By Katrina Trinko | The Daily Signal
If you were to conjure an archnemesis for leftists, you probably wouldn’t think it would be Joe Rogan.
After all, Rogan, who hosts an insanely popular podcast, is hardly some Ronald Reagan or Rush Limbaugh clone. He endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in 2020. He openly talks about using marijuana.
Joe Rogan
And while he seems to think it’s a little unfair for biological women to have to compete against biological males in women’s sports, Rogan otherwise appears to hold the usual liberal pro-LGBT views.
The comedian also has a long track record in Hollywood—not exactly a safe space for conservatives—due to his career as a “Fear Factor” host, among other gigs.
But apparently none of that is enough to offset his fatal flaw: Rogan is interested in finding out what’s true.
How dare he.
Now, for the crime of talking to those who don’t endorse “right think” on COVID-19, Rogan, whose podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” reportedly averages around 11 million listeners, is apparently unfit for polite society.
Singer-songwriter Neil Young, who apparently missed the memo that rock ’n’ roll is about fighting The Man and not helping The Man squash others, said either Rogan’s podcast was kicked off Spotify, the platform that exclusively hosts Rogan, or he wanted his music off.
Rogan’s crime? Spreading “misinformation” on COVID-19. Spotify, to its credit, took down Young’s solo music.
But others, seeking to prove their leftist bona fides, jumped on Young’s bandwagon. Fellow singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell also demanded her songs be removed, and Brene Brown, a popular researcher and author who has two exclusive podcasts with Spotify, announced she wouldn’t be releasing new episodes “until further notice.”
Prince Harry and Meghan, duchess of Sussex, who have a Spotify deal that thus far has resulted in one podcast episode in 2020, also wrung their hands, with a spokesperson for their foundation agonizing over the “all too real consequences of COVID-19 misinformation on [the Spotify] platform.”
So what, you ask, is Rogan doing? Is he saying that taking a COVID-19 vaccine will reduce your lifespan by 10 years? Is he claiming that COVID-19 hasn’t killed anyone? Is he advocating COVID-19 patients be sent to nursing homes to infect other elderly people? (Oh whoops, sorry, that last one was former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.)
No, here’s Rogan’s real crime: He’s listening to people besides the sainted Dr. Anthony Fauci.
In recent weeks, Rogan has hosted doctors Peter McCullough and Robert Malone on his podcast. But as Rogan notes in a video he posted to Instagram on Sunday, both men, while perhaps wrong on certain matters, are hardly random idiots ranting about something they can’t comprehend.
“Dr. Peter McCullough is a cardiologist, and he is the most published physician in his field in history,” Rogan says. “Dr. Robert Malone owns nine patents on the creation of mRNA vaccine technology, and is at least partially responsible for the creation of the technology that led to mRNA vaccines.”
Furthermore, if we’ve learned anything in the past two years, it’s that the science is so not settled when it comes to COVID-19. As my colleague Mary Margaret Olohan ably documented, plenty of claims made by the “right people” about COVID-19 ended up being untrue in the long run:
Or as Rogan himself says in his Instagram video: “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 continues:
Like, 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.
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.
Preach it.
Spotify and Rogan have agreed to start slapping a disclaimer on certain COVID-19 episodes he does, telling the listener to talk to their own doctor and advising if the interviewee holds controversial views.
It’s a disappointing concession. Where is the pressure for CNN to have disclaimers? What about advisories before Fauci interviews? (Plus: If the real goal here is to persuade more people to get a COVID-19 vaccine, you’re more likely to achieve that by engaging in open debate, not by silencing alternative views.)
But it’s certainly better than Spotify deplatforming Rogan. There are already too many examples of Big Tech censorship, whether it’s Twitter and Facebook banning President Donald Trump or Amazon refusing to sell Ryan T. Anderson’s book on transgenderism.
I’ve dabbled in listening to Rogan’s podcast over the past couple years or so. It’s not without its irritations: I could do without ever hearing Rogan talk about the theory of comedy again, and it’s clear his live-and-let-live notions of morality don’t really jibe with my own views.
But here’s what I do appreciate about the podcast: Rogan is a true journalist. He’s skeptical, he’s questioning. In his long episodes, he’s clearly thinking out loud at points.
He asks his producer, who he refers to as “Young Jamie,” to fact-check certain claims in real time. And in a world where everyone, from the politicians to the person who needs a job to support his family, is terrified of being canceled, Rogan is hosting long, wide-ranging interviews where people are talking seriously, frankly, and honestly.
That’s a real risk to take, for both Rogan and his guests.
It’s an act of courage—and it’s something that threatens leftists everywhere. Because if people are allowed to think freely, they won’t embrace leftism.
“I’m just a person who sits down and talks to people and has conversations with them,” Rogan says on Instagram, adding: “Whenever I get something wrong, I try to correct it because I’m interested in telling the truth.”
“I’m interested in finding out what the truth is,” he continues. “And I’m interested in having interesting conversations with people that have differing opinions.”
The fact that those views make Rogan an archvillain doesn’t say anything new about the left. But it does say something very troubling about the state of our country in 2022.
Recent reports indicate Neil Young sold 50% of his catalog to a corporation that is tied to another corporation that pulls the strings connected to Spotify. Any dustup in the cancel culture world has a trail of money that leads right to the same names, the same companies, the same players. They control it all and they want to control you and me just the same.
I get it Melissa. The question that remains is; what are we going to do about it?
I know what we can do Jay,
Tell these old hippies to go retire on the beach somewhere and leave us all alone.
I am actually embarrassed for them..
THIS right here is exactly why the Boomers are being attacked out there on the streets now.. go look at how many elderly people are being attacked.
I don’t of course think this is right at all- BUT I can I can completely understand the mentality that is driving them to that.
The young people can see that things are a complete mess, they’ve been dumbed down in the schools, their families are broken all up now from trying to survive these lives within the train wreck this mafia government has turned our existences into.
These young people are scared, they feel ill equipped and they wonder how their own futures are going to work out.
They see that many of the issues that have been dumped on their plates where dumped there by Neil Young and his generation.. and they won’t just shut up and go away and end the carnage being dumped on them, when they are the ones that are going to be stuck living with what they did and didn’t do.
Their extreme reactions is telling, this is how worried they are, this is not good.
Speaking as one of those ‘old hippies’, there’s nothing I’d like to do more than retire to the beach somewhere and leave everyone alone. But I can’t. Because I can’t afford to sell my house. Because the excessive education property taxes that come with it have lowered its fair market value.
Now, if my school district would allow School Choice tuition vouchers in my K-6 and 9 thru 12 grades – as it does for grades 7 & 8 – I’ll bet my home value would increase, because the cost of maintaining it would decrease, and families would seek it out to gain access to the resulting free enterprise education system.
But alas. I’ll just have to sit here in the snow and waste away in Margaritaville as best I can, at least until everyone else figures out how important School Choice really is.
The same question I’m sure was pondered in Canada – see what is going on up there now? They have a leader of a western nation in hiding. How did they do it? They took action and they are not stopping. Once people in this State (the normies) realize the lies and corruption that feeds Montpelier and just about every “news” outlet in the State – perhaps we’ll get somewhere. Until then, the rainbow coalition and the corrupted government will continue to twist minds and pick pockets. Vermont is a cesspool of corruption. It is funded by taxpayers. If the taxpayers revolt, what are they going to do? We all know and identify the problems. Is there one person in this State who will stand up and do something? Law enforcement? Hello?
And who owns his music? Answer that and it all makes sense.
“This has been going on for decades.”
Yes. As Neil Johnson said – decades! And it all started in a public school system monopolizing the single largest taxpayer funded money machine in U.S. history. If only everyone could understand that if they simply allowed school choice vouchers for parents to choose the education programs they believe best meet the needs of their children, this would all go away.
Literally, it would all disappear in one fell swoop. After all, the teacher unions, principal associations, social services organizations, and government employee unions, understand this. Why else do they resist it as they do?
Because vouchers take money from the public schools that feed this tyranny. The hell with the kids. It’s all about the money.
I repeat: If only everyone could understand that if they allowed school choice vouchers for parents to choose the school they believe best meet the needs of their children, this would all go away. All of it!
“The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.”
― Milton Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement
“The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.” – Milton Friedman
“The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.” – Milton Friedman
Hi Jay.. on the school vouchers.. we need a lot more schools to pick from for that idea to work.
I live in an area where the excellent privates around me are some 60K a year.
What is a $3400 dollar voucher going to do for me?
I’m all about vouchers too- but I need some schools to pick from where that voucher is actually going to amount to something.
Also. Parents are free to pack up and move to the area where the school is sure, but the very people that need these vouchers are not going to be people that have the wherewithall to move and then into an expensive area where that good school is.
To make vouchers successful, we need to pick away at the machine that makes it so hard to open up more schools around and in areas of low income people.
Think about the lifestyle and abilities of the very people that need the vouchers.
It’s not rich people Jay that need vouchers.. and poor people can’t do a whole lot to change their circumstances.
One lesson here Jay that would help parents: Parent and to be Parents.. get yourself moved into areas where there are good school systems early in the game.. because your income goes down a lot when you have a family and then you can’t afford to move.
Get settled in good areas when you are young with two full incomes *before* you have the kids- when moving is a much harder thing to do.
Sorry this is slightly away from the topic- but I too would like to see vouchers work.
We need to set the table still for the voucher to actually be useful. (and they know this Jay, this is why it’s not done, what good is a coupon at a store if that store is not near you?
so they don’t allow the store to come in)
“Hi Jay.. on the school vouchers.. we need a lot more schools to pick from for that idea to work. I live in an area where the excellent privates around me are some 60K a year. What is a $3400 dollar voucher going to do for me?”
Virtually nothing. That’s a politically expedient voucher. But it’s a step in the right direction. If you can have a $3400 voucher, why not a larger voucher? If the only alternative is to move somewhere else, move to a district in Vermont that has school choice vouchers.
In Vermont, today, for those parents living in districts with school choice tuitioning:
The 2021-2022 Tuition of Union Elementary Schools is $15,513.00 per student per year.
The 2021-2022 Tuition of Union 7th-12th Grade Schools is $16,842.00 per student per year.
Under current Vermont tuitioning law, these parents can choose public or independent schools, in-state or out-of-state, INCLUDING religious schools.
https://education.vermont.gov/sites/aoe/files/documents/2021%2004%2019%20BOE%20Final%20As%20Approved.pdf
The only problem is that Vermont parents in districts without tuitioning don’t have access to the voucher under current VT Agency of Education governance – which is being challenged in Vermont Superior court on constitutional grounds as we speak.
https://ljc-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/2021/01/2020-12-21-Vitale-v.-Vermont-Complaint-Final.pdf
“Plaintiffs do not demand the taxpayers of Vermont provide them with town tuitioning out of thin air, as the court in Mason said they had no right to,” wrote the parents’ lawyers, from the Liberty Justice Center, a conservative, Chicago-based nonprofit. “Rather, plaintiffs demand equal treatment: if the Legislature has chosen to allow town tuitioning for some students, then the education and common benefits clauses bar the Legislature from picking winners and losers and discriminating in favor of some children while denying the same opportunity to others.”
My point is that School Choice Vouchers will alleviate the dystopian society we have faster and more efficiently than any other method. And nothing you have said contradicts that premise.
Just do it.
“There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” ― George Bernard Shaw
I agree with you that it certainly a step forward yes, and that yes they should be more.
I was very involved in opening a new charter over there in NH years ago.
The process was way overly difficult- by design we all know.
These people wanting to open these schools are forced to raise so much money that they have no choices but to go knock on the door of the Gates Foundation and the like.. that money comes with all sorts of strings attached.
They’ve sold out their souls before they even got the doors open..
See how this works?
What I am saying is that to make the vouchers work better, we should be slashing all this unduly difficult process to open up more schools all over the place so that families have more choices of schools to even use the voucher at in the first place.
Schools do not have to be insanely expensive.
This nations brightest minds were educated in the dark with books alone and in one room school rooms..
The vouchers in many cases were like a slap in the face..
“Here is your voucher Sir”
And they know damn right well that there is no place they can use it.
We need to solve that..
One of the ironies in limiting school choice is that elite private schools oppose it too. Why? Because when only wealthy parents can afford to attend these private schools, they thrive on the dysfunction of the public school system and ‘cherry-pick’ the best and wealthiest.
And don’t think for a minute that these schools provide a better education proportionate to their cost. I attended some of them. My children did too. And what we all learned is that it doesn’t matter where you choose to go to school, your success is more dependent on the fact that you made the personal choice in the first place.
This is the aspect of School Choice virtually everyone misses. It’s about the parents and their children, not the schools they attend. When parents and their children choose a school or education program, they are far more likely to succeed – not only in school but in adulthood.
Parents who think that a $60K tuition guarantees a good education are sorely mistaken. In fact, many of the elite private schools my kids and I attended didn’t have significantly higher test scores than the public-school kids did. The difference was in their motivation.
With School Choice, all schools, public and private, will improve and be more efficient. That is the proven nature of ‘free enterprise’. And the seed of ‘free enterprise’ is best germinated in the ground of School Choice.
Re: “I live in an area where the excellent privates around me are some 60K a year.”
One of the ironies in limiting school choice is that elite private schools oppose it too. Why? Because when only wealthy parents can afford to attend these private schools, they thrive on the dysfunction of the public school system and ‘cherry-pick’ the best and wealthiest.
And don’t think for a minute that these schools provide a better education proportionate to their cost. I attended some of them. My children did too. And what we all learned is that it doesn’t matter where you choose to go to school, your success is more dependent on the fact that you made the personal choice in the first place.
This is the aspect of School Choice virtually everyone misses. It’s about the parents and their children, not the schools they attend. When parents and their children choose a school or education program, they are far more likely to succeed – not only in school but in adulthood.
Parents who think that a $60K tuition guarantees a good education are sorely mistaken. In fact, many of the elite private schools my kids and I attended didn’t have significantly higher test scores than the public-school kids did. The difference was in their motivation.
With School Choice, all schools, public and private will improve and be less expensive. That is the proven nature of ‘free enterprise’.
I agree w all you said.
At the end of the day, it’s largely about the motivation of the kids too, the parents instilling this in the kids.
There are plenty of brilliant people that came out of inner city bad schools.. then we have the rich kids at the fancy private schools and they don’t amount to anything.. we see plenty of that right here in NH at St.Paul’s and in Exeter.
The schools protect them all too, bad stuff goes on.
They protect them to keep the money coming in and the reputation of schools good so that they can keep attracting the elites.
Some of the elites with kids like Hunter Biden send their kids to a school like that for just this reason too.. to be the clean up crew for what they knew their kids will inevitably get into.
I think we can solve a lot in just educating young people to make these choices early in life so they can set themselves up to get into good school districts.
I fell into this myself. I could have lived anywhere in the state, but I bought a house I liked, you are not even thinking of schools when you are not at that stage in the game. Turns out the great house was in a lousy school district. This all could have been avoided had someone whispered this in my ear early on.
Who knowingly buys a house in a lousy district? we need to get that thought in their heads if we really want more better educated children.
Until we get this all straightened out, one of the easiest things young people can do is put the schools on their radar when they are setting up their homes and feathering a nest for a family.
Don’t buy homes in districts with lousy schools.
This saves a whole lot of headaches.
I think one way to get to vouchers (you have to disrupt the roadblocks thrown up by the administration and union) is to try something original like https://bondsforthewin.com/.
Some of the ideas presented on that site are extremely interesting and there is not much they can do but accede to your request.
I was wrong.
This isn’t like Nazi Germany.
This type of propaganda is more like The Hunger Games.
https://tinyurl.com/2p94kk63
Mr. Johnson’s comment is spot on: people can’t believe there could be so much corruption and evil. It’d be unthinkable in America if it weren’t actually happening.
We should all try to communicate what’s happening to unbelievers, slowly, in tiny steps, until they begin to see for themselves.
“The more society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it”. – George Orwell
This has been going on for decades. Anyone dealing with press in VERMONT has wxperienced this first hand. It’s making news because he’s a mild mannered, curious individual who does long form reporting with intelligent and interesting people.
He has a huge audience. He’s bee left of center forever. That of course will change,meh is know becoming painfully aware how corrupt our system is.
Peoples minds are struggling. It’s hard to grasp for many how there could be so much evil and corruption, so much media control, with so much massive coordination.
Question, who OWNS Hollywood? Who pays the salaries for most of them? Who owns AMC, the American Movie Channel? How is it that all Hollywood people come out like parrots and say the same thing across America in a 24 to 48 hour period on all “differently” owned networks.
On top of that who comptroller all the Nes feeds on your propaganda phone?
Hi Jay,
I’ll tell ya what is going on here:
The Left always eats their own.
The Democrats don’t really even like Bernie- but they know they had a man that could bring in crowds and money- but they didn’t much care for his ideas. What has Bernie done actually besides destroy Vermont?
The Democrat machine sees a Joe Manchin and a Kristen Sinema coming in Joe Rogan and they are now wanting any more of those people at all.
They want hard liners..
So they want to take Joe out before he even gets going.
They are trying to do this same thing with Tucker Carlson on our side- because he is in a similar place.. huge popularity/power=threat
Sorry I had Jay on my mind still Neil..
This was in response to NEIL.
We need an edit option here desperately TNR.
yes we do need edit, people can clearly see on my posts.
This has been going on, the cancel culture for decades. They have been working toward and successfully getting any conservative voice off the public discourse for decades.
It’s an easy get. There is no perfect person that has walked this earth, none but one. All the rest of us are terribly flawed, old school terms, we are sinners, aka say something stupid, do something stupid, etc.
So for the NWO pimps to gain control, they only need to hang out or search some bodies history and what do you know, look at what Joey did. Then the next is easy, they don’t deserve their job, their position, their public spot light, money to live and they are cancelled.
NWO, leftists, marxists, idol is power and money. Nature abhors a vacuum, so your idol is going to be SOMETHING…..conscious or not. Many believe they are “saving the world”…..truly.
If one is at all curious to “what is going on in the world today? It seems so hateful, impatient, despair, harshness, fighting….there is a reason and an answer. It is the opposite of what is being taught in our schools.
These things we are experiencing are completely orchestrated, it’s a military tactic used for 100’s of years, centuries if you look at Sun Tzu…and the cure is the same in all cases.
Get back to wisdom and the original source. Don’t be a pawn of those whom wish us ill.
These are colloquially known in military parlance as “Useful idiots” It is all about subversion. All about money and power, the opposite of the meek shall inherit the earth and love your neighbor.
Thankfully there is a much higher power in control, a much more loving and forgiving way.
Hey, at least I have you thinking.
But while reliance on a ‘higher power’ gives us strength of conviction in the understanding that we all know what’s going on, and in knowing that none of us are perfect, what is the nature of that conviction? What do we do? If only we could edit the government, as easily as we can edit our text.
Well, guess what. We can edit the government – by choosing how our children are educated.
True, and our neighbors too. Because they read VTdigger and VPR and think they have an unbiased, informed education of what is going on in the world. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Sophisticated, yes, but sophisticated is not a compliment.
Rogan allows knowledgeable people to speak the truth and that irks the leftist government
who wishes only THEIR truth be spoken… all the leftist media comply but not Spotify and
old fossils and self promoting no bodies with hardly no followers threaten to pull their
empty vestiges unless he’s censored Spotify said bye bye…
What’s with all these old and new commies trying to uphold a tyrannical government when
they use to despise government???
Oh yeah they also hate Joe because he survived the chyna curd without the vax…..
Isn’t it amazing how they never talk about the people or what they said on his show? They only say misinformation, they are terrified to say what that misinformation was, because
Propaganda can’t handle the truth.
Socialism can’t handle the truth.
The New World Order ant handle the truth.
And this is also why, VERMONT “news organizations” don’t allow free speech on their sites.
This also explains why front porch forum censors
Why Face book censors
Why vt digger removed their commentary.
Yet are there ANY in office making a stand on this? VTGOP? governor?
We need to do better at making people not pay any attention here to the propaganda machine.
Someone told me recently that in China they all *know* that their entire media machine is nothing but propaganda so the masses pay not attention to it at all.
This is the case up in Canada too really..
But here our sheep don’t still seem to get this yet.
They watch The View and CNN and think they know what is going on.
That this is going on still is a failure on our side actually.