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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Robert Kraft, Gillette Stadium Boot Macklemore From Ed Sheeran Tour Over ‘Free Palestine’ Rant

Anti Semite Pro-Terrorist Scumcrumpet Macklemore

There was a time when attending a concert involved listening to music. You bought a ticket, found your seat, endured the opening act and waited for the person you had actually paid to see. You probably had no idea what the performer's political leanings were.

This increasingly quaint arrangement appears to have become unacceptable to the blatant anti-Semite who calls himself Macklemore.

The creep has discovered that there are, in fact, limits to the amount of political activism an audience may be expected to consume along with its entertainment. He is learning this after being removed from Ed Sheeran’s U.S. stadium tour following a series of political speeches and performances attacking Israel and U.S. immigration policy.

The controversy began at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Sept. 4 and 5, where Macklemore opened for Sheeran, whose judgment is on par with a sand worm. Rather than confining himself to warming up the crowd, Macklemore used the enormous platform to deliver a political message about ICE and Israel. He wore the Nazi equivalent of a swastika known as a keffiyeh. He displayed footage of destruction in Gaza, performed "Hind’s Hall" and led the audience in "Free Palestine" chants.

The distinction between a concert and a political rally became rather difficult to locate.

Macklemore has apparently concluded that the opportunity to address thousands of people about the Middle East is simply too valuable to pass up. The difficulty is that the people providing the stage are under no obligation to agree with him, or even to permit their property to become an extension of his political campaign.

That became particularly clear when Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots and the Kraft Group, barred Macklemore from performing at Gillette Stadium. Sheeran is scheduled to play there Sept. 25 and 26. 

Kraft has a particular reason for taking the issue seriously. He founded the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism in 2019 and has spent years campaigning against anti-Jewish hatred. He also appears to believe that criticizing the Israeli government and vilifying Jews are not interchangeable concepts, a distinction that has become surprisingly controversial in some cultural circles. 

Robert Kraft

So let's not pretend that anti-Zionism is different from anti-Semitism; the are interchangeable terms.

Kraft cited Macklemore's recent conduct as well as what he described as a "broader history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery."

"Gillette Stadium has a longstanding commitment to providing a welcoming environment for all guests and ensuring that events held at our venue do not provide a platform for hate speech," Kraft shared in a statement made to ESPN.

"Based on Macklemore's recent actions, material shared from the stage during Ed Sheeran's shows in New Jersey, and a broader history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community, we determined that his participation in the September 25th and 26th shows would not be permitted."

This is not entirely an unprecedented position.

In May 2014, Macklemore performed in Seattle wearing a bushy black beard, dark wig and large prosthetic nose, an obvious anti-Semitic trope. Civil rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, condemned the appearance as resembling historical anti-Jewish caricatures often seen in WWII Nazi posters. 

Macklemore subsequently claimed the costume was a random coincidence, obviously thinking people are morons.

That episode has inevitably returned to the discussion surrounding "Hind’s Hall," particularly because Macklemore's current political performances have been almost entirely concerned with condemning Israel.

There is, of course, a legitimate argument to be made about Palestinian civilians. There is also legitimate room for fierce criticism of the Israeli government. But any serious discussion of the present conflict has to account for the fact that Hamas launched the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, murdering civilians and taking hostages, thereby setting in motion the war that followed. 

Macklemore's critics argue that this part of the story receives considerably less attention in his performances.

FAFO Macklemore.

Kraft made precisely that point while insisting that sympathy for Palestinians and opposition to Hamas are not mutually exclusive positions.

"This decision is not about diminishing the suffering of innocent Palestinians or denying anyone the right to advocate on their behalf," Kraft stated. "But that advocacy should not come at the expense of the Jewish community or obscure the responsibility of Hamas, a designated terrorist organization whose horrific actions have caused immeasurable suffering."

This is not an especially radical proposition. It is, in fact, the sort of proposition that ought to be possible to state without causing a cultural emergency.

Kraft went further.

"I would welcome the opportunity to sit down with Macklemore and discuss the facts, because ultimately our goal is the same: peace for all people, an end to suffering, and an end to all hate," Kraft said.

Macklemore, for his part, responded on social media by blaming venue operators and Kraft for his removal while acknowledging that Sheeran had been put in a difficult position. He rejected Kraft's characterization of his remarks as hate speech and maintained that losing his place on the tour was a price he was prepared to pay.

Perhaps it is.

But there is another price that artists occasionally have to consider. If a performer uses somebody else's stadium, somebody else's tour and somebody else's audience as the setting for an extended political intervention, the people who own the stadium and organize the tour may eventually decide that they have had enough. 

That is not censorship. It is the rather ordinary exercise of deciding who gets to use your property. They have that right.

Eight of the remaining ten U.S. dates on Sheeran's tour were scheduled for NFL stadiums. The tour promoter, Messina Touring Group, confirmed that Macklemore had been removed from all remaining U.S. dates after multiple venue operators refused to allow him to appear.

There is something revealing about the entire episode. Macklemore believed that his political convictions entitled him to use a commercial entertainment platform to broadcast them. The venue operators apparently believed that they were entitled to say no.

The second position remains surprisingly popular among people who own stadiums, and is likely supported by people who own private property, as the law says they do.

Macklemore may regard the loss of the tour as the cost of speaking his mind. That is his prerogative. But the ability to speak does not create an obligation on everyone else to provide you with a microphone, a stadium and thousands of captive listeners.

Even rock stars, it seems, occasionally encounter the boundaries of someone else's property.

Oh, and let's not forget how much Ed Sheeran sucks too.

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