Joe Rogan is no stranger to cancel culture. The wildly popular host of the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience comes within the crosshairs of the woke mob now and again. Joe Rogan irritates the woke crowd like no other because one, he is immensely popular, and two, he is not afraid to go against the leftwing narrative.
This time, Rogan initially got into trouble for hosting Dr. Robert Malone in one of his episodes. Dr. Malone is labeled as an anti-vaxxer epidemiologist by the left. He is also banned on twitter for Covid misinformation.
This episode bothered a lot of people – many of them spoke out against it. Chief among them is folk singer Neil Young, who threatened to take his music off Spotify unless they cancel Joe Rogan. Young offered Spotify an ultimatum, saying, “They can have Neil Young or Rogan. Not Both.” The streaming giant chose Rogan over Young, removing his music from its platform and allegedly costing the singer 60% of his income.
Many other musicians and celebrities voiced their displeasure over Joe Rogan as well, including Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and Joni Mitchell. Even the Biden White House urged the cancellation of Rogan.
In the middle of the backlash, a video surfaced online – a compilation of Joe Rogan using the N-word – adding fuel to the controversy. The heavily edited video did not show much context. Rogan apologized for saying the N-word and explained that he was only quoting others when he said it. “I’m making this video to talk about the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly. There’s a video that’s out that’s a compilation of me saying the N-word. It’s a video that’s made of clips taken out of context of me of 12 years of conversations on my podcast, and it’s all smushed together. And it looks f–king horrible, even to me,” the podcaster said.
The woke mob exposed its hypocrisy through this line of attack, because no other than Joe Biden, the sitting Democrat President, used the N-word during a Senate hearing in 1985. In all fairness, Biden was also quoting someone when he used the racial slur. But what’s good for one Joe should also be good for another.
So far, Spotify has not caved to the mob and removed Joe Rogan. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek refused to cancel the popular podcaster, saying, “I want to make one point very clear – I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer. We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are crossed, but canceling voices is a slippery slope.”
Compromises were made though, with Spotify collaborating with Rogan to remove some of his older episodes that might be deemed offensive. The streaming giant also announced an investment of $100 million to promote ‘diversity’ on the platform to appease the woke mob. So it would seem Joe Rogan – though a little bit bruised – once again survived cancel culture.
