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Transcript:
Today I want to talk about Ed Sheeran and Macklemore. That’s a sentence I never thought I would speak out loud, but it’s the truth: I genuinely want to talk about two musicians I have previously had absolutely zero interest in ever thinking about. Such is life in the year 2026 of the worst possible timeline.
This is a bit like making a movie about Batman: do I really need to tell you that a thug shot Bruce Wayne’s parents in a Gotham City alley? Probably not, but somewhere, someone needs the context that everyone else on planet Earth already knows, so I’ll make this brief: Ed Sheeran is a very popular musician who is on a tour in which his old friend Macklemore is opening for him. During one recent set, Macklemore took a moment to say “Free Palestine.” Robert Kraft, the billionaire who owns the New England Patriots football team and the stadium in which they play, contacted Sheeran and told him that the show would not play in that stadium or any of his rich friends’ stadiums unless Macklemore was dropped from the tour, because Kraft is a fan of Israel, the country that is currently committing genocide upon the Palestinian people. Sheeran immediately rolled over and agreed.
When Macklemore made this public, every single other musical act associated with Sheeran also dropped out of the tour, including, hilariously, Sheeran’s own backing band, Beoga, which isn’t terribly surprising considering that they are “founding members of the Irish Artists For Palestine movement.” Then it seems like Sheeran launched a contest to find new artists to open for him through a promotion on Guitar Center’s website, but Guitar Center let all the video submissions appear on the website without moderation and that went about the way you would expect.
All of this forced a public response from Sheeran himself, which was exactly as mealy-mouthed and pathetic as you might expect, and even a vague post from Kraft saying that what Macklemore said was “hate speech.” Kraft also vaguely promised to give some money to someone in the region, which, judging by his history, probably means continuing to fund the guys who are dropping the bombs on the Palestinians.
Okay. So, considering that this news has been everywhere, why do I want to talk about it? Well, a few reasons: first of all, and most importantly, I think it’s important to periodically use my meager platform to acknowledge the ongoing genocide that is happening–a genocide that surely would not be possible, at least in its size and scope, were it not for the enthusiastic support of both of the major parties of my own government here in the United States. The more each of us speaks this fact plainly, the more it becomes safe for others to speak it, and eventually it becomes ludicrous to lie that it isn’t happening, and evil to continue to support and fund it, and despicable to not actively stop it from happening.
Secondly, I think it’s funny. Not the genocide, obviously, but the sheer ineptitude of sniveling little spineless twerps like Ed Sheeran and the abject bloodlust of soulless billionaire baby-killers like Robert Kraft. It’s just funny to see them twisting in the wind, trying desperately to cling to their empty fame and fortune while the world sees them for exactly what they are.
And thirdly, because I do think I have a very minor thing to add to the discourse, here. While I largely agree with the majority of the opinions I’m seeing around social media right now, there is one take I haven’t seen expressed, so I wanted to just take a minute to do that here.
Kraft’s accusation, that Macklemore’s statement in opposition to Israel’s genocide is “antisemitic,” has been repeated far and wide by Israel’s staunchest defenders. Obviously, no one with any sense would actually think it’s antisemitic to suggest a country should not wantonly murder babies and other innocent people, and so many of these Zionists have padded this accusation by reaching twelve years into the past to point out that Macklemore previously did something that actually was antisemitic: in 2014, he got on stage dressed up in a disguise: a big nose, a black beard, and a black bowl cut wig. This was at a special event at Seattle’s EMP, in which apparently he played two songs, one of which was his hit “Thrift Shop.” Yes, a song about how fun it is to be very frugal. I say “apparently” because the only video I can find of this event shows him performing a different song, but I can’t imagine he’d be allowed to do any event without performing the literal only song most people would ever associate with him, so I’ll grant it.
The responses I’ve seen to this accusation tend to be two-fold. First, people point out that it was 12 years ago and he apologized for that immediately. And second, they point out that it has nothing to do with the fact that he was quite literally dropped from the tour for saying that Israel should not genocide Palestinian people, a statement which is obviously, blatantly, not antisemitic so it doesn’t matter.
I agree whole heartedly with that second point: the people bringing this incident up are clearly trying to distract from the obvious issue, which is that an artist is being deplatformed for speaking out against a genocide, full stop.
But I think the first point calls for a bit more nuance. It’s true that Macklemore’s seemingly antisemitic performance happened more than a decade ago, but it’s not strictly true that he apologized for it. He posted about it on his website, but it was not an apology per se. At the very end, the word “apologize” does appear, but only in the classic not-pology: “I truly apologize to anybody that I may have offended.” But he is not apologizing for being purposely offensive, for engaging in a dog whistle. Instead of an apology, the post is an explanation of the accident that led to people mistakenly being offended: he went to a costume shop before the show, looking for a way to conceal his identity so he could walk around beforehand amongst the crowd, unrecognized. ALL the nose options were big and long. He chose black hair and beard because it was the furthest from his own hair color. It was not his “intention” to look like a Jewish stereotype.
At the time, the AntiDefamation League announced that they accepted Macklemore at his word and all was forgiven. But I lean more towards the feeling of Gene Demby of NPR’s Code Switch, who wrote at the time, “Sure, it’s possible that he didn’t realize that the nose, wig and beard — taken together with his performing a song about the joys of frugality — might converge into a kind of racist Voltron.
“But that would be like frolicking through a fruit patch, tripping face-first into a dirt pit, and then emerging, dazed and face blackened, clutching a watermelon. Your story might in fact be legit, but so many things would have to go wrong in a particular order that you would kind of have to understand if no one believed you.”
What am I saying here: is Macklemore antisemitic? Or even, did he do an antisemitic performance back in 2014? I don’t know! But I’m not going to sit here and say “Oh, he apologized for that, it’s water under the bridge!” Because sure, it happened ages ago and I haven’t seen him do anything antisemitic since then, but it’s certainly a red flag that will always be there in the background. I forgive, but I do not forget. This has served me well over the years.
I think this is important for two reasons: first, because it highlights the fact that the takeaway from the Ed Sheeran/Robert Kraft/Macklemore news story should not be that the first two men suck and the third one should be put on a pedestal. The story here is that people with a great amount of money and power, like Robert Kraft, are using that money and power to silence criticism of a genocidal state, and they are able to do that because of the complicity of “apolitical,” “well-meaning,” “both sides,” “complicated issue” spineless money-hungry losers like Ed Sheeran.
Second, because it highlights how much of this story is NOT AT ALL about antisemitism. If this were about antisemitism, Robert Kraft would have demanded Macklemore get off the tour before he ever stepped on stage. If this were about antisemitism, AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Texas, which joined Kraft in calling for Macklemore to be booted, certainly would not be hosting Kanye West next month, considering that Ye sold t-shirts with swastikas on them, released a song called Heil Hitler, and announced that he is a Nazi.
Macklemore’s brief flirtation with antisemitism doesn’t muddy the situation. In fact, it makes it clearer: hating Jews is fine. Hating Israel is not. Let me give you another example: Candace Owens.
Candace Owens is a bigoted, conspiracy-addled antisemite. She has been for a long time, as you can see in this article from the Jerusalem Post who reported that in 2019 she went on the record to say that she had no problem with Hitler “making Germany great;” it’s just that then he went into other countries, and that was an issue. They point out that at the time of her comments, she was working for Turning Points USA, which is “funded in part by the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation, a pro-Israel group that promotes Jewish identity, as well as by Andrew Borans, CEO of the Jewish Alpha Epsilon Pi Foundation fraternity.”
A short time later, Owens voluntarily stepped down from her role at TPUSA but remained good friends with everyone there as she moved over to do a show for Prager U. In 2020, Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire picked her up, where she spent the next four years spreading her bigoted conspiracy theories. It was only in March of 2024, when Owens had pivoted to criticizing Israel, that Shapiro finally declared her to be too “antisemitic” for his network.
Candace Owens IS antisemitic. That surely IS her motivation for wanting to criticize Israel. The criticisms themselves? Many are absolutely correct: Israel IS committing a genocide. But her being correct about that should NOT persuade us to support her in any way, because she is a terrible, stupid, hateful person who should not be given a platform at all.
At the same time, this story illustrates the simple fact that the rightwing media machine, including prominent Jewish people like Ben Shapiro, did not care about antisemitism in the least. They hired a blatant, unrepentant antisemite and milked her for years. They only deplatformed her when she attacked Israel. Not Jewish people: Israel. That is crystal clear.
That’s why I don’t think we need to shy away from the possibility that Macklemore may have done something antisemitic in his past and never fully reckoned with it: that was not a line in the sand for them. It could not be clearer that Robert Kraft and his billionaires do not give a shit about bigotry towards the Jewish people. They only care about protecting their own interests, and in this case their interest is funding Israel’s genocide.
