Forbes publisher: Working for Bono is cool

Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard, who writes a blog on the magazine’s Web site, wrote Wednesday on his blog about how “cool” it was to now work for U2 lead singer Bono, who is an investor in Elevation Partners, which bought a minority stake in Forbes earlier this week.

Karlgaard wrote, “I think it’s very cool. For one, we know Bono is an optimist, because he wears rose-colored glasses. We at Forbes are optimists, too. Bono says capitalism is a tool to solve the world’s problems. Forbes is the Capitalist Tool. Third, Bono is politically independent. He has praised President Bush for the Administration’s AIDS relief work in Africa. For saying the right thing and encouraging the right response, Bono was scorched by the Left.

“Finally, Bono is a God believer. So, too, are many of us at Forbes, and we never hide this fact.

“Actually, the Elevation partner I know best is Roger McNamee. Roger wrote a column for me at Upside magazine in the early 1990s. He also wrote a piece for one of the Forbes ASAP Big Issues, and once we featured Roger in a two-page photo spread in ASAP…’The Full Roger McNamee’ we called it…Roger in chino pants bulging with pagers, cellphones, wires, connectors, laptop batteries, and powerpacks. Roger is a deep, deep nerd. But a Grateful Dead fan, too. (He used to manage the band’s assets, pro bono. Or should we say, Pre Bono?) In any case, Roger’s Nerd-Dead combo makes him the Silicon Valley archetype.”

Read more here.