• teagrrl@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      Already been discussed here pretty extensively, but it is a very old photo and he apologized for it. Even the ADL (an insane zionist organization) forgave him. Stop pretending like you actually care about antisemitism.

      https://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/20/showbiz/macklemore-costume-apology/index.html

      Rapper Macklemore, who won a Grammy for a song praised for its cultural sensitivity, insists that he wasn’t stereotyping Jews with a costume he wore to a Seattle event Friday.

      The hat, big fake nose, black beard and wig were “a random costume” thrown together “so that I could walk around unnoticed and surprise the crowd with a short performance,” the rapper said in an “apology to anybody that I may have offended” released Monday night.

      While the Anti-Defamation League said the group would “take him at his word that he did not have any ill intent.”

      “Family, friends and fans alike who know me well, know that I’m absolutely not the person described in certain headlines today,” Macklemore said in Monday’s statement. “There is no worse feeling than being misunderstood, especially when people are hurt or offended.”

      Macklemore said the misunderstanding happened because he wanted to surprise fans at a show at Seattle’s EMP Museum on Friday night.

      “Earlier in the day I thought it would be fun to dress up in a disguise and go incognito to the event, so that I could walk around unnoticed and surprise the crowd with a short performance,” he said.

      “I picked up a bunch of fake mustaches and beards and grabbed a leftover wig from our recent trip to Japan,” he said. The only fake nose he could find at a costume store at the last minute was “a big witch nose.”

      His only aim was to disguise himself, not to be “any ‘type’ of person,” he said. “I wasn’t attempting to mimic any culture, nor resemble one. A ‘Jewish stereotype’ never crossed my mind.”

      Some people who saw him suggested that he looked like former Beatle Ringo Starr or President Abraham Lincoln, he said.

      He said it was “surprising and disappointing” that photos of his “disguise were sensationalized leading to the immediate assertion that my costume was anti-Semitic.”

      He did, however, “acknowledge how the costume could, within a context of stereotyping, be ascribed to a Jewish caricature.”

      “We take him at his word that he did not have any ill intent and unreservedly accept his apology,” ADL National Director Abraham Foxman said. “We know that Macklemore is someone who has used his platform in the past to stand up and speak out against intolerance and bigotry, particularly homophobia. With that in mind we believe that this matter is little more than ‘a tempest in a teapot’ over an unfortunate choice of wardrobe.”