The Absurdity of the Backlash Against Joe Rogan
Does anybody really think Joe Rogan is a racist?
From the American Spectator
Excerpt:
...Does anybody really think Joe Rogan is a racist? Of course not. But because, in the thousands of podcast hours he’s archived, he’s used the N-word a few dozen times, he’s a juicy target for the cancel-culture commandos. Never mind that he’s used the word consistently in discussions of the word itself — discussions, that is, of why it’s a bad word.
Yes, the N-word has a very fraught history in American culture. Joseph Conrad, one of the great novelists in English, used it in the title of one of his novels. Flannery O’Connor, perhaps the most distinguished American short-story writer of the 20th century, used it in the title of one of her best stories. The black comedian and activist Dick Gregory used the N-word as the title of his 1964 autobiography.
Soon enough, and for very good reasons, that sort of thing became a no-no. Still, in the classic NBC sitcom Sanford and Son (1972-77), Redd Foxx used the N-word as part of at least one hilarious gag that I still recall vividly half a century later. Richard Pryor, one of the top comics of all time, put the word in the titles of no fewer than three of his comedy albums, in 1974, 1976, and 1982. As late as 1996, Chris Rock, another all-time great stand-up, used the word — or, rather, the form of it that ends with an “a” — as the centerpiece of a 12-minute monologue that is one of anyone’s funniest bits ever. Other brilliant stand-ups, not all of them black, have used the N-word to terrific comedic effect.
But Rogan isn’t even being accused of doing that. The video compilation posted by online this weekend by India Arie, an R&B singer whom I’d never heard of, consisted of 23 clips, no more than a second or two long apiece, of Rogan saying the N-word. The word itself is bleeped every time. The contexts are not all clear, although in several cases you can hear enough of the conversation to recognize that he’s discussing the word as a word. Arie seems to acknowledge this. She doesn’t care. That’s not good enough. “Don’t even say the word, under any context,” she demands. “Don’t say it.”….
Excerpt:
...Does anybody really think Joe Rogan is a racist? Of course not. But because, in the thousands of podcast hours he’s archived, he’s used the N-word a few dozen times, he’s a juicy target for the cancel-culture commandos. Never mind that he’s used the word consistently in discussions of the word itself — discussions, that is, of why it’s a bad word.
Yes, the N-word has a very fraught history in American culture. Joseph Conrad, one of the great novelists in English, used it in the title of one of his novels. Flannery O’Connor, perhaps the most distinguished American short-story writer of the 20th century, used it in the title of one of her best stories. The black comedian and activist Dick Gregory used the N-word as the title of his 1964 autobiography.
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| McWhorter: "This business of not attending to the difference between using [the word] and referring to it is childish." |
Soon enough, and for very good reasons, that sort of thing became a no-no. Still, in the classic NBC sitcom Sanford and Son (1972-77), Redd Foxx used the N-word as part of at least one hilarious gag that I still recall vividly half a century later. Richard Pryor, one of the top comics of all time, put the word in the titles of no fewer than three of his comedy albums, in 1974, 1976, and 1982. As late as 1996, Chris Rock, another all-time great stand-up, used the word — or, rather, the form of it that ends with an “a” — as the centerpiece of a 12-minute monologue that is one of anyone’s funniest bits ever. Other brilliant stand-ups, not all of them black, have used the N-word to terrific comedic effect.
But Rogan isn’t even being accused of doing that. The video compilation posted by online this weekend by India Arie, an R&B singer whom I’d never heard of, consisted of 23 clips, no more than a second or two long apiece, of Rogan saying the N-word. The word itself is bleeped every time. The contexts are not all clear, although in several cases you can hear enough of the conversation to recognize that he’s discussing the word as a word. Arie seems to acknowledge this. She doesn’t care. That’s not good enough. “Don’t even say the word, under any context,” she demands. “Don’t say it.”….
[Continue reading HERE.]
SEE ALSO:
Philosopher Roy Bauer in Dissent the Blog, August 13, 2010
Linguist Bill Poser, January 25, 2008
Computer Scientist Douglas Moran, Jul 21, 2018
JOHN MCWHORTER: “[Rogan] was using [the n-word] in quotation marks … He wasn’t lobbing the word; he was—he was referring to the word or imitating people who use the word the way, until ten minutes ago, many white kids would chant their hip-hop lyrics. To me, there’s a huge difference between the two [things?] and, as I’ve said and written often, I think it’s absurd that we’ve gotten to the point that we’re treating it as a taboo sequence of sounds as if we were worshipping some sun god … and [what Rogan's done] should have no effect on his career. Maybe he wouldn’t choose to [say] those things now but, frankly, when he was doing it then, he wasn’t hurting anybody, and this business of not attending to the difference between using it and referring to it is childish, and … we don’t need it. I don’t see why [universally condemning saying the word is] necessary, although there’s a certain kind of black person who claims to be deeply injured every time that sequence of sounds is uttered for any reason. I think it’s a pose. I don’t like this [outcry] at all.”
3 comments:
Glenn Loury and John McWhorter weigh in here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC7CCqqPOyo
Like McWhorter, I have never listened to Joe Rogan.
Michael Barbaro had a good episode about this on the NYT's The Daily podcast today.
9:21, in that episode, they fail to note that Rogan did not "use" the n-word; rather, he simply "mentioned" it. (Barbaro briefly mentioned "quotation," but he did not explain the point.) The upshot is that Rogan may be guilty of various things, but not racism, not at least with regard to his saying the n-word. These two (in Barbaro's discussion) are perpetuating what McWhorter calls the "childish" decision to fail to maintain the use/mention distinction, as though that word (the n-word) had magical powers.
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