Quick one this week, because my main focus at the moment is on a novel. However, I wanted to date this blog by writing down some thoughts on the Joe Rogan controversy that's been going on recently. Specifically, I wanted to respond to a couple of takes on it that I've seen, which take opposite sides but that happen to be both a bit short-sighted.
To be clear, I absolutely think Rogan's been platforming a lot of people that he shouldn't, especially when it comes to the Covid-19 vaccines. I just had a look at his guests for the past 18 months or so, and there are far too many who are questioning the vaccines, and nowhere near enough who are talking about the actual science. I was briefly heartened when I saw he'd talked to Oliver Stone, but then I dug into Stone's views on the virus and he's notable in this sphere for having gotten the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. Nothing too wrong with that, I suppose, though the article mentions that Vladimir Putin himself wouldn't get that vaccine (not a great endorsement, y'all); it then also quotes Stone as saying that Russia and China aren't enemies of the US, which is... also short-sighted. Though it's not one of the bad takes I'm writing about here!
The point is, I'm fully in support of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and all the other artists who are removing their work from Spotify over its deal to be the sole platform for Rogan's podcast. It doesn't really matter that these are older artists whose listeners are not likely to overlap much with Rogan's. Rogan is doing society a disservice, and acting in bad faith, and Spotify's reaction to the whole thing has been shameful.
Now, the first bad take is from Edward Snowden, for whom I usually have a lot of time. I saw some comments of his on Twitter where he talked about this controversy, pointing out (rightly) that there are a lot of people condemning Rogan who've never listened to his podcast (this is related to the next bad take, about which more anon). He then suggested that no one is actually taking Rogan's advice on vaccines seriously, which... what? What? What?
That makes no sense! Of course people take what he's saying seriously - if they didn't, Spotify wouldn't have blown $100 million getting the exclusive rights to his show. Snowden pointed to Rogan's logo, a vision of his grinning face with a third eye, as the reason why nobody's going there for medical advice. I agree that sensible people shouldn't do that, but when you repeatedly have Robert Malone, Pierre Kory and Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying on, to say nothing of that mentalist Alex Berenson, then you're actively trying to get people to not take the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Snowden should fucking know better.
The other bad take is from a friend of a friend who said on Facebook that Rogan had turned into Rush Limbaugh. On the face of it, it's not actually that inaccurate, though I think that talking to Andrew Yang and Bernie Sanders during last year's primary race adds a little nuance. What annoys me about this comment is that it's perpetuating this false dichotomy of everything falling into either left or right.
Rogan probably does fall more on the rightward side of things, because he seems to have a lot of guests on who are concerned with "cancel culture". But I'm just wary of lumping him in with people like Limbaugh, because he just doesn't seem clever enough to exploit the forces he's helping to unleash. He's probably smarter than I'm giving him credit for, and he's probably issuing his "apologies" in bad faith, but he also doesn't seem to have Limbaugh's knack for provocation.
What I find annoying is, as Edward Snowden suggested, people who've never listened to a Joe Rogan Experience episode falling all over themselves to declare him the next Donald Trump. I've listened to the odd episode, and all I'll say is, he's stupid and paranoid and riddled with conspiracy theories, but he's not cohesive enough in his ideology to be one of these Ben Shapiro-type dingbats.
Not everyone who questions the vaccines or "cancel culture" is right-wing: as an example, I give you Bill Maher, who has also platformed Weinstein and Heying and who rails every week about how much he hates political correctness. He's not exactly an AOC-style progressive, but you can't legitimately call him a right-winger either. He may be platforming a lot of these people too, but the consensus seems to be that when Milo Yiannopoulos went on Maher's show, he ended up saying all the things that caused his own downfall.
This is the difference between Maher and Rogan, as far as I can tell. Maher may give some of the crazies a platform, but he doesn't give them a free ride. Meanwhile, the crazies know that they can go on Rogan because he still seems to think he's just shooting the shit in his basement. I'm not saying I'm sorry for Rogan, but it does look a lot like he's being taken advantage of. Though if he is, he's getting a lot of money for it.
I'm probably nitpicking here, so I'll wrap up. But as I say, not everything we disagree with on the left is as bad as Limbaugh or Trump. Not every antivaxxer is a right-winger. Yet if we persist in characterizing them as such, we play into the right's hands in portraying us as the woke mob. Let's have some nuance, and let's deplore Rogan from a position of knowledge, rather than of ignorance.
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