Wow! What an excellent article! Deepest bow of respect and gratitude for all courageous voices of truth and wisdom and uncompromising integrity! ― Molly
By Lance Rosen
Many older readers will be familiar with the sad story of film director Elia Kazan, who was known for a wide scope of classic movies including "On The Waterfront" starring Marlon Brando, as well as "A Streetcar Named Desire," and "East Of Eden" with James Dean.
In reading about the travesty of Ed Sheeran's decision to sell out his long time friend and touring mate Macklemore, I was reminded of how Kazan almost destroyed his own legacy of genius by deciding to "name names" of Hollywood's suspected communists and so-called socialist radicals, when called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, (HUAC) then led by the drunken witchunting Sen. Joe McCarthy and his corrupt counsel, the disgusting Roy Cohn. Cohn of course was Trump's long time personal lawyer and mentor in his later years, as well as the Gambino mob family's attorney.
Martha and I were privy to background information on much of this as we had a decades long close friendship with someone very close to Kazan who we cannot name for privacy reasons. That person's view of Kazan is much more charitable than those who were living at the time, most of whom felt personally betrayed (like Edward G. Robinson) in the heat of the moment. Kazan, in the truest sense of the word, was a modern day Greek tragedy.
Eventually Kazan was rehabilitated by Hollywood, largely through the efforts of his directing understudy Martin Scorsese, who presented him with his Academy lifetime achievement award while he was still living many years later. Honestly, I can't say that I know if he ever really owned or atoned for his failure as a human being in those times, though I sincerely hope he did.
He was far from the only "rat" in Hollywood who sold out his fellow actors to avoid the blacklist. Ronald Reagan, who was President of the Screen Actors Guild for a while and had earlier been a big time liberal pro-FDR labor activist, (then turned union-buster) reportedly was recruited as a "CI," an FBI confidential informant codenamed "T-10" in that period.
As the story goes, Reagan met actress Nancy Davis, divorced his then wife Jane Wyman, married Nancy, and fell under the sway of her father Dr. Loyal Davis, a medical doctor with a far-right political ideology and agenda.
Biographers have written that Nancy met him the first time because she asked for a meeting with the then SAG President after she found out she was blacklisted and wanted his help clearing her name, which she claimed was a case of mistaken identity. Reagan, being intellectually shallow, vain, and ambitious, "went the way the wind blew" in covertly aligning himself with McCarthy, Cohn, and J. Edgar Hoover's John Birch society.
Finally the Hollywood blacklist was broken with the courageous decision by actor/producer Kirk Douglas to give a screen credit to writer Dalton Trumbo for his screenplay of the Oscar winning film "Spartacus." (Douglas was otherwise by his own admission a disreputable sexual predator and abuser of young actresses who left a trail of broken people in his wake, but he did do this very good thing)
Trumbo was a controversial anti-war figure from the Left, who had written the best selling novel "Johnny Got His Gun," which I recommend highly, as it had a huge formative influence on my outlook early in life.
In a strange parallel, today's politics are rife with a new mutated version of McCarthyism. This time the new blacklist is comprised of public figures who criticize the current ultra-religious far-right regime of Netanyahu's Israeli cabinet. Anyone that characterizes Israeli war policies in Gaza as "ethnic cleansing" or as genocidal in its intention, is branded an anti-semite, a Marxist, or defender of radical Islamic terrorism. Likewise is the case for those who criticize Israel for starting the Iran war. I myself stand multiply accused of anti-semitism, despite being born and raised Jewish.
Rather than rehash all of the particulars, since we are awash in press coverage, with social media influencers weighing in, and a million-and one different takes on the whole affair, I would like to focus on what I believe is essential.
First, is that the big supervillain in this story is Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots football team and Gillette Stadium, the venue for Sheeran's concert. Most of you know his story, and no one should be fooled by his "cover his ass" offer to throw in a couple of million dollars for some kind of Gaza aid, which amounts to nothing. Kraft is as swinish as it gets and for many reasons which are documented, not the least of which is his close friendship and years long financial backing of Trump.
The Israeli policy toward the Palestinians of Gaza is to either kill them, children first, or forcibly deport them. Both of which are war crimes.
People want to nitpick and parse the word "genocide," drawing comparisons to the Holocaust and other such episodes of state run mass murder, then accuse those who use that word of hyperbole, extremism, and exaggeration when it comes to Netanyahu's regime. What is undeniable, in response to those sophists and deconstructionists, is that Netanyahu and Security Minister Itmar Ben-Gvir are war criminals with arrest warrants out for them. The Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant two days ago called for mass expulsion of the Palestinian population from Gaza to leave none remaining. These are facts.
And now, in a historical replay, among the targets of the new Trump-era blacklist are people like Macklemore, who to my knowledge is none of the things he stands accused of and appears from his public statements to be thoughtful. His open letter explaining himself is both honest in its accountability and generous toward his friend, whom he hopes will remain his friend and is willing to patch things up.
Macklemore has now been blacklisted by all NFL owners from performing in their stadiums, this for being an anti-semite, which he is not. He has condemned the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel in strong language. But he cannot perform now as a opener for Sheeran because he spoke out about the plight of Palestinians, and Kraft played the role of Roy Cohn in blackening his name and sabotaging his career.
Macklemore is today's Dalton Trumbo. Ed Sheeran is today's Elia Kazan, a gifted but temperamental artist who out of cowardly self-preservation betrayed his friend. He has no excuse, and he is not really a victim of billionaire Kraft's Trumpy loyalty. He had other choices available.
On one hand, people are, and can be complicated. I try to avoid judging people, especially if I don't know them personally. And as a matter of basic tolerance and belief in redemption, I would never condemn someone for making their worst decision on their worst day, because we are all fallible and therefore can atone for it if we so choose.
It is when people double-down on defending their worst decisions and actions, and such conduct becomes their pattern of life as opposed to one unfortunate incident, that people will tend to judge themselves, and history can then look back on them with some clarity. There is only one way to atone for the betrayal of a friend, and Sheeran already knows what way that is. So, we wait to see if his character will allow him to make the effort. He deserves at least one chance at that.
As for myself, I'm personally saddened. Sheeran's hit song, "Perfect," is one of my all-time favorites to sing at Karaoke. I think of Martha when I sing it and get choked up every time I perform it. People wave their phone flashlights and lighters at the most beautiful parts.
So, I'll just say it right out. I cannot bring myself to sing it now.
And for that, I have to say "fuck you Ed Sheeran, for robbing me and your millions of fans of the small amount of joy we get from hearing and singing your music."
Yes, art is political. It was in the 1940's and 1950's USA during the McCarthy era, as it was in Hitler's Third Reich, and so it is also in Donald Trump's America of today as we see in his attempt to literally demolish the Kennedy Center. There is very little of importance in this world that isn't "political," not in a banal party politics sense, but in the context of our meager efforts to present our creator's art as our respective "truths," and having a personal standard based in reason for what truth is.
So, rather than taking sides or spitting out some topical talking points regarding other people's "positions," I present this as a life-lesson for ourselves, a new chapter in the book "Profiles In Cowardice" from which we can all learn.
(Photo collage, clockwise: Kazan, Reagan, McCarthy and Cohn, Trump with Kraft, Kirk Douglas)
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