Erykah Badu, Hip-Hop Legend And Spiritual Icon, Can Find The Good In Hitler
Erykah Badu Image by Getty Images
By Nathan Guttman January 24, 2018
Singer Erykah Badu prides herself of being able to see something good in everyone, even the worst of people.
“I saw something good in Hitler,” she said in a recent interview with Vulture. What exactly was that positive something she found about Adolf Hitler?
“Hitler was a wonderful painter,” Badu added. (She relented this point when pressed by her interviewer.)
Badu explained that she can feel empathy to Hitler because “he had a terrible childhood,” and said she could even imagine that if her daughter was treated poorly growing up “what that could spawn.”
The singer also shares some of her empathy with comedian Bill Cosby who was accused of multiple sexual attacks. “Sick people do evil things; hurt people hurt people,” she said.
While some critics feel Hitler’s art work showed signs of modest talent, none have ever claimed he was a “wonderful painter.”
Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected] or on Twitter @nathanguttman
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Make a Passover Gift Today!
Dive In
-
Fast Forward U.S. ambassador to Israel wants Netanyahu to deliver a ‘unifying’ speech to Congress
-
Fast Forward Former ‘Bachelor’ contestant Anna Redman apologizes for ‘flippant’ post about what she planned to wear to Auschwitz
-
Fast Forward Citing attack on Trump, Netanyahu demands crackdown on what he says is incitement by his opponents
-
Fast Forward Argentina declares Hamas a terrorist organization, in move designed to show support for Israel
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
- 4
Opinion Yes, the attack on Gov. Shapiro was antisemitic. Here’s what the left should learn from it
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Harvard president: As a Jew, ‘I know very well’ that concerns about antisemitism are valid
-
Fast Forward Ben Shapiro, Emily Damari among torch lighters for Israel’s Independence Day ceremony
-
Fast Forward Larry David’s ‘My Dinner with Adolf’ essay skewers Bill Maher’s meeting with Trump
-
Sports Israeli mom ‘made it easy’ for new NHL player to make history
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.