High School Turns Down Macklemore Visit, Surprisingly Not Because He's a Cheeseball

A high school in California’s Orange County recently won a contest awarding them a visit from Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, as well as a plump $10,000 grant for the school’s music department. But Aliso Niguel High School principal, Deni Christensen, declined both Mack and money because parents objected to the Ed Sheeran of rap on moral grounds.

According to Stereogum, Christensen “opted to turn down the prize because, per [The Orange County Register], ‘some parents said that Macklemore and Ryan Lewis support alcohol, drug use, and misogyny in their music.’”

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, 2014 nominees for the Kids’ Choice Awards, certainly, if implicitly, support some shitty things: racial and sexual appropriation, ill–advised sartorial decisions—seriously, what is with the Sgt. Pepper nonsense?—and fatally saccharine “rap.” But booze and drugs? Nah. There are valid gender critiques to be made of the duo’s lyrics and collective persona, but I don’t think the parents in question were thinking along those lines when they levied the misogyny accusation. (A prime possibility: they have not actually heard Macklemore’s raps.)

Students and parents angry over this decision have begun a petition to reverse it, and Stereogum reports that they have “already received thousands of signatures.” Hopefully they’ll prevail. Macklemore is a dope, but dopes are generally harmless.