I'm not buying it. My inability to find a way to empathize suggests that Pink
was not scared in any normal understanding of that word. [⛧] The ignoring of
abstraction is the very point. If someone was in the crowd and did feel that
*feeling* of being scared, then I would believe them. I might even believe
someone might feel scared by proxy, assuming they were close enough. Say if
someone's child was *there* right then, not home safe in bed when the parent
learned about it.
My point is affine to Dave's, I think. Abstracted "fear" is not actual fear. We whip
ourselves up into some "triggered" state because of whatever associated trigger we've
been programmed to react to. But those 2 states are very different. Unless you've been punched in
the face, the feeling you get when you imagine being punched in the face will be very different
from what it actually feels like to be punched in the face.
Even for those of us who have been punched in the face, receiving said punch
in, say, the MMA ring will *still* feel very different from what it feels like
in the street, delivered by a mugger. These differences should not be ignored
away as Pink seems to be ignoring away what being scared really means.
And I also don't think what Pink is saying at the bottom of your post is "reasonable". It's akin to
the both sides-ism we saw in the recent FCC bullying to put the Talarico interview off air and on youtube. At
first blush, "I see you" to a rich, comfy Pink sitting in her plush residence versus "I see
you" to one of the lucky Palestinians whose survived an amputation may seem reasonable. But they're not,
not even slightly, the same.
To be honest, were I a recent amputee sitting in a blasted out used-to-be-a-city and Pink
said "I see you", I might just spit in her damned face. Stop *looking* and do
something ... or take your empty bullshit home with you.
[⛧] The closest I can come is to lived experience stories one of my black friends has
told me about living in Virginia. For a time, he lived in a relatively affluent suburb
where most people don't hang out on the stoop (as most of us from the South did/do). And
the cops drove around the neighborhood quite a bit, mostly because rich people like to
see the cops driving by sporadically ... all cops are really privately funded, regardless
of the public pretense. When he would sit on the porch and see the cops drive by, he felt
scared ... as a black man loitering around a house in a rich, mostly white neighborhood
... in VA. That fear grew from very immediate and concrete after he first moved there to
more abstract later on. And as the abstraction accumulated, the fear evolved into anger.
My best guess is what Pink is calling "scared" is actually some form of moral
outrage, which is nothing like fear.
On 9/16/26 11:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
Coming in late, as usual... but I'm not really sure what the confusion is.
"Free Palestine" is something that is often, but certainly not always, said as part of antisemitic
propaganda. Yes, I obviously understand that not all anti-Israel messaging is anti-Jew messaging, /especially
/over the last few years, but historically most of it has been. Because of that, I would hope /all /of us
could understand how a Jewish mother might get scared, not perversion-of-the-word "scared", but
legit scared, if they were at a random music concert and that suddenly went political and they found
themselves surrounded by a crowd aggressively chanting "Free Palestine." I'm not saying that fear
is the best available reaction, just that it ought to be perfectly understandable.
I think the question, then, is how far Pink is separated from the above
scenario. The stadium wasn't chanting, they were merely cheering, does that
matter? There was increased fervor the more he talked about it, does that
matter? Macklemore said explicitly he was not being antisemitic, does that
matter? Pink wasn't there herself, does that matter? This started with Pink
sharing a meme, which suggests she heard about what happened, and didn't know
his exact words at the time, does that matter?
All of that should probably matter, but none of it somehow magically prevents
the possibility of her being legitimately scared when she heard about it.
The slippery slope from dog whistles to openly antisemitic speech to violence,
confiscation of goods, exile, and sometimes death, is a prominent part of the Jewish
zeitgeist in any age. It's a well repeated pattern, and it is therefore very reasonable
to wonder if a public figure chanting "Free Palestine" in a stadium increases
the risk a white nationalist will show up with a gun at your synagogue next Saturday
morning, or if your children have an increased risk of being bullied at school, etc.,
etc.... even if the person saying the message is also against White Nationalism. And yes,
I know that the base rate of synagogue shootings is practically zero, but base rate
neglect is a super-common issue that people have with determining the probability of
events, and your chances of being discriminated against or bullied for being Jewish
remain pretty high in large swaths of the country.
I found a clip online of what Macklemore said, and honestly, if I were in the
crowd I would have cheered right along with him, and I would have thought it
was a positive message. That said, even while cheering, my eyes would almost
certainly have been darting around the crowd more than usual, just to reassure
myself things weren't headed in a problematic direction. I also would not have
been at all surprised if I later found out that several Jewish people in the
audience were scared by it.
In Pink's statement she said:
I was in the room at the Grammys in 2014 when Macklemore rapped "Same Love" and
thirty-three couples, gay and straight, got married to it, and I cheered, no questions asked. Four
months later Macklemore put on a hooked nose, a black beard and a bowl cut, performed in it, and
called it a "random costume." Every Jew I know knew exactly what it was. The same love,
it turned out, had a guest list, and we weren't on it. But he apologized, and I let it go, because
that's what we do. We let it go. Then last weekend he stood in front of a stadium full of
music-loving families, with violent images from a war on the screens, dedicated a song to the
movement of his choice, and then took the mic to tell all of the Jews in the stadium that it wasn't
about them.
You don't get to decide that for us.
That's what prompted my repost. Not "Free Palestine," and not anyone's
right to say it....
You don't have to agree with one thing Israel's government does to not want
the Jewish family two rows down from you to be scared or targeted at a concert.
That's the only thing I'm asking anybody for. To the ones who are frightened
this week, Jewish or Muslim or Palestinian or Israeli or just tired of all of
it: I see you.
That seems pretty reasonable.
Best,
Eric
<mailto:[email protected]>
On Mon, Sep 14, 2026 at 11:26 AM glen <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/macklemore-dropped-ed-sheeran-tour-pro-palestine-statements-1235625967/
<https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/macklemore-dropped-ed-sheeran-tour-pro-palestine-statements-1235625967/>
> Pink later explained that she did not object to Macklemore’s calls for a
“Free Palestine,” but said, “I have never asked for another artist to be silenced
and I’m not asking now. I don’t need anyone fired, and I don’t need a refund. What
I need is to be able to say, as a Jewish mom, ‘that scared me, and it scared
people I love,’ without being told our fear is just propaganda, and without being
told I’m somehow cool with genocide because I noticed?”
I'm not the most empathetic person. But I try. And I simply cannot understand how someone like Mackelmore
saying "Free Palestine" could *scare* someone like Pink. Is it that when she hears "Free
Palestine", she thinks it means "free Hamas from its restraints so it can murder Israelis". Is
that it?
If so, I can imagine myself hearing someone like ... oh, IDK, Toby Keith shouting "Free the Proud
Boys". Would that scare me? Would it scare local trans people because it would mean "Free the Proud
Boys so they can freely execute trans people in the streets?" Is that why "Free Palestine"
scares Pink?
If so, I have to go back to one of my favorite quotes: "Stupidity should be painful."
I mean, yes, I do have an irrational reaction to things like lotus seed pods. But OMG, it's
*because* of that reaction that I look at them so frequently. What kind of "fear" does
Pink experience? It's just baffling, ridiculous even.
--
--
8647 ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ
ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω.
.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ...
--- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
