Ed Sheeran says he's "not complicit" in the Macklemore anti-Semitic clusterfrack

"Jews . . . right?"

Ed Sheeran has issued a statement explaining that Macklemore’s exit from the Loop Tour was, in the most technical and legally convenient sense, someone else’s problem. 

“Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter’s decision, it was not mine,” he cowardly wrote. “Macklemore’s contract for the tour was with the promoter, not me.” 

The headliner whose name is on the tickets, the posters, and the stadium lighting rig would like it known that the man with the loop pedal was merely a spectator to his own tour’s booking decisions. Venues, including ones linked to Robert Kraft, told organizers they would cancel upcoming dates if Macklemore remained on the bill after his New Jersey sets. In spite of that, anyone who would still attend a Sheeran concert is either ignorant of who Sheeran is, or is themself, a scumcrumpet anti-Semite.

Sheeran says he spent the week trying “to build a bridge” and even spoke with Kraft in order not to be the recipient of a boycott by those people who see Jew hatred as a good reason to boycott him. The bridge, as these things often do, led to the same place the venues already wanted to go. 

“The venue’s and promoter’s decision was final,” he reports, as if the artist whose concerts those venues exist to host that night had no leverage worth mentioning. He is “appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine.” 

“The suffering and pain caused on both sides is a human tragedy.” This is the required preamble, the verbal equivalent of standing exactly in the middle of a room and announcing that furniture exists. 

He has “personal views.” He just prefers not to say them out loud. “I am not complicit,” he adds, a sentence that tends to appear most often in statements written by people who suspect someone might think they are.

Those who attend his shows “do not expect a political forum.”  The shows are “about unity, joy, escapism, love, and a place for everyone to feel welcome.” Everyone, that is, except the opening act who used his allotted minutes to say “Free Palestine.” 

Sheeran respects Macklemore’s [anti-Semitic] “strength of purpose to stand up and shout for what he believes.” He just prefers a quieter method: “I choose to use my fame and platform to be a place of safety and sanctuary, to maintain diplomacy and keep conversations open, not closed. If we only focus on shouting the loudest, nothing will ever change.”

The shouting has now been relocated off the tour. The conversations remain open, presumably, in the private channels where a stadium-filling artist discusses matters with venue owners and promoters while the rest of the bill watches support slots disappear. 

Finneas and others have already walked. 

Finneas

Sheeran would “never let down the fans who had made plans, nor would I abandon the touring crew and the other support acts and musicians who rely on me for work and to make a living.” 

The remaining support acts may wish to check their contracts. He knows who he is, he says, “both as a person and as an artist, and those who know my heart know my values too.” 

The public is invited to take that on faith, since the values themselves have been filed under “personal way” and will not be appearing on stage. The loop pedal keeps turning. The statement is complete. The decision, he insists, was never his.

I call bs. What do you think?

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