Pink had fallen silent in the face of backlash from many quarters following her reposting a call for Macklemore to be dropped from the Ed Sheeran tour in the wake of his nightly pro-Palestinian songs and statements. Now she has spoken up about the controversy and her part in it in a big way, with a 1,300-word social media post that has her exploring why she repeated the sentiments asking Sheeran to drop Macklemore, why his statements alarmed her as a Jewish woman, and how it has felt “lonely” facing an onslaught of criticism this week.
The singer noted that she may have been a typical “cheap and fast” social media user when she first reposted the anti-Macklemore meme, rather than speaking up in her own words, which she is now belatedly doing. “A repost isn’t a statement, and a meme isn’t a spine,” she argued, saying that she would “rather be disagreed with for what I actually said than hated for what anybody else wrote, so let me say it.”
Pink noted how her feelings about Macklemore have evolved, from support for him when “I was in the room at the Grammys in 2014 when Macklemore rapped ‘Same Love’ and 33 couples, gay and straight, got married to it, and I cheered, no questions asked.” Then, she pointed out an antisemitic costume the rapper wore a short time later, for which he subsequently issued a mea culpa. “Macklemore put on a hooked nose, a black beard and a bowl cut, performed in it, and called it a ‘random costume.’ Every Jew I know knew exactly what it was. The same love, it turned out, had a guest list, and we weren’t on it. But he apologized, and I let it go, because that’s what we do. We let it go.” Nonetheless, she suggested, his wearing of the costume informed how his statements might be received in years to come.
