Neutrality is not the same as innocence

Macklemore’s time on Ed Sheeran’s “Loop Tour” lasted only two shows before his onstage support of Palestine cost him his opener spot, a decision attributed to the tour’s promoter and venues. Sheeran was not an uninvolved stranger who happened to hear that Macklemore had been removed from a concert somewhere across the country. Macklemore was opening for him. This was Sheeran’s tour, his production, his headlining platform.

And yet, when the controversy arrived, the response was essentially: not my decision.

Sheeran said the tour promoter and venues made the final call to remove Macklemore, not him. He said he spent the week trying to find a solution, speaking with venues, promoters and other stakeholders. That is worth acknowledging. It would be dishonest to rewrite his account into one where he personally picked up the phone and fired Macklemore.

There is something almost comically narrow about treating “I didn’t make the final decision” as the end of the conversation.

Macklemore has described difficult conversations with Sheeran and said Sheeran told him about pressure from venue owners, including Robert Kraft. Sheeran confirmed speaking with Kraft and other stakeholders, while maintaining the ultimate decision was not his. After Macklemore was removed, all of Sheeran’s other opening acts — Finneas, Lukas Graham, Aaron Rowe and Irish band Beoga — left the tour in solidarity.

That is a remarkable amount of activity for a situation in which the headliner supposedly had nothing to do with the decision.

Nobody is suggesting that Sheeran secretly sat in a back room and personally drafted the eviction notice. The point is more uncomfortable than that. You can be deeply involved in the circumstances surrounding a decision without being the person who officially makes it.

There is a difference between authorship and responsibility. There is a difference between making a decision, having influence over it, benefiting from it, objecting to it and accepting it.

Those distinctions matter. Conveniently collapsing them into “not my decision” does not make them disappear. This is where Sheeran’s declaration that he is “not complicit” becomes more interesting than the controversy itself.

Complicity is a strange word because it implies a clean boundary: Either you are involved, or you are not. Real life is considerably messier.

If a promoter makes the decision, a venue applies the pressure, a headliner negotiates with everyone involved and then continues the tour after the opening act is removed, where exactly does neutrality begin? Apparently, somewhere just outside the headliner’s name on the poster.

That is the problem with the fantasy of neutrality; it imagines that politics only exists when someone announces a political opinion. Politics is also who gets a platform, who loses one, who has leverage, who is pressured, who gets protected and who gets told that the business decision simply isn’t theirs to question.

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Sheeran has every right not to turn his concerts into political rallies. He has every right to say he wants his shows to be places where people can escape politics for a few hours. Politics also does not have to ask permission before entering the building.

When it does, saying “I didn’t make the decision” may establish who signed the final paperwork. It does not necessarily establish who was responsible for what happened next. That distinction is especially difficult to ignore when the people standing around you begin making choices of their own.

Macklemore was removed, other opening acts walked away and Sheeran stayed. Again, that does not prove that Sheeran ordered Macklemore’s removal. It proves something simpler: Everyone involved had choices to make, and they did not all make the same one.

Since then, Macklemore has made the loss of the opening slot into an opportunity. On Sept. 24, he announced a new “Free Palestine” tour, beginning with dates in Dublin, Paris and London, with additional U.S. dates and performers to be announced. He has said proceeds will support organizations assisting Palestinians.

Perhaps that is what makes the word “neutral” so appealing. It sounds cleaner than “I chose not to intervene.” It sounds less consequential than “I decided the show should go on anyway.”

It allows someone to describe themselves as outside a conflict while continuing to operate comfortably inside the circumstances created by it.

But neutrality is not the same as innocence. Sometimes neutrality means refusing to choose. Sometimes it means accepting someone else’s choice.

Sometimes, when you have considerably more power than the person being removed, the distinction between the two is worth examining.

joneseb3@miamioh.edu

Eleanor Jones is a senior Honors political science major with minors in business, English and religion from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She serves as co-chair of YDSA and also participates in Women in Political Science and Women Helping Women. Her interests include literature, law, medicine and travel.