anonymous March 31st, 2008 11:15AM  
"Hold the presses Mikey! Hot news on the wire!
Hundreds see an image of a Guinness drinking choir.
Celebrities and cameras are headed to the scene
While presidents are fleeing to their speeding limousines."

When there's a major news event, people now seem to look to celebrities for solutions (charity events etc) and opinions; in this instance the 'guinness drinking choir'boy Bono. Politicians are conspicuous by their absence or lack of action in the face of disasters in comparison. When the president should have been making his prescence felt after the hurricane in the US, instead you saw Kanye West. In the UK we had a celebrity chef making an issue of child obesity, rather than the prime minister.

"Don't worry, it's just stigmata.
Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother."

Celebrity culture has also replaced religion (linking to 'choir' earlier) - Bono has been portrayed as a christ like figure. This might be a comment on his implied arrogance or on his deification by media and public.

"Your local programming interrupted
by the mindless banter of a soulless talking head.
Roll out the red carpet, dripping bloody tongue.
Pay no mind to blue berets and all their shiny guns."

Celebrity is a distraction from the real issues at hand - the blue berets with the guns. Celebrity talking head peices (i.e. The clicking fingers ads) represent an outporing of their opinion, and an excuse for people to get behind them with regard to a specific problem and not to think for themselves what deserves their attention as in...

"Who you gonna call when the man brings his hammer down?
Goose stepping with a smoking Irish fly."

"goose stepping" with Bono's alter ego 'the fly' - following celebrity blindly, oblivious to 'the man' i.e. Some higher power (government, god?) who has more real power than the celebrities. That or the celebrities may replace 'the man' as figures of political power, despite their only qualification being fame.

"And when our world is over, children by the fire
Raise their hands and pray that they may see a new Messiah.
And somewhere in the darkness a flag goes running by.
The smell of cigarettes and love are incense for the fly."

The world is being shaped by rock stars etc who's ideology of 'ciggarettes and love' isn't practical; we'll all end up as tribes sat around fires again.

just my guesses. cheers