[imagesource: YouTube / The Joe Rogan Experience]

Here we go again.

It’s been a less than stellar few weeks for podcaster Joe Rogan.

There was a letter signed by more than 270 scientists, doctors, and healthcare professionals calling on Spotify to “take action to halt the spread of false information about the COVID-19 and the efficacy and safety of vaccines”.

The letter states Rogan “has discouraged vaccination in young people and children, incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are ‘gene therapy’, promoted off-label use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 (contrary to FDA warnings), and spread a number of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.”

Then came the viral compilation video showing Rogan using the n-word repeatedly, as well as other racial language.

We did cover this last week but it bears repeating:

Joe Rogan on hoping to see Planet of the Apes in a “good neighborhood:”

“We walked in to Planet of the Apes. We walked into Africa, dude. We walked in the door and there was no white people.” pic.twitter.com/ENU1XehIzn

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) January 30, 2022

At this point, I would actually encourage his fans to take a leaf out of his book.

You don’t have to try and defend the above behaviour because Rogan himself has offered his “sincere and humble apologies”.

Gizmodo reports:

[He] said that the video mashup making the rounds online was taken out of context. Even so, he added, “it looks fucking horrible, even to me.”

…“I know that to most people there’s no context where a white person is ever allowed to say that word, never mind publicly on a podcast, and I agree with that now,” Rogan said in his nearly six-minute Instagram post.

“I haven’t said it in years, but for a long time, when I would bring that word up, like if it would come up in conversation, instead of saying ‘the n-word’, I would just say the word.”

That still doesn’t explain the ‘Planet of the Apes’ comment, does it? On that front, Rogan said:

Rogan explained on Saturday that he later deleted the podcast episode and that it was an idiotic thing to say. He wasn’t trying to be racist, he maintained, he was just trying to be entertaining.

So entertaining. I heard somebody say that Joe Rogan is basically Goop’s Gwyneth Paltrow for dudes and I had a good chuckle.

You can see the full apology here:

 

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A post shared by Joe Rogan (@joerogan)

Spotify CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek addressed the issue last Wednesday and was met with some pushback from staff.

Ek has now confirmed that Spotify has removed old episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience in a memo to staff, reports The Verge:

“Not only are some of Joe Rogan’s comments incredibly hurtful — I want to make clear that they do not represent the values of this company,” Ek writes in the memo, which The Verge obtained. “I know this situation leaves many of you feeling drained, frustrated and unheard.”

He goes on to say Spotify spoke with Rogan and his team about “some of the content in his show, including his history of using some racially insensitive language.”

Following these chats “and his own reflections,” Ek says Rogan “chose to remove a number of episodes from Spotify.”

Ek also says that although he “strongly condemns” Rogan’s words, he does not believe “silencing Joe is the answer.”

…He reiterates that he believes Spotify is a platform, not a publisher, but acknowledges employees and others might think otherwise given its licensing agreement with Rogan.

Musicians have a right to pull their music from Spotify if they don’t want to share a platform with Rogan.

Rogan has a right to carry on with his podcast, whether that’s hosted by Spotify or not. As it stands, it is.

In 2020, Spotify paid Rogan a rumoured $100 million fee to host his podcast in an exclusive deal. 70 podcast episodes have now been removed.

Ek also said that Spotify is committing $100 million “to licensing, developing, and marketing music and other audio content by creators from historically marginalized groups”.

In case you somehow care, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, who had previously come to Rogan’s defence, has now withdrawn his support for the podcaster, saying he “was not aware of his N-word use before my comments, but now I’ve become educated to his complete narrative”.

Past comments and tweets from Johnson have since been highlighted by Donald Trump Jr. and others illustrating what they say is hypocrisy on Johnson’s behalf.

[sources:gizmodo&verge]