Ed Sheeran: An amoral celebrity worth $400 million.
Jethro Sheeran (Ed's cousin): "Finally the world and all his fans see through him. He’s not a good person, I don’t like his music so I can’t say he’s even a good artist.
He’s honestly a selfish individual with malicious, cunning ways. ‘He kills you with kindness’ (His Words) I’m his first blood cousin and he screwed me over, made fun of my mental health and mental health in general.”
EDIT: I should also mention that Ed Sheerean's talent agency is Wasserman (now rebranded as The Team) founded by Casey Wasserman, who was found in the Epstein files and is friends with Netanyahu ("Your leadership in the last two years makes me proud to be a Jew").
All I knew about him was that he’s some goofy-looking carrot top ( I don’t listen to fourth-rate pop) so I asked Siri to play one of his songs. First thought: people actually pay money to hear this shit? Does anyone actually believe this garbage will be relevant twenty years from now? Ten years? Five?
Compare to the likes of humanitarians like Roger Waters and Annie Lennox, who remain music legends as well as actors such as Susan Sarandon and Vanessa Redgrave.
Looks like Eddie Boy might be joining Pink and Boy George on the Hasbara Has-Been Tour.
the zionist billionaire Robert Kraft is a liar and a thug. he claims that his massive surveillance center inside Gillette Stadium [10:35] is used to track “anti semitism”, but in reality it surveys pro-Palestinian speech across media and then sends it to institutions which it knows will cause them harm:
the zionist billionaire Robert Kraft is a liar and a thug. he claims that his massive surveillance center inside Gillette Stadium [10:35] is used to track “anti semitism”, but in reality it surveys pro-Palestinian speech across media and then sends it to institutions which it knows will cause them harm:
The crocodile tears coming from likes of the genocide-deniers and both-siders like Seinfeld and Pink, and even the sarcastic bile tears from the Bill Mahers of the world, give me great pleasure, as an indication of their fearful desperation, as the curtain is pulled back further and further towards revealing reality, and away from the mendacious lies of a criminal enterprise. The more they whine, the more their world is collapsing.
Rather, they are strong enough now that they no longer need keep up the pretenses. The analogy I use is of a pimp who has that poor runaway girl in a hotel room, no money, no phone, no options, and he no longer needs to pretend to be a nice guy just trying to help out.
Correct, and well said. For the vast majority the global population, there is no reality, only propaganda. If Is ra hell can get away with openly talking about unaliving Palestinians, funding more settlements in the West Bank, rebuilding the Third Temple in Jerusalem, the Greater Is ra hell Project, and funding Epstein for his honeypot project… I suppose all the global world leaders that have power are compromised, allegedly!!!
I think it is collapsing. The analogy I would use is the lung cancer patient who declined treatment and sound medical device for years, before and after diagnosis, who has fallen to the ‘screw it, I’m gonna die anyway’ philosophy, and chain smokes two packs a day instead of one.
Some would say the patient is strong (willed). Smart, not so much.
We’ll see. I think the NATO countries are headed, like fools, towards a war with Russia, and the U.S., because that will be a boon to the MIC, will support it. Speaking of collapse, the bond market has less than a year on life support, imo.
Maybe you need to know the history of the conflict and you are making it worse, by not knowing the facts! Yes, Israel went too far! Did you forget how Hamas butchered Israeli citizens, raped their women and killed their babies and took young and old underground? U taking sides will instead promote more violence instead of promoting peace!
I doubt he forgot. He just knows the rapes and baby killing stories supposedly perpetrated by Hamas are fabrications. It’s been revealed over and over, even in Israeli media that Israeli accusations are in fact admissions to what they themselves have done to Palestinians.
Absolute bullshit. Israeli's may treat women, and their children, as sex objects but Muslim men don't. They treat women as special, and would never do what you, rather stupidly, repeated already debunked lies put out by Netanyahu to make israeli's the victims, which is ridiculous when they have killed, maimed and raped and stolen the homes and land of Palestinians for over eighty years.
You sit there and hug your lies if that's tge only wsy you can live with yourself and your beloved israeli murderers, who are still killing during a ceasefire. You are vile.
Israelis love raping women, children, men, whatever they can stick their penises in. They party and laugh while creepy old men mutilate the penises of infant boys and then suck the blood off the baby's penis. Depraved cruelty and sexual violence are deeply imbedded in their disgusting culture.
Sharon, did you forget that we all know that most, if not all, of the mortalities on Oct 7 were inflicted by the IDF; that Hamas did not rape any woman or girl on Oct 7; that Hamas did not kill any babies on Oct 7? Did you forget that we all know that Hamas offered a hostage swap by the evening of Oct 7, which Netanyahu rejected? Did you forget that we all know that Netanyahu was well aware the attack was going to come, and arranged for the guards on the border to be stood down and the rave to be moved closer to the border?
For God's sake, woman, STOP LYING. Maybe you need to know that gentiles are not stupid subhumans who believe your lies, and that your lies cause us to despise you.
Come on now. You know you are spouting long-debunked rubbish. Your 'but, but, but' is beyond boring at this stage. There are no SIDES. Free Palestine from the tyrannical, debauched and immoral regime they call 'Israel'.
The history, Sharon, started loooooong ago, with the advent of the NaZionist project to wipe Palestine off the map and populate the region with their particular god's chosen liars and murderers, Israel.
Should we talk about how the east african 'Beta Israeli' are treated like a whole underclass of slave labor in Israel because they don't look like the 'stereotype' of a ashkenazi Jew?
We all know this conflict started in 1948 with the Nakba when eastern Europeans decided it was fine to steal and invade Palestine and genocide the native people living there for millennia. The squatting (jewish) settlers are as native to Palestine as (islamic) Indonesians or (islamic) Senegalese would be native to Saudi Arabia. Or to put it more bluntly, Palestinians are genetically closer related to Jesus than the jews that have arrived the past 2 centuries.
Both sidesing genocide is so wrong. Ed Sheeran is going to be very ashamed of this stupid stance, just like others who did the same thing, whether celebrities, ordinary people or anyone in between.
After the dust has settled and this whole situation has ended, it will be like after Nazi Germany when every claimed they were always against it.
But the rest of us will know better.
Any kind of support or diminishment of the horror of genocide is reprehensible, and not being able to figure that out is a moral failure.
CJ>>"I strongly disagree with the idea that it’s unhelpful to bully celebrities about their position on Palestine. On the contrary, I think we should bully them more."
I'm 100% with you on this, Caitlin & Tim (for all the excellent reasons you mention and more)! 💯👍🙏❤️
You can't actually bully a celebrity like Sheeran, but you can stop fawning over and financially supporting them, which by contrast makes them FEEL like they're being bullied. Sheeran and his ilk royally deserve that treatment!
Celebrity - fame - is the diabolical bastard spawn of banal mass media epistemology. That means it's a choice. As an artist, if you're talented and lucky with your timing and your artwork (whatever it is) happens to strike a universal chord with a big audience, good luck to you. But you either can choose to buy into the celebrity side - the leveragable stuff of fame that scales way beyond your artistic capacity to reach your audience on your own, directly, up close and in real time - or you can eschew it. You can be the finest troubador who ever wrote a song of real genius, and still simply choose not to play it anywhere but in small localised venues who aren't going to ban you for your lyrics. Or if they do, there are a dozen others within spitting distance who will open their doors to you.
No-one ever said being lucky enough to be gifted great artistry should automatically entitle you to live like a fucking trillion-dollar hedge fund trader or the CEO of a global arms manufacturer. Or a King, or a Sultan, or a fucking banking or Hollywood mogul.
I'm fucking sick of mass media celebrity culture. In its entirety. It's dominated (and destroyed) our concept of 'art' and 'creativity' and what it means to find the truly universal in artwork, and simply share it with an audience who can see it and value it for what it is: something for us all to share a part in, and together celebrate solely on its merits.
Sick of how we have come to triage and benchmark artistic success; creative originality and the new genuine Human connections it can forge. By the miserable, ersatz metric of its monetisable, massed adulation. Art that's mostly 'famous' for being 'great art' because someone, somewhere, invariably with power and wealth, decided to apply the banal industrialised mechanics of scale distribution and amplification to it. Almost always hijacking it, and clumsily diminishing it, even as they pumped it full of their cynical, artificial growth chemicals.
I've met a hundred singer-songwriters, over forty years of playing local gigs, who frankly shit all over Ed Sheeran as artists. Shit all over the over-amplified, over-distributed stadium imposters, however authentic they may have started out. Shit all over almost all the famous 'music industry artists' you and I have heard of - many of whose work, sure, I like and admire, too, for the best reasons, that still endure and linger despite their over-renown. But I do not idolise - and do not iconise - such artists out of all proportion to their artwork's power to say something to me, up close and personal (if such does survive their fame). That kind of idolatry is just the banal smoke-and-mirrors trick of mass media epistemology shaking me down, duping us all into mistaking what is usually, at best, mostly just honest artistic craft and toil - some great, some just good, plenty very fucking ordinary - for b/s words like 'genius'.
Fuck fame. It kills. It kills art, it kills ideas, it kills creative Humanity. Fuck fame, and fuck the famous. All of them. They're welcome to enjoy the fruits of it if they choose. But they need to know this: it comes at a cost, now: the cost of accountability. The more globally famous - the richer, the more privileged, the more bubbled away from your audience - you decide to let your art make you, by shackling it to the mass media mechanics that are really the trick to 'fame'...the higher will become that cost.
No-one rides the Fame Train for free anymore, all you rich, famous 'artists'. Get used to it.
Fame can kill, but not all: Miro was not killed by fame, nor Dolly Parton for that matter. Judge people not by their fame or lack of fame but by how they use it.
Fame kills you as an artist if it makes you think twice before honestly answering a question about the world we all share. Dolly did plenty of good things with her money and fame, but she was also brutal in deploying it to ensure she never had to square up publicly to the truly hard questions of our world. Such as Is-Pal.
As I said, artists can make whatever choices - whatever Faustian pacts with fame and its baubles - they choose. But the Ed Sheeran episode suggests that the age of 'controlled' and 'gate-kept' mass media, when one could simply annoint themselves conveniently as 'apolitical' to avoid hard public choices on the world we all live in, has now passed.
I understand your bitterness and uncompromising attitude, but in the case of Dolly Parton, I think her song 9 to 5 hits all the bases: sexism, capitalism, and the dual oppression of women: "Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living
Barely getting by, it's all taking and no giving
They just use your mind, and they never give you credit
It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it
And you're in the same boat with a lotta your friends
Launching ideas you all believe in
The tide's gonna turn, and it's all gonna roll your way. "
I think it unfair to lay into her for not speaking out on I/G during these last years as she dealt with disease. I will note what her sister Stella just said: "Parton took to X, formerly Twitter, to show her support of Macklemore. She was “sounding the alarm,” calling it “dire” if artists are being removed from a tour for “simply calling out genocide in Gaza.
“I’m here to sound the alarm again today as I’ve been doing since 2016,” she wrote. “We are in a dire situation when a performer is pulled from a tour for simply calling out genocide in Gaza.” Dolly Parton did so much good, was so generous and authentic that I think i her death we can appreciate the bounty of her heart and her gift and refrain from accusing her of "Faustian pacts with fame." My heart just isn't in finding fault with such an exceptional human being. I favor positive re-enforecement: praising people for what they do right rather than condemning them for what they have not done. I know your bitterness at not achieving the recognition all artists desire is sincere and so I will just say: some speak their truth, Dolly sang hers.
The sad reality is that both Dale and Jack are probably right. The sadder reality is that Dolly was the exception not the rule and the saddest reality is( as the lyrics intimate) that we live in a system where getting ahead(famous) requires acquiesce and keeping your head down to get ahead.
Pleasing plutocrats to "achieve" some position within their structure. This is not a life that can possibly be construed as creative, regardless of the songs or whatever other half-assed medium the celebrities vomit out to thrill their mind-addled fans.
I think in many ways powerful people who have clout and a voice and a large following who hang on their every word staying quiet on such issue is far worse than an average person who doesnt have that reach. After all, powerful and famous people have the ability to shape public attention, force uncomfortable conversations, and make people confront what they might otherwise ignore. Choosing not to use that power when it matters most is not neutral, it is a choice.
I say this because Dolly Parton passed away last month and I hear all this talk about what a kind and a generous spirit she had. So I looked into it, turns out, she never once said anything about Palestine. And somehow people dont seem to find that to be a problem. And it is not like she was not in the habit of doing it. She did dedicate a show in 2022 to Ukraine, but when it came to one of the worst crimes of our times, this allegedly amazing human being just stayed quiet.
To see people not caring about that and still celebrating her as if she didnt stay silent on one of the worst crimes of our times really speaks to the morality, or lack thereof, of the masses who are just sheep. Cause if we are going to canonize someone as an extraordinary human being because of their compassion, generosity, and activism, then surely we are allowed to ask what that compassion looked like when speaking up actually carried a cost.
Gaza has become a litmus test for how selectively people apply their own moral principles. People will tell you how much they care about humanity, compassion, justice, children, suffering, and human rights - and then completely suspend those principles when applying them becomes uncomfortable.
Parton had extraordinary reach. If she had spoken, people would have listened. It honestly almost nullifies the rest of her activism as mainly performative. Cause when it really mattered, when saying something would have come at a cost, she stayed silent.
Speaking out against mass killing and the suffering of civilians should not be a controversial act of moral courage. The fact that it has become one , and that so many people would rather protect the reputations of beloved public figures than confront that contradiction, is far more revealing than anything a celebrity could ever say.
She really was. And honestly, it wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if she weren’t so universally beloved. The fact that everyone seems to adore her actually makes me question other people - and THEIR moral compass - more than it makes me question her. Like if this is the standards people set for each other, no wonder we are screwed...
"Choosing not to use that power when it matters most is not neutral, it is a choice." 🎯
It is the responsibility of EVERY human to do what they can to stop evil from winning. Every single one of us has to work & fight for good or we will lose whatever freedoms we have left.
During the genocide I have watched MOST people avoid even speaking against it, claiming it's "complicated" or that they want to stay neutral or they don't want to hurt Jewish feelings.
Every single one of them is failing in their responsibility to humanity to stop evil.
And they think it's fine to say nothing, do nothing, THINK nothing because the people they admire & respect (rightly or wrongly) do & say nothing.
Macklemore forces people to examine their own consciences and actions. Dolly Parton (lovely as she was - Israel imprisoned Palestinians throughout her fame) and Ed Sheeran (who's always been ghastly imho) excuse people from their weak, COMPLICIT behaviour.
When complicitity & cowardice are normalised evil wins.
Agree with you totally, Caitlin & Tim. We are actually not bullying anyone. We have a right to agree or disagree, like or dislike any icon of popular (or classical) culture. Specially if they are callous enough to disregard the most moral issue of our time - the on going genocide of the Palestinian people.
The celebrities do need a fan base to make their millions. To withhold our support is bringing power to the people.
"In this way celebrities function as a kind of goalkeeper preventing dissident thought from reaching the minds of the masses."
Exactly. Multi-millionaire Ed Sheeran is just a mouthpiece for the real big money and power of the oligarchy. His job is to brainwash the vulnerable into thinking the way they want us to think. I just worry that they'll use Sheeran's "nice guy image" to make all pro-Palestine supporters look like "terrorists" and get us locked up for making poor little Ed cry.
Agree 100% Caitlin.
For context:
Ed Sheeran: An amoral celebrity worth $400 million.
Jethro Sheeran (Ed's cousin): "Finally the world and all his fans see through him. He’s not a good person, I don’t like his music so I can’t say he’s even a good artist.
He’s honestly a selfish individual with malicious, cunning ways. ‘He kills you with kindness’ (His Words) I’m his first blood cousin and he screwed me over, made fun of my mental health and mental health in general.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/DdY250ejX9u/?img_index=4
I'll say it again: Fuck that coward Ed Sheeran
EDIT: I should also mention that Ed Sheerean's talent agency is Wasserman (now rebranded as The Team) founded by Casey Wasserman, who was found in the Epstein files and is friends with Netanyahu ("Your leadership in the last two years makes me proud to be a Jew").
Never heard of him before.
Yes, Jon. Me too.
Hi Indu
All I knew about him was that he’s some goofy-looking carrot top ( I don’t listen to fourth-rate pop) so I asked Siri to play one of his songs. First thought: people actually pay money to hear this shit? Does anyone actually believe this garbage will be relevant twenty years from now? Ten years? Five?
Compare to the likes of humanitarians like Roger Waters and Annie Lennox, who remain music legends as well as actors such as Susan Sarandon and Vanessa Redgrave.
Looks like Eddie Boy might be joining Pink and Boy George on the Hasbara Has-Been Tour.
the zionist billionaire Robert Kraft is a liar and a thug. he claims that his massive surveillance center inside Gillette Stadium [10:35] is used to track “anti semitism”, but in reality it surveys pro-Palestinian speech across media and then sends it to institutions which it knows will cause them harm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zYeIM3y_aQ
me neither until this blew up.
however, my daughter is very into music and she says he’s lame
the zionist billionaire Robert Kraft is a liar and a thug. he claims that his massive surveillance center inside Gillette Stadium [10:35] is used to track “anti semitism”, but in reality it surveys pro-Palestinian speech across media and then sends it to institutions which it knows will cause them harm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zYeIM3y_aQ
The crocodile tears coming from likes of the genocide-deniers and both-siders like Seinfeld and Pink, and even the sarcastic bile tears from the Bill Mahers of the world, give me great pleasure, as an indication of their fearful desperation, as the curtain is pulled back further and further towards revealing reality, and away from the mendacious lies of a criminal enterprise. The more they whine, the more their world is collapsing.
Their world is not collapsing at all.
Rather, they are strong enough now that they no longer need keep up the pretenses. The analogy I use is of a pimp who has that poor runaway girl in a hotel room, no money, no phone, no options, and he no longer needs to pretend to be a nice guy just trying to help out.
Correct, and well said. For the vast majority the global population, there is no reality, only propaganda. If Is ra hell can get away with openly talking about unaliving Palestinians, funding more settlements in the West Bank, rebuilding the Third Temple in Jerusalem, the Greater Is ra hell Project, and funding Epstein for his honeypot project… I suppose all the global world leaders that have power are compromised, allegedly!!!
I think it is collapsing. The analogy I would use is the lung cancer patient who declined treatment and sound medical device for years, before and after diagnosis, who has fallen to the ‘screw it, I’m gonna die anyway’ philosophy, and chain smokes two packs a day instead of one.
Some would say the patient is strong (willed). Smart, not so much.
We’ll see. I think the NATO countries are headed, like fools, towards a war with Russia, and the U.S., because that will be a boon to the MIC, will support it. Speaking of collapse, the bond market has less than a year on life support, imo.
Choppy waters ahead.
Oh, the war is coming. Either NATO will win or it will go nuclear. If it does, the rulers will be snug as bugs in their bunkers.
As for the peons? La di da, can't be helped!
The rulers are not stupid at all, just sociopathic.
Ever see "Don't Look Up!"?
And no, interest rate curves signal nothing like a bond collapse.
Sociopaths can be stupid. Yes, watched DLU several times. Jennifer Lawrence was a hoot.
We’ll see about the bonds. Indicators don’t always indicate reliably.
Maybe you need to know the history of the conflict and you are making it worse, by not knowing the facts! Yes, Israel went too far! Did you forget how Hamas butchered Israeli citizens, raped their women and killed their babies and took young and old underground? U taking sides will instead promote more violence instead of promoting peace!
"raped their women and killed their babies" These are myths by the ever-active Israeli propaganda machine. Fabricated!
Yes I agree. Israel is repulsive in what it does and what it stands for. Can't remember ever hearing anything Israel has ever done with a good heart.
I doubt he forgot. He just knows the rapes and baby killing stories supposedly perpetrated by Hamas are fabrications. It’s been revealed over and over, even in Israeli media that Israeli accusations are in fact admissions to what they themselves have done to Palestinians.
Absolute bullshit. Israeli's may treat women, and their children, as sex objects but Muslim men don't. They treat women as special, and would never do what you, rather stupidly, repeated already debunked lies put out by Netanyahu to make israeli's the victims, which is ridiculous when they have killed, maimed and raped and stolen the homes and land of Palestinians for over eighty years.
You sit there and hug your lies if that's tge only wsy you can live with yourself and your beloved israeli murderers, who are still killing during a ceasefire. You are vile.
Israelis love raping women, children, men, whatever they can stick their penises in. They party and laugh while creepy old men mutilate the penises of infant boys and then suck the blood off the baby's penis. Depraved cruelty and sexual violence are deeply imbedded in their disgusting culture.
That is a lie!Dare you to prove that!!
Hasbara script bots are as human and convincing as the “lonely lady in town” spam I sometimes get.
They support training dogs to rape humans.
Sharon, did you forget that we all know that most, if not all, of the mortalities on Oct 7 were inflicted by the IDF; that Hamas did not rape any woman or girl on Oct 7; that Hamas did not kill any babies on Oct 7? Did you forget that we all know that Hamas offered a hostage swap by the evening of Oct 7, which Netanyahu rejected? Did you forget that we all know that Netanyahu was well aware the attack was going to come, and arranged for the guards on the border to be stood down and the rave to be moved closer to the border?
For God's sake, woman, STOP LYING. Maybe you need to know that gentiles are not stupid subhumans who believe your lies, and that your lies cause us to despise you.
Come on now. You know you are spouting long-debunked rubbish. Your 'but, but, but' is beyond boring at this stage. There are no SIDES. Free Palestine from the tyrannical, debauched and immoral regime they call 'Israel'.
The history, Sharon, started loooooong ago, with the advent of the NaZionist project to wipe Palestine off the map and populate the region with their particular god's chosen liars and murderers, Israel.
GO and read some facts yourself.
Soon there will be no Palestinians left.........is this OK for you!
Still spouting the rape women and kill babies shit???? Wake up you brainwashed fool!
Should we talk about how the east african 'Beta Israeli' are treated like a whole underclass of slave labor in Israel because they don't look like the 'stereotype' of a ashkenazi Jew?
We all know this conflict started in 1948 with the Nakba when eastern Europeans decided it was fine to steal and invade Palestine and genocide the native people living there for millennia. The squatting (jewish) settlers are as native to Palestine as (islamic) Indonesians or (islamic) Senegalese would be native to Saudi Arabia. Or to put it more bluntly, Palestinians are genetically closer related to Jesus than the jews that have arrived the past 2 centuries.
Fact: Hannibal Directive. Look it up smarty pants.
nice satire.
This sharon cohen never said anything about bullying. There are probably many Sharon Cohens’! Anyway, your arguments are ridiculous!
Both sidesing genocide is so wrong. Ed Sheeran is going to be very ashamed of this stupid stance, just like others who did the same thing, whether celebrities, ordinary people or anyone in between.
After the dust has settled and this whole situation has ended, it will be like after Nazi Germany when every claimed they were always against it.
But the rest of us will know better.
Any kind of support or diminishment of the horror of genocide is reprehensible, and not being able to figure that out is a moral failure.
Unfortunately, the only thing Ed Sheeran is ashamed about is not having an opening act on his tour.
There are lots of them out there unfortunately -- people who don't get the need to speak out against genocide.
Gotta let the little turd know that this is not acceptable.
CJ>>"I strongly disagree with the idea that it’s unhelpful to bully celebrities about their position on Palestine. On the contrary, I think we should bully them more."
I'm 100% with you on this, Caitlin & Tim (for all the excellent reasons you mention and more)! 💯👍🙏❤️
You can't actually bully a celebrity like Sheeran, but you can stop fawning over and financially supporting them, which by contrast makes them FEEL like they're being bullied. Sheeran and his ilk royally deserve that treatment!
100% correct as usual. Thank you for your work on trying to restore humanity to the equation ❤️
Celebrity - fame - is the diabolical bastard spawn of banal mass media epistemology. That means it's a choice. As an artist, if you're talented and lucky with your timing and your artwork (whatever it is) happens to strike a universal chord with a big audience, good luck to you. But you either can choose to buy into the celebrity side - the leveragable stuff of fame that scales way beyond your artistic capacity to reach your audience on your own, directly, up close and in real time - or you can eschew it. You can be the finest troubador who ever wrote a song of real genius, and still simply choose not to play it anywhere but in small localised venues who aren't going to ban you for your lyrics. Or if they do, there are a dozen others within spitting distance who will open their doors to you.
No-one ever said being lucky enough to be gifted great artistry should automatically entitle you to live like a fucking trillion-dollar hedge fund trader or the CEO of a global arms manufacturer. Or a King, or a Sultan, or a fucking banking or Hollywood mogul.
I'm fucking sick of mass media celebrity culture. In its entirety. It's dominated (and destroyed) our concept of 'art' and 'creativity' and what it means to find the truly universal in artwork, and simply share it with an audience who can see it and value it for what it is: something for us all to share a part in, and together celebrate solely on its merits.
Sick of how we have come to triage and benchmark artistic success; creative originality and the new genuine Human connections it can forge. By the miserable, ersatz metric of its monetisable, massed adulation. Art that's mostly 'famous' for being 'great art' because someone, somewhere, invariably with power and wealth, decided to apply the banal industrialised mechanics of scale distribution and amplification to it. Almost always hijacking it, and clumsily diminishing it, even as they pumped it full of their cynical, artificial growth chemicals.
I've met a hundred singer-songwriters, over forty years of playing local gigs, who frankly shit all over Ed Sheeran as artists. Shit all over the over-amplified, over-distributed stadium imposters, however authentic they may have started out. Shit all over almost all the famous 'music industry artists' you and I have heard of - many of whose work, sure, I like and admire, too, for the best reasons, that still endure and linger despite their over-renown. But I do not idolise - and do not iconise - such artists out of all proportion to their artwork's power to say something to me, up close and personal (if such does survive their fame). That kind of idolatry is just the banal smoke-and-mirrors trick of mass media epistemology shaking me down, duping us all into mistaking what is usually, at best, mostly just honest artistic craft and toil - some great, some just good, plenty very fucking ordinary - for b/s words like 'genius'.
Fuck fame. It kills. It kills art, it kills ideas, it kills creative Humanity. Fuck fame, and fuck the famous. All of them. They're welcome to enjoy the fruits of it if they choose. But they need to know this: it comes at a cost, now: the cost of accountability. The more globally famous - the richer, the more privileged, the more bubbled away from your audience - you decide to let your art make you, by shackling it to the mass media mechanics that are really the trick to 'fame'...the higher will become that cost.
No-one rides the Fame Train for free anymore, all you rich, famous 'artists'. Get used to it.
Get the fuck used to it.
Fame can kill, but not all: Miro was not killed by fame, nor Dolly Parton for that matter. Judge people not by their fame or lack of fame but by how they use it.
Fame kills you as an artist if it makes you think twice before honestly answering a question about the world we all share. Dolly did plenty of good things with her money and fame, but she was also brutal in deploying it to ensure she never had to square up publicly to the truly hard questions of our world. Such as Is-Pal.
As I said, artists can make whatever choices - whatever Faustian pacts with fame and its baubles - they choose. But the Ed Sheeran episode suggests that the age of 'controlled' and 'gate-kept' mass media, when one could simply annoint themselves conveniently as 'apolitical' to avoid hard public choices on the world we all live in, has now passed.
Chrs dale
I understand your bitterness and uncompromising attitude, but in the case of Dolly Parton, I think her song 9 to 5 hits all the bases: sexism, capitalism, and the dual oppression of women: "Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living
Barely getting by, it's all taking and no giving
They just use your mind, and they never give you credit
It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it
And you're in the same boat with a lotta your friends
Launching ideas you all believe in
The tide's gonna turn, and it's all gonna roll your way. "
I think it unfair to lay into her for not speaking out on I/G during these last years as she dealt with disease. I will note what her sister Stella just said: "Parton took to X, formerly Twitter, to show her support of Macklemore. She was “sounding the alarm,” calling it “dire” if artists are being removed from a tour for “simply calling out genocide in Gaza.
“I’m here to sound the alarm again today as I’ve been doing since 2016,” she wrote. “We are in a dire situation when a performer is pulled from a tour for simply calling out genocide in Gaza.” Dolly Parton did so much good, was so generous and authentic that I think i her death we can appreciate the bounty of her heart and her gift and refrain from accusing her of "Faustian pacts with fame." My heart just isn't in finding fault with such an exceptional human being. I favor positive re-enforecement: praising people for what they do right rather than condemning them for what they have not done. I know your bitterness at not achieving the recognition all artists desire is sincere and so I will just say: some speak their truth, Dolly sang hers.
The sad reality is that both Dale and Jack are probably right. The sadder reality is that Dolly was the exception not the rule and the saddest reality is( as the lyrics intimate) that we live in a system where getting ahead(famous) requires acquiesce and keeping your head down to get ahead.
I lust for Seinfeld and Maher to be shamed in a very real and public way.
Yes public schlappings are delightful. This is all it takes to keep psychopaths at bay.
The proxy war against Russia is a war for the same ones as in Israel. Sheeran supported Ukraine and suffered no opposition from the elites.
Pleasing plutocrats to "achieve" some position within their structure. This is not a life that can possibly be construed as creative, regardless of the songs or whatever other half-assed medium the celebrities vomit out to thrill their mind-addled fans.
I think in many ways powerful people who have clout and a voice and a large following who hang on their every word staying quiet on such issue is far worse than an average person who doesnt have that reach. After all, powerful and famous people have the ability to shape public attention, force uncomfortable conversations, and make people confront what they might otherwise ignore. Choosing not to use that power when it matters most is not neutral, it is a choice.
I say this because Dolly Parton passed away last month and I hear all this talk about what a kind and a generous spirit she had. So I looked into it, turns out, she never once said anything about Palestine. And somehow people dont seem to find that to be a problem. And it is not like she was not in the habit of doing it. She did dedicate a show in 2022 to Ukraine, but when it came to one of the worst crimes of our times, this allegedly amazing human being just stayed quiet.
To see people not caring about that and still celebrating her as if she didnt stay silent on one of the worst crimes of our times really speaks to the morality, or lack thereof, of the masses who are just sheep. Cause if we are going to canonize someone as an extraordinary human being because of their compassion, generosity, and activism, then surely we are allowed to ask what that compassion looked like when speaking up actually carried a cost.
Gaza has become a litmus test for how selectively people apply their own moral principles. People will tell you how much they care about humanity, compassion, justice, children, suffering, and human rights - and then completely suspend those principles when applying them becomes uncomfortable.
Parton had extraordinary reach. If she had spoken, people would have listened. It honestly almost nullifies the rest of her activism as mainly performative. Cause when it really mattered, when saying something would have come at a cost, she stayed silent.
Speaking out against mass killing and the suffering of civilians should not be a controversial act of moral courage. The fact that it has become one , and that so many people would rather protect the reputations of beloved public figures than confront that contradiction, is far more revealing than anything a celebrity could ever say.
Dolly Parton enthusiastically endorsed the invasion of Iraq. She was just another American supremacist.
She really was. And honestly, it wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if she weren’t so universally beloved. The fact that everyone seems to adore her actually makes me question other people - and THEIR moral compass - more than it makes me question her. Like if this is the standards people set for each other, no wonder we are screwed...
"Choosing not to use that power when it matters most is not neutral, it is a choice." 🎯
It is the responsibility of EVERY human to do what they can to stop evil from winning. Every single one of us has to work & fight for good or we will lose whatever freedoms we have left.
During the genocide I have watched MOST people avoid even speaking against it, claiming it's "complicated" or that they want to stay neutral or they don't want to hurt Jewish feelings.
Every single one of them is failing in their responsibility to humanity to stop evil.
And they think it's fine to say nothing, do nothing, THINK nothing because the people they admire & respect (rightly or wrongly) do & say nothing.
Macklemore forces people to examine their own consciences and actions. Dolly Parton (lovely as she was - Israel imprisoned Palestinians throughout her fame) and Ed Sheeran (who's always been ghastly imho) excuse people from their weak, COMPLICIT behaviour.
When complicitity & cowardice are normalised evil wins.
And evil is winning.
Agree with you totally, Caitlin & Tim. We are actually not bullying anyone. We have a right to agree or disagree, like or dislike any icon of popular (or classical) culture. Specially if they are callous enough to disregard the most moral issue of our time - the on going genocide of the Palestinian people.
The celebrities do need a fan base to make their millions. To withhold our support is bringing power to the people.
Especially when they're Ed Sheeran. Bully the shit out of that overrated simp.
"In this way celebrities function as a kind of goalkeeper preventing dissident thought from reaching the minds of the masses."
Exactly. Multi-millionaire Ed Sheeran is just a mouthpiece for the real big money and power of the oligarchy. His job is to brainwash the vulnerable into thinking the way they want us to think. I just worry that they'll use Sheeran's "nice guy image" to make all pro-Palestine supporters look like "terrorists" and get us locked up for making poor little Ed cry.
Read my take on things: Why I Dislike Most Celebrities (Except for Two) https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com/p/why-i-dislike-most-celebrities-except
Excellent writing!
Good job, Rev. Its our job to pry the door open for all of the future Francesca's out there. I loved your "antisemitic/anticementic comment.
Another great chapter in the "to know who rules over you" book. LOL!