a groovy experience???