When Joe Rogan responded Sunday night to the countless attacks advocating censorship of his enormously popular podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience,” he got a lot right.
First off, Rogan perfectly articulated the danger of censorship under the guise of stopping so-called “misinformation.”
“The podcast has been accused of spreading ‘dangerous misinformation,” Rogan said in a video posted to Instagram.
“The problem I have with the term ‘misinformation,’ especially today, is that many of the things that we thought of as ‘misinformation’ just a short while ago are now accepted as fact,” he correctly explained.
“For instance, eight months ago, if you said, ‘if you get vaccinated, you can still catch COVID and you can still spread COVID,’ you’d be removed from social media, they would they would ban you from certain platforms. Now, that’s accepted as fact,” Rogan continued. “If you said, I don’t think cloth masks work, you would be banned from social media. Now that’s openly and repeatedly stated on CNN. If you said I think it’s possible that COVID-19 came from a lab, you’d be banned from many social media platforms – now that’s on the cover of Newsweek.”
“All of those theories that at one point in time were banned, were openly discussed by those two men [Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Robert Malone] that I had on my podcast that had been accused of dangerous misinformation,” Rogan articulated.
He was also impressively magnanimous when speaking specifically about his detractors, such as musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, who’ve demanded Spotify remove Rogan’s podcast from the platform.
“First of all, I’m not mad at Neil Young, I’m a huge Neil Young fan,” Rogan said. “I’ve always been a Neil Young fan. … And definitely no hard feelings towards Joni Mitchell. I love her too. I love her music.”
And finally, Rogan said he wants to have more voices on his show and more “balance.” While there is valid criticism of this comment, it’s generally good for Rogan to diversify his guests, so long as he does not shy away from speaking with those on the outs with the mainstream media, which is one of the major draws to “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
But the one thing Rogan got incredibly wrong was his welcoming and explicit approval of Spotify adding a disclaimer to some of his “controversial” episodes. Here’s what Rogan said:
“One of the things that Spotify wants to do, that I agree with, at the beginning of these controversial podcasts, like specifically ones about COVID … put a disclaimer and say that you should speak with your physician and that these people and the opinions that they express are contrary to the opinions of the consensus of experts, which I think is very important, sure, have that on there.”
What Rogan has effectively promoted is adding a disclaimer qualifying his free-flowing conservations “misinformation” — even if the word is not used.
This is particularly confusing coming from Rogan because in this same video message, the host perfectly articulated the farce of flagging and censoring so-called misinformation that has routinely turned out to be true.
As any conservative can attest, it’s mostly troubling because his concession of a disclaimer only gives the Left more ammunition to outright censor Rogan.
It will not appease the Left like the liberal host wrongfully assesses.
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