My plan was to delay examining any article with Joe Rogan as a subject until I had completed another dozen or so "Propaganda Files" pieces. That would have set up a preliminary framework to tackle Rogan.
However, Peniel E. Joseph's piece, "Don't pretend you don't know what Joe Rogan is all about," was published February 10 by CNN. Some elements of this piece were so interesting, and some phrasing so outrageous (including the title) that I feel it's preferable to comment ASAP.
My Theme: Low Tolerance for Ambiguity
I know very little about Joe Rogan. I have watched one complete podcast and segments of half a dozen others. I'm no fan boy. My initial take is that Rogan is a fine interviewer with a little touch of Johnny Carson in him and more than a little touch of Howard Stern. He seems nimble during interviews, as one might expect of a comedian. Mr. Joseph evidently has issues with Rogan, some of which I grasp, some of which I don't. Before getting to specific lines from Joseph's article, however, I want to discuss why this particular piece interested me. Lines strewn throughout, including the title, are evidence of something I see as a common theme in American media at the moment.
Almost everyone in journalism of any kind seems unable to maintain neutrality or ambivalence regarding public figures. There seems to be a media obsessive-compulsive disorder to categorize public figures into neat righteous/not-righteous categories. Writers also seem incapable of perceiving people as fence straddlers, as politically neutral, as independent thinkers. It's almost as if stating that you're an independent is treated as a form of obfuscation, of purposeful camouflage. Somewhere deep down inside, you must actually be this or that. Protesting that you're not leads to social media microscopes being turned to a higher lens power. The search for clues to righteous/not-righteous continues until some shred of evidence offers an excuse for a label.
People must be defined as Trumpster or non-Trumpster, progressive or not progressive, Christian or not Christian. Basically, as believer or non-believer in whatever is fashionable in a particular neck of the woods. The religious nature of Trump support has helped create these righteous/not-righteous perceptual categories. The faster we can stereotype or caricature someone, the less our stress. If we allow someone into our personal culture, and we don't have them cleanly categorized, then we suffer the stress of being psychologically intimate with someone who might be "not us."
My working theory is that the more stress people are under, the less they tolerate ambiguity. The more stress, the more driven they are to stereotype, categorize, caricature, and label. A during-Trump, post-Trump pandemic has created fertile ground.
Point by Point
I'm not going to debunk, per se, what Joseph has written, but I'm going to review some of the more outrageous comments:
1) The title of the piece is both outrageous and beyond preachy. Somebody telling me that I need to acknowledge that I implicitly know "what Joe Rogan is all about" is ridiculous. I don't know Joe Rogan. If I saw a hundred podcasts, maybe I'd have some small hint of what he's about. But the last thing that I need, and I think the last thing that anyone needs, is an academic telling people to draw some forced-choice conclusion about someone based on partial information. In a time of knee-jerk categorization, the last thing Americans need is coaching to do more knee-jerk labeling. Joseph seems to think he has Rogan pinned down, identified, and psychoanalyzed. Good for him. I gamble professionally. I tend to know what I don't know, and I rely on what I don't know to make decisions. This way of thinking and working is evidently alien to Joseph. I'll have more to say on this in the conclusion.
2) In the fourth paragraph of this piece, Joseph strings together a series of comments regarding Rogan that Joseph deems problematic in some deep way. I want to criticize Joseph's choices here.
Joseph writes, "Rogan has made waves by suggesting that because you can never be woke enough...it'll eventually get to (where) white men are not allowed to talk." Joseph seems to believe this is a really bad thing for a comedian to say. Joseph should probably stay out of comedy clubs. He should also avoid watching American commercials, which now highly overrepresent white men as the doofuses of the world.
Joseph also says, "Rogan has horribly and deliberately misgendered a trans MMA fighter." C'mon, man/woman (that was sarcasm, Sheldon). I'm with Rogan on this one. If an XY guy pretended to be a woman so he could enter cage fights to beat the hell out of women, wouldn't Joseph want him arrested? Instead, because an XY fighter labels himself "trans," Joseph is on "her" side. Gag me with a spoon.
Further along in the same paragraph, Joseph criticizes Rogan for hosting guests who question vaccine validity and for "giving a platform to a climate change skeptic." Rogan is an interviewer. His job is to get a range of guests. Unless the guests tilt exclusively right (they do not), I don't see the problem. This is the flip side of the argument regarding late night hosts. The vast majority of guests on late night American television skew left compared to the general American population.
3) Because Trump and Republican Governor Ron DeSantis have both publicly recommended Rogan not apologize for using "nigger," Joseph writes, "The far-right conservative support for Rogan belies the myth that his show represents a reasonable middle or common ground uniting average Americans untethered to the left-right spectrum of American politics." This comment by Joseph makes no sense. Rogan has no control of who endorses his show or implores him to do anything. How do comments by Trump or DeSantis dictate what Rogan's show is about, what Rogan's audience is about, or what Rogan himself is about? They do not. Rogan's podcast undoubtedly has specific demographics that Joseph could have stated and explored, had he been interested in making a somewhat less definitive and more accurate proclamation.
4) Joseph writes, "Folks who enjoy Rogan's political unpredictability, down to earth quality, and frank discussion about politics ignore the fact that he's one of the wealthiest people in America." I'm not sure who Joseph thinks he is, presuming that anyone ignores Rogan's wealth.
I must have heard about Rogan's $100 million Spotify contract figure 200 times in the last month. How could Joseph presume people ignore Rogan's one-percenter status when it's the lead every 20 minutes on cable news? Speaking as someone who grew up in a county, half of which was owned by a family named Rich (I kid you not), I can tell you that socioeconomic status never leaves my field of thought. Not all one-percenters, however, are fire-breathing vampires (although that tends to be my default attitude).
5) Finally, Joseph provides this gem, "Any public personality attracting effusive support from Trump and DeSantis, two exemplars of racial and cultural intolerance, can not purport to be, as Rogan does, an independent thinker." I'm flabbergasted at both the basic illogic of this statement and the author's arrogance in making it. Unless Joseph is telepathic, he has no magical access to Joe Rogan's mind. Trump and DeSantis cheering someone on does not render that person an ideologue or even right wing. Joseph is pushing nonsense here with this fervent, baseless proclamation.
Propaganda
I started this entry not knowing much about Joe Rogan. I will end it the same way. I suggest anyone reading either Joseph's piece or this entry do the same.
Joseph's piece features a particular kind of propaganda. He proclaims things as true, and readers are simply supposed to take his authoritarian word on them. He says that he knows, and we should follow.
As I stated in this entry and several others, I know very little about Joe Rogan. His Wikipedia profile yields a Libertarian who endorsed Bernie Sanders and whose political preferences don't cluster under a convenient label. The Joe Rogan profile confidently proclaimed by Joseph does not at all match the Wikipedia profile.
The omissions of the Sanders endorsement and Rogan's votes for Libertarian candidates are tip-offs to Joseph's propagandistic writing choices. He could have mentioned these things, but they would have undercut his narrative, so he skipped them. Propaganda is often about what writers and editors choose to NOT tell you.
Conclusion
I traffic in making significant decisions based on partial information. Most professional gamblers do the same. My strength as a human being is knowing what I don't know, and also knowing the degree to which I don't know it.
In this era of Americans existing in informational silos, insulated from each other, Joseph does no one any favors by proclaiming that we should be drawing conclusions and imposing labels based on fractional and flimsy information (and his opinions).
Stress pushes all of us in the direction of simple decisions, clear categories, and ignoring ambiguity in favor of certainty. Calling ourselves "certain" of something may reduce our stress, but it doesn't solve real life problems. Joseph's kind of certainty is a mirage that leads us all deeper into a judgement desert.
Joe Rogan is not Archie Bunker, and most of his listeners are not Archie Bunker fans. Joseph is undoubtedly correct that the United States is institutionally racist and has racism baked into the fabric of society. But coaching people, as Joseph does, into snap-labeling others as righteous/not-righteous solves nothing. If you can't appreciate and deal with the ambiguity of your fellows, you're not part of any American solution. You're part of the American problem.
Bob Dietz
February 16, 2022
