Ed Sheeran/Macklemore

[WallyHilloughby]

what are your thoughts on this whole debacle?
quite frankly I’m sick and tired of artists using concerts etc as some political forum

I have indeed. She made a joke and she clarified it didn’t mean an endorsement either way. If you are interested in this, I recommend the podcast “Dolly Parton’s America” which does a deep dive into how she managed to not ever make her political views known. If only they’d interviewed you, eh? You’d have set the journalists, scholars and Dolly herself right on that!

Those photos are awful but that happened in 2014 and Macklemore apologised immediately. He said the costume was not intended to be a caricature of a Jew. It was a stupid thing, but it’s clearly not as bad as killing 10s of thousands of innocent Palestinians.

So many horrible comments here, so many people turning a blind eye to reality. (I’m Jewish but who cares.)

I don't know much about Macklemore but I thought what he said was positive and then I was really disappointed to see the photo of him in the costume PPs have posted so I just looked into Macklemore doing the costume. He says "he randomly chose the elements of the outfit so that he could disguise himself and move freely around during the secret show". It says people then say it could be seen as a caricature of a Jewish person. Couldn't it also be a caricature of an Arab person? You could also say it looks a lot like what Sacha Baron Cohen dressed like as The Dictator (disclaimer, I haven't seen the film)

He then went on to include a link to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which was formed to fight anti-Semitism.

The above information is what I read from the BBC article at the time
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-27483970

"He said the costume was not intended to be a caricature of a Jew"

I mean, is he the stupidest person in the world or does he just think we are?

I mean he's stupid either way. If he did it intentionally, he's stupid and if he did it unintentionally he's also stupid. A bit like Prince Harry dressing up as a Nazi.

I did say it was disappointing to see.

Edit to add: and now I am probably going to sound stupid but here we are. I have learnt from Mumsnet that having a hooked nose is seen as a Jewish trait. There was a thread a while back where someone said they felt unsafe because they looked typically Jewish. It was a woman I believe. And someone asked what that meant and she didn't want to answer it: and was getting upset about giving details. My background is south Asian and I have many Arab friends by virtue of the area I lived in and I could easily observe a hooked nose or a prominent nose as a stereotypical feature. Conversely, of my Jewish friends, none of the four girls have a distinct nose shape, I'd probably describe their noses as one having a cute button nose type, and the others pretty unremarkable.

Oh for gods sake. Again putting words into my mouth. Dolly did not endorse Hilary, she supported her. That is what I said from the beginning.
no she didn’t make her political views known but when you look at the causes she supported, her behaviour and things she said about trump it’s pretty obvious. 🙄

Yeah. Sure. Just a big massive coincidence.

I suppose his arm just had an unfortunate spasm as well.

The exaggerated hooked nose, dark hair and sallow complexion is how the Nazis portrayed Jewish people prior to exterminating them.
Obviously it's not how Jewish people really look, that's the point - it's a cruel, dehumanising caricature.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-propaganda

It really wasn’t obvious. Listen to the podcast. Anyway I’m glad we agree that Dolly Parton did not endorse Hillary and I assume we therefore agree that Dolly Parton kept her political views to herself, which was the point I made to begin with. Somehow that was ok for her and people celebrated her (rightly) and mourned her death (including Paloma faith) but then criticise Ed Sheeran for keeping his views to himself (including Paloma faith on national tv). And all I’m asking is what’s that all about?!

So if you've never heard of this caricature and you know that it's not how Jewish people really look then how are you supposed to know that it's a costume of a caricature of a Jewish person? It's not like you can connect the two things yourself because like you say it's a caricature, the whole point is that it's not how Jewish people really look.

Of course he knew.

Well yeah, I guess he could be completely ignorant?

It would also require everyone around him to also be completely ignorant and given how people's normal reaction to those photos is 'fucking hell that's bad', you'd have thought someone would have pointed it out to him if he didn't already know.

Dolly’s “apolitical” position wasn’t actually politically neutral

Dolly didn’t publicly campaign for presidential candidates, but she did publicly support causes and groups that were politically contentious.

She said things such as wanting everyone to be treated with love and respect, defended LGBTQ+ inclusion, and supported HIV/AIDS charities.

dolly was absolutely political, she just didn’t tell people who to vote for.

I just read up on this, before you sent the link. It isn't that I never saw the nazi propaganda but rather I didn't realise that is how it has since been "popularised".
It is awful and sad.
I have lived probably a far more sheltered and perhaps privileged life than most (but also that's partly because I've been surrounded by very decent people thankfully) that there's a lot in terms of racism I haven't experienced (given I myself share some of the features you mention). Some corners of the internet reveals all the ugly in the world and I'm fortunate to be surrounded by good, decent people in my real life.

I don't know, I wasn't there. Maybe they just weren't fans of cartoons, maybe they had zero interest in Jewish people so never took any notice or maybe they were all raging antisemites.

I was just pointing out the logical conclusion of what that poster was saying. Jews dont look like the caricature of Jews so unless you have actually learnt somewhere what the caricature of Jews looks like then you'd have no idea wtf the costume could be perceived as.

As the poster who said that, I agree with your logical conclusion and this post too and for articulating what I couldn't.

fans of cartoons??? Do you mean Nazi propaganda?

I mean, the guy uses his platform to talk about how evil the only Jewish state in the world is.

But he innocently paired a huge hooked nose with a big beard and simply didn't realise how bad it looked? Big coincidence, no?

The costume thing happened in 2014. The speaking up for Palestinians started in 2024 at the point where 10s of 1000s of Palestinians had been killed. There's a decade in between, they didn't happen at the same time or even close to the same time as your post seems to suggest.

@DeterminedRat it was very obviously a Jewish caricature and your faux innocence on his behalf - the person who actually dressed up as a caricature of a Jew - very similar to Nazi caricatures of Jews - does nothing to help Macklemore.

He was obviously antisemitic when he donned this costume on stage, whether it was 2026 or 2014.

Much like Ed Sheeran then. She didn’t say anything about Palestine, oil, Trump, Obama etc. She advocated kindness and supported grass roots things like the Imagination Library. Ed Sheeran will do charitable stuff that obviously supports particular causes but doesn’t want to speak about these big political issues. Look I’m no massive Ed Sheeran fan (I am a massive Dolly Parton fan) but I’m saying I don’t get the criticism on choosing not to speak about such political matters. Dolly was lauded for it literally a couple of weeks ago and now the same people are throwing Ed Sheeran under the bus for taking the same approach and I don’t get it.

I’m not sure why you’d think this.

Op I’ve only just heard of Macklemore and know Ed Sheeran’s name but not much more, it seems he’s fallen into a problem. It looks like he chose Macklemore initially but now all this.

Well yeah, theres absolutely nothing reported to suggest that his arms were used to convey any message - so why exaggerate? If the costume alone was clearly antisemitic, why add in the idea of a salute that didn’t happen?

Hmmm...

His other arm is down near his ear, he’s clearly dancing and moving his arms up and down.

you don’t think a nazi salute would make the papers?

And the person beside him is doing the same move. Both feet are off the ground like dancing.

Ridiculous