About an hour into U2's show Monday night at the Charlotte Bobcats Arena, the event became something very different from a typical rock concert. During "Sunday Bloody Sunday," front man Bono donned a headband with the word "COEXIST" spelled out with the Muslim crescent, Jewish Star of David, Christian cross and other religious symbols.

"Coexist: what a beautiful, simple thought, and it's getting harder to hold onto," Bono said, adding a prayer "that we do not become a monster in order to defeat a monster."

For "Bullet the Blue Sky," Bono adopted the pose of a prisoner: headband over his eyes as a blindfold, down on his knees, arms raised with wrists crossed. It looked as though it could be commentary on the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal in Iraq -- until Bono solemnly intoned at the song's conclusion, "Dedicated to the brave young men and women of the United States military."

But the moment that took the cake was the introduction to "One," the final song before the encores. Bono asked the sold-out mob of 17,000 to turn the arena into a Christmas tree by holding up their cell phones. He went on to say that as long as everyone had their phones out, they should join up with the anti-poverty One campaign by text-messaging a number on the video screen.

Then he paid tribute to a North Carolina political figure whom left-leaning rock stars have vilified for decades -- Jesse Helms, the conservative icon known as "Senator No" during his 30-year tenure in the U.S. Senate. But thanks to Helms, Bono said, more than 400,000 Africans with AIDS are getting medication now.

"This stuff works," he declared, outlining his ideology-spanning plan for victory over poverty worldwide. "Teddy Kennedy and Jesse Helms; South and North; casinos and churches -- all walking together as one."

United, the crowd roared. And Bono began to sing.

We're one, but we're not the same

We get to carry each other, carry each other.

By the time his name was mentioned onstage, Helms was no longer in the arena. But he traveled to Charlotte for a pre-show dinner with Bono. The men first met in 2000, when Bono won Helms over to his cause of fighting AIDS and poverty in Africa. Monday was a chance for Bono to catch Helms up on the work that still goes on nearly three years after Helms retired from politics.

The next day, the senator's wife was singing Bono's praises.

"He is doing marvelous things," Dot Helms said in a phone interview. "He is an exceedingly smart man and also a deeply committed Christian. ... I think that's the motivation behind what he is doing. He feels people ought to be in the trenches doing things and not just talking, which he said to us."

Nobody could accuse Bono of "just talking." Bruce Springsteen, Tori Amos, Steve Earle and other high-profile artists are politically active on a variety of issues. But no one in popular music is in the same league as Bono -- a man the New York Times magazine calls "the most politically effective figure in the recent history of popular culture."

A large part of that is Bono's willingness to get down in the trenches and work within the political system. Through his African relief organization DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) and hobnobbing with Helms, President Bush and other politicians, Bono makes as many headlines for activism as for music. Earlier this year, when Bono's name was floated as a candidate to head the World Bank, it almost made sense.

On tour, Bono spends as much time talking politics as singing. The day after a show in Boston earlier this month, he met with students and faculty at Harvard University. And in March, on the day U2 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Bono found time to do an interview with Chapel Hill filmmaker John Wilson, who is making a documentary about Helms.

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