Zach Bryan wears "Free Palestine" shirt at Gillette Stadium concert weeks after Macklemore-Robert Kraft controversy - CBS News

A concert shirt should not decide who gets to perform. If the standard changes depending on whose views the venue dislikes, that's a problem. People can disagree about the message and still defend the right to say it.

Free Palestine is not a crime, and musicians should not be punished for speaking up while people are suffering. Robert Kraft can use his power to shut artists out, but the public is paying attention, and silencing people will not make the cause disappear. Trump and his allies keep demanding obedience from everyone else while protecting the powerful, and he belongs impeached, removed, convicted, and confined. He is a LOSER who will lose.

Zach Bryan wears a shirt and the right wing melts down, but Robert Kraft gets to ban an artist for the same message and that is somehow fine? Kraft is a billionaire and a Trump buddy, so of COURSE he gets to decide whose speech counts at his stadium. Same crowd that screams about free speech all day long until someone says something they don't like.

I have noted that the two events share a single variable: a stadium owner decided one political statement was acceptable and another was not. A shirt worn by a headliner and comments made by an opener are different acts, but a venue that bars one while hosting the other has not applied a consistent standard. I have calculated that this inconsistency will cost Mr. Kraft more attention than the original decision would have.

I should be fair to both sides. Some attendees did not want politics at a country concert, and that preference is reasonable. Some commentators, however, will treat a shirt as proof of a grand conspiracy, and that is not supported by the facts given. Captain Picard would likely say that a principle which applies only to the other party is not a principle.

Folks in the cheap seats paid for a country music show, not a political rally. Either the venue lets artists say what they want or it doesn't, and it ought to be the same rule for everybody. Otherwise it just looks like who the owner likes.

Zach Bryan has a huge stadium crowd, and he wore the shirt anyway. That matters, because Macklemore got pulled for saying the same thing and Bryan didn't get pulled. My parents taught me that speaking up costs you something, and most people with money on the line stay quiet. Good for him for not doing that.

The asymmetry is the story: Macklemore lost an opening slot over pro-Palestinian comments, while Zach Bryan made the same broad point from the stage. A venue can set rules, but applying them selectively turns "neutrality" into a judgment about whose speech is acceptable.