We Can Learn to Live with COVID-19, and With Joe Rogan Too

Since the threat of being “canceled,” shamed or otherwise erased from public discourse seems to be a mark of success in media work these days, congratulations, Joe Rogan! You truly have arrived.

If you haven’t heard of him, he’s big. Since he launched “The Joe Rogan Experience” in 2009, his talk show has become one of the most popular podcasts on the planet.

Size also makes him a bigger target for critics, who recently have included such boomer generation stars as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, survivors of polio who accuse Rogan of spreading dangerous misinformation about COVID-19. They asked for their songs to be removed from Spotify, the streaming service that carries his podcast under a reported four-year $100 million contract.

Health officials in President Joe Biden’s administration also urged Spotify and other internet firms to crack down on COVID-19 misinformation.

And about a week later, that controversy was upstaged by another, the online release of a startling montage of video clips of Rogan using the N-word and, in one anecdote, describing a Black movie audience as looking like the “Planet of the Apes.” Not nice.

Rogan vigorously — vigorously! — apologized for the clips from 12 years of shows, calling them “the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly.”

He noted that he was “not a racist” but clearly he messed up.

As an African American who tries mightily to defend free speech, I don’t want to see Rogan, who came to fame as a “cage-fighting commentator” and host of NBC’s “Fear Factor,” chased off Spotify.

Even if he easily could find another streaming service (right-wing Rumble already has offered him a four-year $100 million contract to jump ship), his show’s removal would turn him into a martyr for those who already think their political side can’t catch a break.

Offenses when it comes to the N-word, among others, tend to be judged in the eyes and ears of the offended, and the rules, as Rogan observed, are always changing. Rogan noted how the N-word is in the title of Richard Pryor’s classic 1974 comedy album “That N-----’s Crazy.”

He also could have cited the title of Dick Gregory’s bestselling 1964 autobiography, “N-----.”

But the old social rule that only Black people can use the word out loud or in print still stands, which leads some, like CNN writer John Blake in an online essay, to fear that Rogan’s use of the epithet can lead to “a world where hate speech and violence are rebranded as ‘legitimate political discourse,’ and ‘public racism’ returns to ordinary life.”

I feel his pain, although I don’t want to invest a word, even the N-word, with that much power. We need more conversations about race, not fewer. The misuse of some words should lead us to better words, but it can’t if we don’t talk.

More than the N-word, I’m concerned about dangerous misinformation, some of which has infamously been uttered in Rogan’s remarks about COVID-19 vaccines.

In an April episode, for example, he said he was not “anti-vaxx” and said he thinks “for the most part” it’s safe to get vaccinated, “but if you’re like 21 years old, I’ll say no. … If you’re a healthy person and you’re exercising all the time and you’re young and you’re eating well, I don’t think you need to worry about this.”

That’s a typical podcaster’s cop-out. Say you’re “not a respected source of information,” then give out off-the cuff “information” without bothering to verify it. With too many people already confused and reluctant to get vaccinated, it would help to have somebody on the same show to debate the matter.

Yet, a big part of Rogan’s appeal, his fans tell me, is that he looks and sounds like “a regular guy” who, unlike a lot of other show hosts, avoids party labels and tries to “give both sides” of issues. That’s true. He’s had guests as varied as Cornel West and Bernie Sanders on the left and Ben Shapiro and Alex Jones on the right.

But he seldom has both sides on the same show, which in the case of something as widely misunderstood as COVID-19 vaccines would be a big help.

I’m pro-vax, but not anti-Rogan. A lot of people turn to his show precisely because they’re looking for straight talk that they don’t get from the old media. That’s fine. Freedom to listen is as important as the freedom of speech. But, listeners, beware. Shopping around for what makes you feel good doesn’t always lead you to what you really need to know.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)