Full Disclosure I am more than just a little pissed off right now, and so, if this gets a wee raw, I apologize in advance to anyone I may inadvertently offend. But my vaunted Irish is up
This just keeps getting worse and worse. Following the revelation of a myriad of Joe Rogan podcasts showing him liberally using The N-Word, spineless Spotify CEO Daniel EK felt it necessary to finally actually say something. And what he said was basically I have no words with which to express my horror and regret for Joe Rogan’s language in his podcasts. The problem is that his utterances weren’t for the public, but for Spotify employees. And he went on to say that I don’t feel that the solution to this problem is to silence Joe Rogan. Of course he doesn’t, he’s into Rogan for $100 million!
Look, the simple fact of the matter is that Joe Rogan is a virulent racist. There is no other explanation. That phrase slips far too often, and far too comfortably from his tongue. Nigger. There, I said it. We’re all adults here. And I will not use it again, but I felt it important for context that it appear for what it is.
It turns out that there was a good reason for Ek to be panicked. In the backlash of the controversy, Spotify removed more than 130 of Rogan’s podcasts from the site, so nobody can any longer even listen to see what the context of his comments were. Which led a competing site to offer Rogan $110 million to broadcast for them, with no censorship, and they would make all of his podcasts available. talk about losing a cash cow!
All of that bullshit, monetarily incentifying black exploitation was bad enough, but then the soulless assholes at FUX News had to jump into the fray. On an episode of The Five, resident asshole Greg Gutfeld, with a certified douchebag medal to put on his lapel, just had to open his stupid fucking pie hole, African Americans don’t care about this story. It’s only the liberal left that’s driving this narrative.
Are you fucking insane?!? This is the single most hated and vilified word in the English language. This is the word that African Americans had in their ear as they were lynched, or beaten, or tortured, or sitting in jail cells for no greater crime than being black! And you honestly think that African Americans don’t care about privileged white assholes throwing around the N-Word like it was holiday candy?
Fuck You Joe Rogan! And Fuck You Greg Gutfeld! And Fuck You spotify! And Fuck You FUX News. And FUCK the other soulless platform that wants to put Joe Rogan to work glorifying white supremacy, at the expense of simple human dignity. There is a special place for all of y’all in hell, and it’s next to the noisy ice machine.
Folks who cheerfully use appellations such as those can’t be expected to be sensitive to the feelings of other humans. That’s neither a feature nor a bug, it’s just the way the machine operates.
Someday, Dog willing, we’ll find a way to reprogram some of these machines. Meanwhile, anything we can do to silence them is good.
But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be called out…
The funny thing about that site “competing” for Rogan’s podcasts is that they SAY there’ll be absolutely no censorship but Rogan does have this occasional tendency to say things that piss off conservatives and I will guarantee you that just as soon as he does one of those bits that piss off the cons, suddenly that other site will remember that “censorship” is only bad when the GOVERNMENT does it, not a private company. (Granted, Rogan doesn’t go off on cons that frequently but he does claim to “speak the truth” and simply “ask questions,” no matter whose truth is being challenged or how upsetting those questions may be. So, at some point, he’d be bound to “cross the line” that the cons consider acceptable speech.)
Rogan is in this position because he got greedy. He was already successful, already making money on his podcast when he was independent. But then Spotify flashed that 100 million dollar contract in his face and he probably had visions of quasi-respectability in his head ala Rush Limbaugh (may he rot in purgatory). Now this is turning into a mess that keeps complicating the math for all parties involved. Spotify should have known better.
As the white father of two black children, Amen.
Sure hope spotify’s CEO doesn’t want the customers needed to make up whatever he paid that baboon rogan. Maybe he has enough of his own bucks to make spotify a lasting venture. I sure as hell won’t use it. I am hardly an outlier in this one.
Thing is, I’ve never even heard of some yahoo called rogan until he made a fool of himself and spotify. Guess I do too much actual reading of things a lot more interesting than what passes for….entertainment (?) on things like spotify. Think I’m the winner here. lmao
Back in the 1980s there was a delightfully quirky TV show called News Radio that lasted four or five seasons. It was Phil Hartman’s last big role before his tragic death. There was other serious talent in the cast. Maura Tierney, Dave Foley, Stephen Root and Khandi Alexander come to mind. One of the characters was the building “handyman” who was something of an idiot fuckup that had an inflated view of himself with some assholery in his personality that had a propensity for making something worse instead of fixing it. And yes, Joe Rogan played the character. Turns out he wasn’t acting – all he had to do on set was remember his lines and be himself!
That’s why I remembered him when he got a “Reality” TV show (Fear Factor) and that’s a genre I always considered bullshit. I of course saw some of the promo ads when watching whatever network it was on and even sat through portions of sections when I was channel surfing and boy was he EVER in his element being an asshole! So it doesn’t surprise me in the least that this untalented hack with nothing more than name recognition from reality TV with a proven track record (from Fear Factor) of exploiting people desperate for their proverbial fifteen minutes would decide to become an “influencer” and peddle bullshit for a living. I don’t know if Spotify has a board of directors but since it’s publicly traded I assume they do. They should demand the CEO pay Rogan’s 100 million out of his own pocket as punishment for signing him to that deal.
Am I the only one who – every time I see his name I think “Joe Rogaine”?
Me too, and then the term loudmouthed-fecktard comes to mind…
I generally don’t like streaming music services. They all seem to be programmed by monkeys. This kind of thing makes me like them even less!