I don't think the complaints are invalid, but it does feel like some of the critics are misinterpreting the song. It's less of a "gay people shouldn't be ashamed of who they are" song and more of a "straight people need to get their act together" song.

No contest

I made a comment earlier that while I sometimes get weary of identity politics and all the talk about Jezebel's privilege, Jezebel only makes it worse by writing these really self-conscious "check your privilege, everyone else" articles without ever having written an honest piece about the Hugo Schwyzer disaster that…

I love the song.

Exactly, because it's always great to walk onto this site to see a white lady tut-tutting some racist white guy, and then moving on to other wholly self-absorbed white lady things.

THANK YOU.

There are people "literally" running things? As in... treadmill-powered computers? Eh?

Yeah, I think he a has a pretty high level of self awareness for a white male. Enough to the point that he has even questioned his own success, and how his whiteness has aided that.

Macklemore isn't the problem, the reaction to Macklemore is the problem. He's problematic without it really being his fault. The only thing he can do is be self-aware. Its really his audience that needs to be more introspective.

I don't think he thought it was groundbreaking. It was blown up by the media. Those were his thoughts and experiences, and he wrote a song that he wanted to write.

I feel that you are possibly missing the point of his song. He's not taking what you (or any other LGBT person) say and "refashioning it". He's speaking of a personal experience. And while you "as a white woman" would not presume to write a song about it being ok to be black, you might write from a perspective of a…

Right?

Not from you, sorry if it seemed that way. I was reading posts critical of the song and the artist (and I'm not really a fan of hip-hop or Macklemore, so I have no dog in this fight other than what I said in my post), and it just blew my mind that there was this "oh, he's just cashing in, he took the safe road," etc.…

And I thought it was lovely that he contemplated his own sexuality and found a way to feel solidarity for gay people through that contemplation; that's real empathy. And I did know that some of the money went to charity; it was one of my first questions, so I investigated.

Are young people listening to the song? Young people in communities where attitudes might be less accepting or lagging behind where more and more of the country is? Then what he's done is a good thing. Because making those kids challenge their assumptions is where progress is made. The kid who joined in when someone…

GOD, STOP WRITING SONGS ABOUT CATS THEN.

Jezebel, I love you, but you're Mackelmore bashing is getting ridic.

"Human rights are not a zero-sum game" ... Thank you. Your comment is wonderful.

I see a bit of a difference in that you could never write a song about how when you were a kid, you thought you were black and what it meant to you. Situational experience isn't co-opting or appropriating anything. Also, the chorus was written by a lesbian artist. Just my two cents.