If record sales were relevant, then J-Lo and Ja Rule should be messiahs. Or if not, at least spokespeople for a generation.

But Billboard chart positions don’t make saviors. And neither do radio play nor meaningless chunks of metal and plastic.

Judging by U2’s reception at the Grammys, someone apparently thinks otherwise.

Indeed, with eight nominations and four wins this year, U2 was re-elevated to heights they haven’t seen since the mid-80s.

Now the self-styled “best band in the world” has been thrust back into the spotlight.

The terrorist attacks were like a shot of Viagra for Bono and the boys as an overly sensitive music industry looked to the most marketable and least interesting way to sell a mourning nation musical Kleenex.

Enter U2’s “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” and “Walk On,” from their 2000 release, “All That You Can’t Leave Behind.” With wonderfully ambiguous lyrics and a sound that reached back to the days of Radiohead’s “The Bends,” the tracks were exactly what record companies told listeners they needed – something numbingly familiar and derivative.

Radio play increased, U2 ended up with the 26th-best selling album of the year according to Billboard.com and the band took home a handful of Grammys.

But someone needs to take off the public’s rose-colored glasses and break Bono’s blue ones – he doesn’t need the damn things to see properly anyway – because U2 is not making music or statements that matter.

The Entertainment Industry Foundation gave Bono the Humanitarian of the Year award on Valentine’s Day at the first “Love Rocks” benefit. Tom Cruise, Lauryn Hill and others, including a taped speech by Bill Clinton, paid tribute to the egomaniacal, stuck-in-a-moment-in-1987-when-he-was-still-cool rocker.

Time plastered a smug Bono, complete with U.S. flag-lined jacket, on its March 4 issue, along with a tagline reading “Can Bono save the world?”

As spokesman for DATA (Debt, AIDS, and Trade for Africa), a group he founded to help Africa, Bono says he wants the world to focus on dropping the continent’s countries’ debts, altering trade rules for poor countries and improving health care.

He met with Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and Bill Gates in February at the World Economic Forum, espousing his causes and impressing the Secretary.

Of course, this is nothing new to the ever-bespectacled political poet.

Ever since taking part in 1984’s Band Aid and a subsequent trip to an Ethiopian orphanage, Bono has been politically conscious, hobnobbing with everyone from the Pope to Bill Clinton.

It all seems wonderful. Bono is the classic case of: guy gets power and money, guy uses power and money to “do good and make a difference,” guy feels good as festering, starving Sudanese child manages one final smile before dying as a rich rock star he doesn’t know holds his hand and sheds a tear.

Even though Bono speaks intelligently about world issues, it’s hard to believe he actually realizes what he’s saying.

In the Time article, he says he doesn’t argue compassion. Instead, logic is his method.

One of the chief goals of DATA is to erase the accumulated $350 billion public debt of the world’s 52 poorest countries, most of these being in Africa. Bono says the countries should be funding health care and education rather than wasting money paying back loans taken by corrupt and defunct governments.

If he really cared about this sort of superfluous spending, Bono might focus on the expenses of his own band.

For the 1997 Pop Mart tour, the band spent more than $1.5 million per week to keep the show going.

Ticket prices for U2’s recent U.S. tour ranged from $45 for nosebleed-but-at-least-I-can-see-Bono’s-glasses-on-the-Trinitron seats to $130 gold circle seats.

The band grossed $109.7 million on the tour, according to Rollingstone.com, the highest of any musical act in 2001.

And since their stage show was much less extravagant than past years, the band ought to have enough money to personally help out – or outright purchase – at least one poor African nation.

And if not, they can always buy Bono a new pair of glasses.

Jon Dahlager is a junior in journalism and sociology from Cottage Grove, Minn. He is arts and entertainment editor of the Daily.