{"id":895400,"date":"2026-09-17T14:18:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T14:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/895400\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T14:18:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T14:18:16","slug":"robert-kraft-once-the-nfls-good-guy-is-just-another-billionaire-silencing-macklemore-nfl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/895400\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Kraft, once the NFL\u2019s good guy, is just another billionaire silencing Macklemore | NFL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six years ago, in the middle of a \u201cracial reckoning\u201d that never was, a White House that had begun out of control reached its chaotic apex. Federal officials were sweeping citizens off American streets in unmarked vehicles<\/a>, surrounding the Lincoln Memorial with armed guards<\/a> and rolling military vehicles through residential neighborhoods<\/a> in a fascist reaction to protests against the murder of George Floyd. It was at this point that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, realizing it had all gone too far, appeared on a Zoom and admitted his league was \u201cwrong\u201d<\/a> for not listening to its players when they had protested against police brutality.<\/p>\n

The implication was clear: more than any other sports league, the NFL was harshest in its reaction to the protests<\/a> that began with Trayvon Martin in 2012 and continued with Ferguson, Baltimore and Colin Kaepernick. By blackballing Kaepernick, sitting by while broadcast partners refused to air the national anthem<\/a> to undermine the protests, and, most embarrassingly, Goodell\u2019s draconian announcement that teams would be subject to fines<\/a> if players showed dissent, the NFL had proven itself to act in the most un-American of ways.<\/p>\n

This week, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft showed he has learned nothing from those years. He banned Macklemore<\/a> from supporting Ed Sheeran at the Patriots\u2019 Gillette Stadium over the rapper\u2019s vocal support for Palestine \u2013 something that has become a career-threatening political position as dangerous as kneeling during the national anthem. Kraft imposed his own version of authoritarianism: Macklemore claims<\/a> that Kraft not only banned him from his stadium, but appeared to influence other NFL owners to stop the rapper from appearing at most of Sheeran\u2019s other stadium dates. For his part, Kraft says his decision to stop Macklemore from performing at Gillette was due to both Macklemore\u2019s \u201crecent actions\u201d and \u201ca broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community\u201d. In 2014, Macklemore apologized<\/a> after he wore a wig, beard and hooked nose at a Seattle concert, which critics said was an anti-semitic caricature.<\/p>\n

No NFL owner has worked harder to be seen as reasonable and socially conscious as Kraft. He has appeared on the surface as a shrewd businessman, power-neutral, making political donations to Republicans and Democrats alike. New Englanders recall him fondly as the man who rescued the Patriots from the misogyny and vile incompetence of the Victor Kiam years; from the threat of the team relocating to St Louis when he bought the Patriots from James Orthwein in 1994; and, of course, the man who saved them from all the losing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kraft was eventually given the benefit of the doubt as the hero in his stadium battle against disgraced<\/a> former Massachusetts legislature speaker Thomas Finneran that nearly led to Kraft moving the Patriots out of the Commonwealth. He did so by building the only 100% privately financed<\/a> stadium in the NFL \u2013 even though in 1998 Kraft himself had agreed to take a lucrative offer of public money from the Connecticut legislature and move the Patriots to Hartford. It was under Kraft\u2019s ownership \u2013 led by his late wife Myra \u2013 that the Patriots took a stand for women, renouncing the rights to Christian Peter a week after drafting him, when multiple domestic violence accusations and convictions against the player surfaced.<\/p>\n

As the NFL collectively destroyed Kaepernick\u2019s career (the former quarterback says<\/a> the same tactics of collusion are now being used against Macklemore), it was Kraft who tried to appear sympathetic to those who suffered under systemic racial injustices. He supported<\/a> Patriots Devin and Jason McCourty in their advocacy of criminal justice reform, helped the release<\/a> from prison of rapper Meek Mill, and following the deadly 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, loaned the Patriots\u2019 plane<\/a> to students traveling to Washington to protest gun violence. Despite a president who called the pandemic a hoax<\/a> and encouraged citizens to inject bleach<\/a> to immunize themselves against the coronavirus, Kraft sent his private plane to China to help transport shipments<\/a> of N-95 masks to the United States. Bob Kraft has always believed he\u2019s one of the good guys.<\/p>\n

In the Macklemore<\/a> situation, he is not. While he has been lauded by his supporters, all Kraft has done is follow a familiar script of a rich man applying power. He has undermined his everyman persona as a guy who sat on the cold metal seats at Schaefer Stadium alongside his fellow Patriots fan but was fortunate enough to eventually buy the team. Now he is just another billionaire using his power to stifle words \u2013 to do exactly what his fellow owners did to Kaepernick a decade ago. Nor should it be forgotten that no matter how many rappers treat Kraft like the cool old white dude, Bob Kraft, hater of hate speech, lover of peace, is a prominent part of a league that conspired to ban a player from playing football for telling the truth: cops are getting paid leave for killing people. That\u2019s not right. Hardly hate speech.<\/p>\n

The end result is an old man threatened, unable to maintain the facade that he is any different, any better, than the moral rot around him. While truth often belongs to those who get to tell the tale, who control the airwaves, who get to do the blackballing and destroy the careers, it also belongs to the silenced. Both the overstepping Kraft and the tattered Sheeran \u2013 whose supporting acts have resigned from the tour<\/a> in solidarity with Macklemore \u2013 know that now. One looks like a dictator, the other a wimp.<\/p>\n

Kraft is also displaying a perverse, pervasive strain of American exceptionalism normalized by Donald Trump where might makes right. His supporters have attempted to argue that Kraft hasn\u2019t violated the first amendment over Macklemore because he owns Gillette Stadium, the land under it and paid for it with his money rather than with public funds that would be better spent on potholes, bridges and better schools. Along those narrow grounds, Kraft can certainly decide who gets to say what on his property \u2013 although even that argument is a specious one if he cares about community and not oligarchy. By then extending his influence from his private bubble of Foxborough to allegedly use that influence to blackball Macklemore from the rest of Sheeran\u2019s tour by calling ahead to Philadelphia, Dallas, Tampa, Charlotte, Indianapolis and Atlanta, Kraft engaged in yet another collusion, for each of those venues are largely publicly financed. They do not belong privately to Kraft, or the rest of the football oligarchy, but to the taxpaying public. Public space is protected by the first amendment. Kraft has either forgotten what the pregame flags and flyovers are supposed to be about, or like so many other foundations in this country, has simply decided to stop caring.<\/p>\n

Where does Kraft stand today? The lover of peace and hater of hate speech is now backpedaling, remembering his position as one of the good guys, offering to throw money at the bad publicity \u2013 a $2m donation to unspecified charities<\/a> in the Middle East without reinstating Macklemore \u2013 but he really stands with Trump, that most seasoned practitioner of hate speech, who once called<\/a> Kaepernick and the NFL players who smash their bodies into a million pieces every Sunday \u201csons of bitches\u201d.<\/p>\n

Kraft gave Trump $1m for his first inauguration<\/a> then said in 2024 that he hadn\u2019t spoken to the president<\/a> since the January 6 attack on the Capitol. But there he sat<\/a> this January in the Kennedy Center presidential box next to Trump for a screening of the Amazon Studios bomb Melania. As Trump petulantly destroys the arts, Kraft\u2019s wife Dana Blumberg sits on the Kennedy Center board<\/a>, part of the unanimous vote to close the center<\/a> unless Trump\u2019s name is added to the building. Kraft has his name on another blackballing, but he\u2019s headlining the marquee this time. For people who decry anti-democratic behavior, the Krafts seem comfortable in its company and quick studies at mastering it themselves. They\u2019ve had a lot of practice.<\/p>\n

Howard Bryant is the author of 11 books, including Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field, and Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America. He also writes on Substack<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six years ago, in the middle of a \u201cracial reckoning\u201d that never was, a White House that had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":895401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-895400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}