PERSONS OF THE YEAR

摘要

These are not the people you expect to come to the rescue, Rock stars are designed to be shiny, shallow creatues, furloughed from reality for all time. Billionaires are even more removed, nestled atop fantastic weaan where they never again have to place their own calls or defrost dinner or fly commercial. So Bono spends several thousand dollars at a restaurant for a nice Pinot Noir, and Bill Gates, the great predator of the Internet age, has a trampoline room in his $100 million house. It makes you think that if these guys can decide to make it their mission to save the world, partner with people they would never otherwise meet, care about causes that are not sexy or dignified in the ways that celebrities normally require, then no one really has a good excuse anymore for just staying on the sidelines and watching. Such is the nature of Bono's fame that just about everyone in the world wants to meet him—except for the richest man in the world, who thought it would be a waste of time. "World health is immensely complicated," says Gates, recalling that first encounter in 2002. "It doesn't really boil down to a 'Let's be nice' analysis. So I thought a meeting wouldn't be all that valuable."