Robert Kraft told Ed he couldnt continue his tour (specifically wouldn't let him play in the stadium he owned, and convinced the owners of other stadiums to agree with him) if he kept Macklmore on the tour. Macklemore has been saying "free palestine" among other things in his opening act for Ed. I recommend you read Macklemore's post and Ed's response if you want further info
It seems like driving a wedge between Ed and Robert is the most obvious answer
Sheeran just saying Macklemore's line about Palestine at every remaining concert sounds like a hilarious "fuck you" to Kraft while also still fulfilling is touring contract
Force Kraft to escalate even more if he wants to shut it down, while enabling Macklemore's words even when he's not there
"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. There are different approaches to being an advocate for change."
He’s completely allowed to say this though. This whole silent is the same as supporting it is BS. Some people just aren’t knowledgeable enough to involve themselves. His opinion will literally not stop the genocide. People are dog piling the wrong person. Nobody is even going after Kraft or the other stadium owners. The collective of people attacking Ed instead of the people responsible are missing all of their ability to critically think and parse out the real problem. We are literally doomed as a society.
I think it's because we already know Kraft is a huge asshole.
Also, Ed has stood up for causes before, the whole 'I don't take sides' is absolute horseshit. It smells mighty fishy when suddenly he won't stand up for a cause that his billionaire friend dislikes.
He doesn’t have to stand for all of them though. He might not know enough to take a stance. He might be one of those guys who genuinely wants everyone to feel included and not to exclude anyone and the free Palestine movement does often get mixed in with them being anti-Israel and anti-Jew. We don’t know his personal reasoning and to expect someone to express it with this mob like mentality, like he did something wrong when he didn’t, is absolutely wild. It’s literally inhumane to treat someone this way because they didn’t want to push their agenda on others. He literally said he thought the whole thing was terrible and condemned the killing. That’s enough. People are still mad because he said conflict. People are mad because he doesn’t want to use his platform for politics. Yes, it is politics even though it’s also a genocide. People will politicize everything if you haven’t noticed. This whole this is bonkers.
Exactly. Dude is a musician. It's wild to expect him to even know anything about Palestine. He lives his life on a tour bus. He's an entertainer. A modern jester. Why in the fuck does anyone care about his opinion on anything (other than music)? Just let the dude sing and dance.
Yeah it's wild to expect a person living in our time with ample access to news media to know anything about one of the most reported on conflicts of the past 5 years involving a famously persecuted peoples and the people they're currently oppressing. He lives on a bus, nobody on a bus knows things!
It's wild to expect a random musician to have deep knowledge on another country's political issue, and to then use his day-job to preach to his unwilling customers about that political issue. I wouldn't expect my insurance agent to preach to me about world politics, and they would certainly get fired for it. The only difference between Sheeran and a random insurance agent is that Sheeran has more money. He's still just at work, and people are expecting him to go on a political crusade while on the clock.
The flip side of this is that people can choose to like or dislike celebrities for any reason they want and that's another form of freedom. Being 'cancelled' because people don't like you in a job about being liked is just business.
You don't need 'deep knowledge on another country's political issue' to know what's been going on since 2023 in Israel.
Also he met with one of the former hostages in 2024, so he absolutely knows at least something is going on and has plenty of access to educate himself about it.
Sorry to have to tell you but musicians have famously been taking political stances and talking about it on stage for a looong time now.
Sorry to have to tell you but musicians have famously been taking political stances and talking about it on stage for a looong time now.
True, but irrelevant to the point I'm making. Musicians have also been abusing drugs and alcohol since forever. Does that mean Ed Sheeran needs to shoot up heroin too?
You say you don't expect your insurance agent to talk to you about politics. Insurance agents aren't famously and historically known to talk about politics. Musicians are.
You would be surprised how easy it is to miss major events if you're not actively looking up the news, or sitting on uncurated social media. Especially if you already have a PR person dedicated to giving you information on important things, and they're only giving you what your promoter/label/etc. would want you to say.
Right except for that time he met with one of the former hostages a couple years back so he absolutely knew something about what's going on and can easily educate himself.
And you can hear about lots of information and still not be correct. You ever see Fox News? He doesn’t need to use his platform to project YOUR opinion. Full stop. He doesn’t have to. He can want his entire platform to be neutral. He is allowed. He’s not your and anyone else’s muppet. Maybe attack the guys who started this whole thing? You know, Kraft and the other stadium owners? Not the guy who literally didn’t do anything. Ed knew Macklemores views and gave him the platform. He wouldn’t have had that without Ed and now Ed gets cancelled because other people gave Macklemore consequences? Reddit is a cesspool of people who can’t critically think. It’s an echo chamber for people who are doing and have done less good for the world collectively than Ed Sheeran has.
Sure, he's allowed to have a neutral platform, and we're allowed to think he's a mealy mouthed shitheel for doing that. He's taken sides before, he's spoken up about Aboriginal rights in Australia, but as soon as his rich asshole buddy is mad he's suddenly apolitical. That's absolute bullshit and I'm 100% allowed to call it out as such. Full stop.
"Reddit is a cesspool of people who can’t critically think."
Says the poster defending the rich guy who is defending the even richer well known asshole who is in the Epstein files. On Reddit. Good job.
Got em! The crazy Redditors accept only left-wing media outlets as "education". If Ed Sheeran educated himself entirely via Fox News, Candace Owens, and Matt Walsh, this guy would be adamantly against Ed Sheeran using his platform to discuss politics. The issue isn't whether or not famous people use their job to discuss politics. The issue is whether or not famous people use their job to support ME and MY ideals. The crazy Redditors are totally fine with right-wing musicians keeping their mouths shut.
I saw something about everyone hating Pink because she used her platform to "speak her mind". Pink certainly feels that she's educated on the subject. Why are we not applauding her? Probably because singers should just stick to singing.
I legitimately have no idea what you're talking about. I don't follow Ed Sheeran, and honestly only found out about this whole thing through reddit yesterday.
That said, that sounds like exactly the type of thing that I'm talking about. He was probably told about it by his PR person, and agreed to do it. Because it's good PR.
Maybe learn something about it before you talk about it, eh?
Ok then, he obviously knew nothing about anything going on and had absolutely no way to educate himself because his PR person controls his access to knowledge. A fun story to tell yourself!
Because people like projecting and they think if you have a platform you have to use to say what they want you to say. They don’t see him as a person because he’s rich. They want him to be a megaphone for their ideologies.
That's Reddit in a nutshell. All rich people are inherently evil, even a guy as humble and genuine as Ed Sheeran. The only way to make up for their iniquities is to use their "platform" to support the Left.
This isn't about left or right, it's the genocide apologists everyone has a problem with. It's not inherently *antisemitic to be against genocide just because it's Israel doing it. My parents are as republican as can be without being MAGA and they call it genocide.
I don't know anything about it. I don't live in Isreal, and I don't care enough to do any research on it. I have my own problems that directly affect me and my family. If they are committing acts of genocide, that's terrible, because genocide by definition is terrible.
The fact that people are so angry at his statement says all you need to know. They are just addicted to the outrage. Macklemore is a performative moron, not some martyr. Also hilarious people think it’s going to implode his career. He is still playing sold out stadiums, the Reddit echo chamber just loves to jerk.
People aren’t going to agree with you because of your username will make them bias.
Israeli Jews are 100% still killing Palestine women and children, that is a fact. Another fact is not all Jews want to eradicate Palestinians. Ed Sheeran doesn’t want to make his Jewish fans feel targeted because he supports Palestinians and unfortunately the world is making everyone pick a side.
They are also still killing armed militants. Something the pro pali side will never mention is the amount of rockets and attacks directed at Israel. It’s much more convenient to pretend every single Palestenian is an innocent woman and child and every Israeli is a blood thirsty IDF soldier. The truth is more complicated than that. That’s the only point I’m making, and it enrages the other side to hear it. No, it is not a response to oppression. Israel completely withdrew from Gaza, hamas was elected, and the attacks and suicide bombings started immediately. This was 20 years ago, and never stopped. Oct 7 was the escalation that caused this response, and with it came many dead Hamas fighters as well as civilians.
At no point did Macklemore acknowledge any of that, it’s just every Palestinian is a victim and every israeli is the oppressor. Perhaps Ed doesn’t see it that way.
If you're trying to stay neutral why would you say you're keeping conversations open? It makes more sense to be like "I'm trying to give people an escape from the world, this isn't a place for conversation." I would've respected him more for that.
Which is completely fine. Why people always expect artists or players to involve in things they don't want to? You cannot force anyone to take part and even less when his business is on the line.
No one is forcing him to do shit, tho... just cause people have a worse opinion of him based on what he decides to do doesn't mean he is forced into anything
Seems like what you want is forcing the other groups and his band to do something they don't want to do
He is not forced into taking any position. He can keep writing how amazing he is for being neutral
If as a consequence individual people are not willing to work with him, this is not forcing him into doing anything. At the most he will not do stuff, but he will not have to do anything he doesn't want to do
Someone not able to realise something cause people don't want to work with them is not the same as someone being forced into doing something
I don't want to force anyone on doing nothing. But the bad guys here are the stadium owners that don't allow them to perform, ed has done nothing wrong. Because Macklemore doesn't know how to make a show non politic, that is what started the problem.
We agree then: people don't want to play with him and should not be forced into it, Ed is not forced into actively doing anything he doesn't want to do. He's perfectly free to keep writing how amazing he is for being neutral on genocide
His shows going to crap is just consequences of free will and people being free to do what they think it's best
How many venues? Like 80% of stadiums in the US are owned by local gov't or quasi gov't agencies. I'm honestly surprised any NFL team owner owns a stadium because they usually extort the local gov't to build them for them.
Call me conspiracy theory lady but I feel like they'd off Ed and make it look like an accident before they dropped him cause if another promoter takes him that's money Kraft is losing out on and might encourage others working under him to do the same. I don't believe in alot of the conspiracy theories out there but I do believe the rich and powerful like to keep the baby rich people in line as much as possible some they can afford to drop others not so much
If by smart you mean using his privilege of not needing to care to keep his profits up, sure. But maybe you should, like a normal person, think about people more than money when making decisions.
Ed had the perfect opportunity to say "You know what, I have hundreds of millions of dollars, I can afford to play one show less. Not backing down would be a strong signal to show that I can't be coerced by powerful people into a political agenda and that I stand up for free speech. It would loosen the grip that wealthy people have on the industry by setting a precedent which gives legitimacy to smaller artists."
Instead he said "You know what, I have hundreds of millions of dollars and I want a few more. So I'm going to throw all the people that supported me on this tour under the bus for a quick cash grab. I'll also say that I'm not political because politics don't affect me since I'm a rich white man."
Wrong. You should not be required to speak out about things happening in the world if you have a platform and labeled as having no spine or worse, that you are taking the other side when you are not. What about hunger, what about the pharm industry, what about homelessness, what about the genocides that have been happening in India and China. Where does it end? The general populace is fickle and will lamb baste anyone at the drop of a hat.
Yeah, Ed is no hero in my book but I can't say really condemn him for taking the passive route here. The dude is a singer, not a politician, and I certainly don't expect him to stick his neck out for this type of stuff no matter how much I disagree with Israel's actions.
The thing is Ed Sheeran never put on a costume of that racist Jewish caricature that anti-semites post. When Ed Sheeran says free Palestine I think he probably just thinks he wants palestinians to be free. When Macklemore says it you kind of wonder what he means. When you signal boosted anti-jew racism in the past, I'm going to view any anti-zionism from you as just an expression of your anti-jew racism
Macklemore wore a costume that included a big nose and a beard in 2014. He has apologized immediately for upsetting people and supported organizations that fight against anti-semitism.
The thing you're doing is exactly why Israel has such a bad rep. Any and all criticism is immediately marked as anti-semitism and disregarded. Of course there are anti-semitists out there, but if you're bombing children, I think you can expect some valid criticism. But you did call yourself gullible so I can't be too mad that you let yourself indoctrinate with this narrative.
I don't believe him. I don't believe that nobody around him didn't see that the costume he wore was matching the anti-semitic trope. It's on the level of believing that nobody around plattner ever pointed out that his tattoo was a Nazi tattoo until one month before he started running for Senate. I could believe that one person accidentally chose something that turned out to be a hate symbol but I don't believe that nobody around them told them before they got called out for it publicly.
It's really rich for you to say that I call all criticism of Israel antisemitic in a post where I'm specifically pointing out that Ed Sheeran saying free Palestine doesn't ring any anti-semitic alarm Bells at all.
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u/mCracky 27d ago
ok internet, what did I miss?