Here is a picture of Macklemore appearing on Seattle news station Q13 FOX that some people are sharing on social media:
A number of things might immediately jump out to you about it:
- Macklemore is not gay!
- Nor is he a homosexual hip hop artist!
- Wow, that news station is wrong! Also possibly homophobic and pandering to its equally biased viewers!
- Some people (definitely not you, we hope) will see this and think: "Ha! Macklemore is kind of gay, like, because gay means lame and he's lame, get it?" Once again, hopefully you are not one of these people because that would be a pretty homophobic thing to think.
- Just 21 minutes from Bellevue to Lynnwood! That seems like an awfully clear driving day on I-405!
- That can't possibly be real, right?
No, it can't—unless, of course, we've hopped in a time machine back to Macklemore's third grade art class and this news broadcast is happening inside his head. Or unless he has taken his role as self-appointed straight dude spokesman for gay people everywhere to a new extreme. Neither of these things is the case. The screen grab is taken from this 2012 news broadcast, which was, in fact, about Macklemore's song "Same Love" but not quite so focused on Macklemore's own sexuality.
He gives his now-familiar speech about the message of the song and the gay people in his life, and he comes off as an all-around nice guy, as usual. That's not to say the news broadcast itself is 100 percent the picture of informative news broadcasting—one of the anchors does lead into a question about Macklemore struggling to gain attention as a rapper with the observation, "I've seen 8 Mile. So I know the stereotype about white boys and rap"—but Q13 is definitely not plastering their viewers' screens with false information about Macklemore being gay. The actual screen grab looks like this:
Look, Macklemore's "Same Love" crusade may be a little clunky. He could probably stand to fall back a little bit and, you know, give the mic to some actual gay people. But he hasn't taken things so far as to actually go around on news stations pretending to be gay. And hey, if you're passing that image around because you think it's funny—Macklemore may be kind of wack at times, but he is right that laughing at someone being "gay" because they're not cool is, itself, uncool.
It's fun to catch a news station in the act of blatant, overwhelming ignorance, but unfortunately that isn't quite the case here. Although, as some muckrakers may have noticed, there's still a claim in that text that some people might dispute the truth of:
Don't trust your television, sheeple.
[via Ahmed/Big Business]
RELATED: Watch Pt. 1 of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' "World Tour" Documentary
RELATED: 25 Things You Didn't Know About Macklemore
