Here’s how it happened:
Ed Sheeran (musician) got a call from a billionaire who was in the Epstein files, Robert Kraft. Kraft told Ed, “If Macklemore’s on your tour, you’re not performing.” He rallied other stadium owners to do the same.
At that point, Sheeran, who has been friends with Macklemore for over a decade, told Macklemore he had to go. He could not perform at the Sheeran concert. And Macklemore put out a gracious statement, “Ed was in a f*cked up position. His typical apolitical stance was being challenged.”
Two things about that: Ed Sheeran has wealth of approximately 400 million dollars now. Also, he is not always apolitical. He released a statement a while back that he “stands with Ukraine.”
So, at what point does one think one has enough money, enough fame, and enough music fans to fight back against billionaire edicts? At what point does one acknowledge that one is only ‘apolitical’ when the people who are being slaughtered have a darker complexion than you do?
What Ed Sheeran did by buckling under Robert Kraft’s oligarchy was tie Zionism to white supremacy. It’s as simple, and short-sighted, and stupid as that.
Let’s talk about how this started: Pink. A white woman who, for a while, flirted with cosplaying as a Black woman, and is now giving speeches about being “a Jew” who was mortally offended by Macklemore saying, “Free Palestine, free Lebanon, free Cuba, free Sudan, free all the people in America who are living in fear of the terrorist organization, ICE. And to my Jewish brothers and sisters, my criticism of the Israeli government is in no way a criticism of you.”
The above is what Macklemore said that so offended Pink, so that she screamed for the removal of Macklemore from Sheeran’s tour. And when the billionaire Kraft, who has numerous sexual misconduct allegations against him, gave Sheeran his edict, that’s whose moral standard Sheeran chose.
It seems harder, and more frightening than ever to be a Macklemore when there are so many Sheerans who choose to “stay neutral.” I get it, because I was a Sheeran myself. I have so many Jewish friends whom I love, who have experienced true antisemitism, who are old enough to have had parents who lived through and suffered through the Holocaust, that I hoped to keep my head below the radar on this issue.
But now, seeing so many Jewish people, including Israelis, standing up against their own government, and having the iron courage to endure the hatred against them for doing so by their own families and friends, seeing what’s happening here with ICE totally out of control, seeing the billionaires touting a technology that is destroying our children’s future, I have to confess:
I want to be, and will always strive to be a Macklemore, in this terrible and terrifying post-Trump America of Sheerans.
And I think I’ll start by ordering Macklemore’s new album.
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