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Malcolm Knox<\/a>Journalist, author and columnist<\/p>\nSeptember 25, 2026 \u2014 3:30pm<\/p>\n
September 25, 2026 \u2014 3:30pm<\/p>\n
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n In Aesop\u2019s fable of the donkey, a man is criticised for riding his donkey to market while his son walks. When he lets his son ride, he\u2019s criticised for spoiling the boy. He joins the boy on the donkey and is criticised for hurting the animal. Finally, he and the boy carry the donkey, but drop it into a river. Moral: try to please everybody and you\u2019ll please nobody, plus you drown your donkey.<\/p>\n In the 2026 version, Ed Sheeran is the man with the donkey. Sheeran, a 35-year-old English married father of two, has made a successful art of inoffensiveness, selling 200 million records from pleasant tunes and lyrics that never offended anyone<\/a>. His personality is authentically inoffensive. His wife, his childhood sweetheart, had cancer. He supports charities that also offend no one. Until this month, the worst he was accused of was plagiarising melodies, but in the gloriously lucrative middle that Sheeran occupies, everything sounds a bit like something else.<\/p>\n So how is it that Ed Sheeran has ended up offending everyone?<\/p>\n This fable started when Sheeran, for his sold-out tour Loop, invited the American rapper Macklemore<\/a> to be his support act. Macklemore is a figurehead of celebrity activism. As the warm-up act for the 2017 NRL grand final in Sydney<\/a>, back when we had such things<\/a>, Macklemore performed his anthem Same Love as we approached the same-sex marriage postal survey<\/a>. Since the onset of the war in Gaza, Macklemore has campaigned for the Palestinian people and his song Hind\u2019s Hall<\/a> is named for a six-year-old Palestinian victim.<\/p>\n Sheeran, who has proudly made mega-bland into a mega-brand, might have been using Macklemore as a proxy, to give his shows a bit of edge while remaining personally apolitical. Sheeran\u2019s most radical stance on anything had been to echo others\u2019 opposition to Brexit. His commercial locomotive is peace and love and no disagreement. You really could please everyone all the time, or so the business model went.<\/p>\n Then came private property, in the person of Robert Kraft, owner of the Boston stadium where Sheeran and Macklemore were booked. Kraft is a prominent supporter of the Israeli government and staunch opponent of antisemitism. Benjamin Netanyahu has described Kraft as Israel\u2019s most loyal friend<\/a>. Kraft told Sheeran the concert could not proceed unless Macklemore was removed. Other stadium owners reportedly threatened the same. Macklemore was punted. Sheeran\u2019s other support acts and backing band pulled out of the tour in solidarity<\/a>. Sheeran, desperate to continue taking no position, said the decision was not his<\/a> but the tour promoter\u2019s.<\/p>\n Sheeran has continued the tour solo, making passive-voice apologies and condemning all violence<\/a>. On Instagram he posted, \u201cThere are too many wars across the world causing immeasurable pain, none of which should be tolerated.\u201d The Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023 were \u201chorrific\u201d, he said on stage, and the Israeli Defence Forces\u2019 response was \u201ccatastrophic\u201d.<\/p>\n By now, he was carrying the donkey onto the bridge. The pile-on intensified. \u201cEven Ed Sheeran\u2019s apology took both sides,\u201d said The New Yorker\u2019s<\/a> headline. The internet joke went, \u201cHow do I boycott Ed Sheeran\u2019s music when my previous consumption of his work was zero?\u201d Criticised by both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel voices, Sheeran found new friends in the anti-woke far right. A fan, Eva Stevens, said \u201cthe middle\u201d was now the most dangerous place to be.<\/p>\n Sheeran was just bending over backwards to avoid making enemies, wasn\u2019t he? He sang at Kraft\u2019s wedding. Kraft is his friend. Sheeran had to consider the infrastructure of workers, from stage riggers to popcorn sellers, whose pay packets depended on him. His wish was to be as utilitarian as his songs: maximum benefit to the maximum number.<\/p>\n Related Article But you can\u2019t draw a straight line in curved space, even if you\u2019re Ed Sheeran. The mental and moral gymnastics of inoffensiveness and de-escalating conflict through general agreeableness may be a mask for cowardice, but it can also be the kind of complicity that gives a free pass for power to do what it wants.<\/p>\n We equate celebrity with power and influence, but the Sheeran fable shows the illusion of this \u201cpower\u201d when it butts up against the raw reality of real estate. Kraft, like theatre owners stopping certain plays and like tech bros dictating the content of their social media platforms, is asserting his private property rights. My house, my rules.<\/p>\n When we talk about free speech, what we\u2019re often really talking about is control of the spaces in which speech happens. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez<\/a> commented, this story is not about the content of Macklemore\u2019s speech or Sheeran\u2019s agonised wriggling, but the power of \u201ca handful of stadium owners\u201d.<\/p>\n In Australia, most of our stadiums, libraries, universities, town halls and gathering places are not owned by private individuals who can set the house rules. Yet the public trustees of those places increasingly act as if they are owners. The South Australian and Queensland governments and the State Library of Victoria have, in silencing controversial speech, assumed the prerogatives and privileges of private ownership, slipping into the same dark hole as Donald Trump who, in kicking disobedient media out of the White House<\/a>, said it was \u201cmy house\u201d (before quickly correcting himself and calling it \u201cthe people\u2019s house\u201d; but for the great privatiser, there\u2019s no difference).<\/p>\n Related Article It\u2019s not too much to expect our libraries, universities and the rest to remember that they are stewards of a public trust, not owners of a private house. At the last writers\u2019 festivals in Newcastle and Sydney, the NSW government opposed the appearance of some writers but stopped short of pulling funding. The stopping-short is the critical point. Governments might provide some of the means for public events, but this is not a purchase of the words that are spoken in them, as long as they fall within the law.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the difference between public and private rights, between democracy and oligarchy. Responsible public stewardship of public spaces is one of the differences between us and America, and one we must be very careful to preserve.<\/p>\n Maybe Macklemore would be welcome on public Australian land. Tones and I, the Australian artist who almost performed at this year\u2019s NRL grand final, has a clashing engagement that day with \u2026 Macklemore<\/a>. There\u2019s a slot going begging at the Olympic Stadium at 7pm on October 4. But yeah, nah, who needs more controversy when you\u2019ve already got the NRL bunker<\/a> trying to please all the people, all the time?<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n![\"See](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/da475bad4b84b36c21e6c6263aa1612405f81d53.jpeg\")
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil: Ed Sheeran opened last Saturday\u2019s concert in Philadelphia alone, and apologised to fans for making \u201cmistakes\u201d as he handled the fallout over rapper Macklemore being dropped from his tour.Instagram<\/p>\n![\"Sheeran](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/d74c60977b0afb3dd81bacd55ee6f684a2b8a186.png\")
Sheeran and his support acts no more (from second left): Macklemore, Finneas and Aaron Rowe.Fairfax<\/p>\n![\"Ed](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790359346_997_bede9c0de07aa57a040e9c60aef3055a4ad4cd98e995c01e810abb80559fa2c6.png\")
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