Ed Sheeran played his hit song “I Don’t Care” on his recent tour stop at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
By the time he sang it, the crowd had already been told that not caring wasn’t an option.
His opening act was the rapper Macklemore, who used his set to explain: “One of the reasons why I wanted to come on this tour was because I wanted to stand up here on stages and stadiums across America, and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart. Free Palestine.”
Then he performed his protest song “Hind’s Hall” while footage of the destruction in Gaza played on the screens.
Doing that, two nights in a row, got him kicked off the tour.
Robert Kraft, who owns the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium outside Boston, refused to host Macklemore at Sheeran’s two upcoming shows there, citing “a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery.” Other stadium owners on the tour joined him.
With stadiums refusing to have Macklemore, the tour’s promoter cut him from the remaining dates.
Macklemore didn’t care. He said his mission was accomplished. “I didn’t need 10 shows from Ed,” he wrote on Instagram afterward. “I needed two. Two chances to stand in front of 90,000 people.”
To be clear, Macklemore has every right to say whatever he wants at his own shows, to people who paid to hear it. But activists don’t seem to think the venue owners, stage crews, and Ed Sheeran himself have the right to refuse to be a part of Macklemore’s protests.
Biting the hand that feeds, Macklemore criticized Sheeran, who he said “couldn’t get past his public facing, ‘I don’t take sides.'”
Sheeran answered like a normal adult.
“There is a reason I do not use my professional platform for politics— my audience includes young people, often children, of all backgrounds,” he wrote. “Those who come to my shows do not expect a political forum.”
In other words, some people just want to go to a damn concert.
It was Macklemore or the tour, the promoter had warned, and Sheeran said he would never “abandon the touring crew and the other support acts and musicians who rely on me for work and to make a living.”
But fanatics argue that nobody gets to stay out of it.
Macklemore said so himself: “There is no neutral position between the oppressor and the oppressed.” The logic is that Gaza has to be solved, so Gaza has to be shoved down people’s throats.
And for his heinous crime of neutrality, Ed Sheeran is being canceled.
The day Sheeran posted his statement, every supporting act on the tour quit in protest. One of them wrote that “artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed.”
In Ireland, a radio station pulled Sheeran’s music from its playlists.
An Irish newspaper op-ed called him a “gutless coward.” The Irish actor Liam Cunningham wrote, “We know who Ed Sheeran is now.”
Even the children’s YouTube star Ms. Rachel piled on. No surprise there— her toddler show features a nonbinary “they/them” co-star and she now campaigns on Gaza, so she’s in the business of promoting political views where they don’t belong.
“Ed Sheeran is making a political statement to his fans when he does a concert to support Ukraine,” she wrote, “but considers Palestine too dangerous and political.”
And yes, Sheeran played a Ukraine benefit in 2022. But everyone there bought a ticket FOR the cause. Nobody at MetLife bought a ticket for Gaza.
Sadly, the fanatics do it because it works.
Macklemore pledged the $1 million he’d earned on the tour to Palestinian relief groups, and challenged Kraft to match it.
Kraft answered that Sheeran had already called him, told him he was donating $2 million “to aid in the region to fight this humanitarian crisis,” and asked Kraft to match it, which Kraft did.
It hasn’t bought Sheeran any peace. Tomorrow he plays Philadelphia, and two activist groups have announced a protest outside the stadium. They call it “his first show after caving to Zionist threats.”
Even when the activists successfully bully people into supporting their cause, it’s not enough for them. Nothing is acceptable but total, undying fealty to their political opinions.
And every cause claims the same right to your attention and support.
If nobody is allowed to be neutral about Gaza, nobody is allowed to be neutral about the climate, or race, or gender. Each of those causes has its own true believers, and they’re just as certain as Macklemore that THEIR emergency can’t wait.
So climate activists glue themselves to the road you take to work, and deface priceless works of art. Your kid’s school teaches gender ideology, and the parents who object get treated like domestic terrorists.
Then the ballgame opens with a knee for BLM. Try to get a coffee and the Starbucks baristas write their political slogans on your cup. Go to the movies and get lectured by Hollywood. Watch a football game and get shamed by the shaving brand Gillette, somewhat ironically, over toxic masculinity.
And what are you supposed to do? Raise a fist in solidarity? Be aware…? Give some corrupt activists money, so they can spend it on mansions for personal use, as the leaders of Black Lives Matter did?
Taken to its logical conclusion, your life gets consumed by things you’re forced to care about and can’t affect anyway. And it’s all at the service of people who’d rather hold you captive than entertain you, or teach your kids, or serve you coffee— the things you’re paying them to do.
Not every place lives like this. There are many cities, states, and countries where this type of behavior is not tolerated.
Most of the time I write about a Plan B as a way to protect your savings, and your freedom, from a bankrupt US government.
But this is also what a Plan B is for. Freedom is about lifestyle too, including freedom from the fanatics who insist that nobody gets to stay out of it.
It’s the option to opt out— somewhere to live where you can raise your kids, drive to work, watch a ballgame, order a coffee, and go to a concert without any of it turning into somebody else’s protest.
P.S. If you’d rather choose where you live by how you want to live, that’s what Schiff Sovereign’s flagship research service, Plan B Confidential, is for— actionable research on second residencies, foreign banking, and legal tax strategies, with boots-on-the-ground reports from more than 120 countries.
