Joe Rogan brought a bouquet of roses to an ideological knife fight.
The podcaster shared a heartfelt Instagram video Jan. 30 following calls for Spotify to censor “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
The kerfuffle kicked off when classic rocker Neil Young threatened to pull his music off the platform unless Spotify yanked Rogan’s show from the service.
“They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,” Young said in a quickly-deleted open Jan. 24 letter on his website.
Young objected to Rogan spreading “misinformation” about COVID-19. His rallying cry lured Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren to pull their music from Spotify, too.
The mainstream media, eager to pile on the free-thinking podcaster, amplified the musicians’ cries while ignoring their own “misinformation” barrage (think: the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, the Russian collusion narrative, and much more).
Rogan agreed with Spotify’s decision to add “content warnings” to his COVID-19 episodes in the Instagram clip. He also praised Young and vowed to bring more “balance” to the show.
“I want to show all kinds of opinions so we can all figure out what’s going on and not just about COVID, about everything, about health, about fitness, wellness, the state of the world itself.”
He didn’t rage against his critics or explain why his show delivers much-needed balance to mainstream news as is.
Fans worried Rogan’s critics would be emboldened by his defeatist posture.
“You retreat, they encroach,” fellow podcaster Adam Carolla said of the censorial Left, and with good reason.
Yet Rogan may have set his critics a trap, one they didn’t see coming.
Let’s take Rogan’s “balance” vow, for example.
Could Rogan open his Spotify showcase up to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the man most associated with pandemic groupthink? It seems the perfect way to assuage his critics. Chances are it’ll never happen.
Dr. Fauci rarely appears in media outlets willing to challenge his views. Case in point: He’s refused an invite from The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton syndicated radio show. The conservative duo has been highly critical of Dr. Fauci, but an appearance on the show would give him access to a skeptical audience.
Could some vaccine-hesitant listeners get their first jab after such an appearance? Wouldn’t that be worth Dr. Fauci’s time?
If Dr. Fauci won’t show up there, he’d never submit to one of Rogan’s three-hour interviews, where tough but fair questions are the norm.
Other mainstream experts, ill-prepared for challenging queries, may similarly shrink under Rogan’s questioning. They’ll end up like CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who withered under Rogan’s rat-a-tat questions about his network’s overt bias.
Spotify’s new content warnings should be sufficient to appease reasonable critics. That, plus Rogan’s magnanimous video explainer, should have addressed any remaining concerns.
It’s already proving insufficient. Rogan’s detractors want him gone. Period.
We’ve already seen Graham Nash and India Arie yank their songs off Spotify following Rogan’s Instagram comments. (Arie complained Rogan’s racial conversations were “problematic”).
This fight isn’t new, and it’s far from over.
Recall how some Spotify employees demanded editorial oversight over the show two years ago when Rogan gave time to Abigail Shrier, an author critical of select elements of the trans movement.
That’s the sizable downside to Rogan’s charm offensive.
Rogan is hopelessly naïve about the stakes in play. As a center-left soul, he hasn’t experienced the drumbeat of attacks conservatives routinely face. He’s unaware of how rabid, and unrelenting, the assaults will be from across the culture (Hollywood, the media, academia) until he does precisely as he’s told.
He got a taste of that treatment when major news outlets reported that he took “horse dewormer” after gulping down a cocktail of meds, including Ivermectin, to battle COVID-19 last year.
That set Rogan off, sparking his debate with Dr. Gupta and recent complaints about media bias.
He’s about to get a whole new education on the Left’s fight to squelch free thinkers. If he thinks the pressure is intense now, just wait.
Sooner or later, he’ll have to drop the nice guy shtick if he wants to survive.
My new book, Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul, covers how Cancel Culture invaded La La Land, forced Hollywood’s biggest stars to grovel for their careers and left comedians defending their free speech rights.
Rogan will need all the ammunition possible to prevent him from being the latest “canceled” star.
Christian Toto is the author of Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul.
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