People listen to what Joe Rogan says – he can’t just walk away from that fact

“I talk s**t for a living – that’s why this is so baffling to me ... If you’re taking vaccine advice from me, is that really my fault? What dumb s**t were you about to do when my stupid idea sounded better?”

So said Joe Rogan, the crown prince of podcasting, the current king of controversy, Spotify’s great white revenue hope. Rogan’s words were, per Sky News, uttered at one of his recent stand-up shows in Texas in which he also reportedly addressed the release of a compilation clip of instances where he used a racial slur on his show. It has been circulating quite widely.

Now, there are people who argue that Rogan is deserving of respect for his candour regarding that statement, which amounts to his saying, if you’ll forgive me for attempting to rip off his style, “Why the hell are you taking medical advice from a stupid piece of s**t like me?”

It takes some chops to tell your audience that they’re bloody fools for paying attention to what you have to say. It is the sort of statement you might expect, at the very least, to warrant a call from Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, who paid Rogan $100m to join the platform and has been having bricks thrown at him ever since, including by the likes of music legends Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.

“Dude, it’s Daniel here. Just wanna say, would you just shut your mouth FFS? It’s enough that I’ve got to deal with the crap I take because of the jerks you have on your show. The anti vaxxers and stuff. Now you’re more or less telling your audience they’re idiots for signing up to Spotify to listen to you? Please! Wall Street’s gonna kill me if you carry on like this!”

In an earlier age, Rogan’s apparent honesty might indeed have backfired. It might even have been described as a Ratner moment, at least in Britain. Those of us of a certain age will remember the businessman, whose candour about one of his products (a decanter) in a speech at the Institute of Directors cost him his business, which was at the time Britain’s most popular jeweller.

Things are different today, when it seems as if every other person has taken one of Neo’s pills and gone down some crazy rabbit hole, at the bottom of which they will forgive anything from the people they identify as being on their side.

Rogan’s line has been used before. It is deployed as a cheap way of squirming out of taking responsibility for uttering, promoting, or otherwise condoning incendiary, often fact-free statements.

Fox News infamously used it in its defence against a defamation lawsuit brought against it by the former Playboy model Karen McDougal, whom Tucker Carlson claimed had tried to extort Donald Trump over, well, do I really need to spell it out? “Fox persuasively argues that, given Mr Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of scepticism’ about the statement he makes,” the judge said, in throwing out the claim. She also remarked on a motion to dismiss in which Fox had argued that “when read in context, Mr Carlson’s statements cannot reasonably be interpreted as facts”.

See, Tucker was just talking smack and his viewers knew it – just as Rogan’s listeners know it.

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But do they? I would argue that while such a line may be potent as a legal strategy (in Fox’s case) and/or good for a laugh during a stand-up show (in Rogan’s) when the comic is just telling it like it is, it is also disingenuous at best. Gutless, too. Because people do listen to them. They are influenced by them. They like them. They connect with them, although God only knows why, certainly in the case of Carlson. They nod along. Speak brother! Preach!

People like Rogan and Carlson have power and they have influence. That influence can be used for good or for ill. And when it comes to the anti-vax craziness they have either promoted, or acted as apologists for, it is definitively for ill.

There are few more pernicious myths than the ones thrown around about vaccines in the middle of a global pandemic, which has killed millions of people around the world. Vaccines are the best way to protect against Covid, both from an individual and from a societal perspective. They’re safe. They’re effective. They’re life savers. Those who suggest otherwise, even if it is “just to entertain”, have blood on their hands.