Rapper Macklemore is a vocal supporter of Palestine and Gaza residents. During a recent concert at MetLife Stadium, he yelled “Free Palestine!” onstage, projected images of devastation in the area, and performed protest song “Hind’s Hall.”
Now, it seems that American venues are not willing to play ball with the Seattle artist, and he has been dropped from Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour.
“After discussions with stakeholders, Macklemore will not be performing on the remaining support dates,” according to Messina Touring Group, the promoter of Loop Tour. This news follows backlash from organizations like StopAntisemitism and others, such as pop star Pink.
I don’t expect them to act morally - we live in a system that puts immoral people into positions of power - but I also don’t have to make excuses for those immoral people acting immorally. I can expect that the system produces bad outcomes because it’s put immoral people into positions that can influence the outcomes, and explain that as the behaviour of the system, while still condemning the immoral people for acting immorally. At least some of them do have a sense of shame or a vested interest in appearing likeable, so normal people do have a degree of influence when they complain enough.
There were plenty of things that she spoke out on (or directly acted on) that had no good reason to be controversial, but nonetheless were, e.g. personally funding COVID vaccine research and giving books to millions of children. She often wasn’t vocal about the causes she supported, as the goal was to get good things done with the unspendable amount of income she was receiving rather than to spend money to improve her image, so it was often long after the fact that people would discover she’d been the benefactor making something possible. She’s often listed as the example of a good billionaire because she wasn’t a billionaire, but would have been several times over if she hadn’t given away so much money.
Not just that, it pressures people to act immoral.
First of all, explaining isn’t excusing. Second of all, one perversity of the system is that it makes everyone complicit by forcing everyone to participate, as consumers, participants in production, as participants in the political system, etc… If you push that to it’s logical conclusion, everyone who isn’t committing their entire life towards overcoming the system can be blamed to act immoral, depending on how strict your morals are.
Putting too much focus on blaming people’s morals instead of focusing on the system that corrupts people’s morals is counter productive and creates a culture where people trying to do the right thing burn out and adopt an attitude of indifference because no matter how much you are trying to do the right thing, there are always more things to do. It also creates a culture where people compare and compete with eachother’s moral worth, which can lead to fracturing and infighting.
Shaming people into acting moral is not very effective imo.
She sounds like a decent person, but my point is that if you look hard enough, you will find moral failings (same as with every human). I could blame her for not speaking out against Israel, for eample, and condemn her for it.
To be clear, I’m not in general against applying pressure on people in power by voicing disapproval or outrage where it is effective. What I find moderately annoying in this example is that people seem to focus more on Ed Sheran instead of focusing on the people with the actual power behind the decision to kick him (like Robert Kraft)…