Mick Hartley

Ed Sheeran: it’s the story that won’t go away. From the Times:

Ed Sheeran has been accused of crying “white tears” after becoming emotional on stage and telling fans of his “mistakes” in handling the Palestine row that has come to dominate his US tour.

A video accusing the singer of playing “the victim” was widely circulated on social media, including by Nadiya Hussain, the Bake Off star, after Sheeran’s show in Philadelphia on Saturday night.

Hussain, who has one million followers on Instagram, shared the video featuring the therapist Megan Cooper without adding comment of her own.

In it, Cooper told viewers: “We’re all waking up to Ed Sheeran’s statement on stage, and I’m not going to go into what he said, but I do want to focus on one specific point.

“For those of us in white bodies, we need to understand and educate ourselves on white tears. White tears [are] a cultural tactic using emotion, consciously or unconsciously, to deflect accountability, to gain sympathy, and to centre [one]self in conflict and challenge, particularly during discussions around racism and oppression.”

In such a situation, Cooper said, “What happens is we become the victim. Our emotion is now prized above the actual issue, in this case, genocide. What this shines a light on is whose tears get to be seen, listened to, and heard in our society, and whose don’t.”

“White tears”. “For those of us in white bodies”. “Genocide”. Oh god. This whole affair really drags out the worst.

The Times attempts a sensible summary:

Performing alone on stage for the first time since the row erupted, Sheeran said the war in Gaza was “unjustifiable” and apologised to fans, saying: “I’ve had to take and make difficult decisions, and I am making mistakes, and I’m so, so sorry.

Sheeran also condemned the October 7th massacre – “What happened in Israel and at the Nova music festival on October 7 was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain” – but no one seems to mention that bit. As Stephen Pollard notes wrt the BBC:

The BBC’s report of Sheeran’s comment in its flagship Radio 4 Sunday news programme, Broadcasting House, chose to omit half of his words. If you have been following the BBC’s coverage of Gaza, it will not surprise you which half it left out. Yes, it omitted mention of his condemnation of what happened on October 7, with its correspondent telling listeners only that he “clarified where he stood on the situation in Gaza”, followed by a recording of Sheeran saying: “What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic, unjustifiable, and disproportionate. My heart has been broken by the scale of devastation and loss of civilian lives.” And that was it. In the extract of the recording that you can listen to below, there is no mention of October 7 at all.

Imagine if the edit had been the other way round, and the BBC had reported his condemnation of the October 7 massacre but not his words about Gaza. We would never hear the end of it; I wouldn’t be surprised if the Director General had already been forced to resign.

This is, of course, typical of the way the BBC operates. But more widely, it is typical of the way the entire issue is framed.

Look, for example, at the spectacle last week when Gillian Anderson recorded a video appeal for aid to Sudan, which is on any definition the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet. She made no mention of Gaza, and has thus been monstered by the Free Palestine brigade as a stooge of the Zionists.

Palestinianism means that everything, everywhere must be viewed through the prism of Gaza. And, for the BBC, that means editing an even-handed speech to make it seem as if Ed Sheeran was concerned only with the loss of life in Gaza.

Added, to that Times article:

Ed Sheeran has been criticised by Charlotte Church for choosing “capitalism over doing the right thing”, after the singer told fans he had made “mistakes” in his handling of the row that has dominated his US tour.

Church, 40, told Sheeran “we’re watching you” as she urged attendees at a gig in Cardiff to chant “free Palestine”.