Joe Rogan says "faggot" and the crowd goes wild.

“A lot of people say, ‘Hey man, you’re a fucking hypocrite ‘cause you’ll say the R word but you won’t say the N word? Yeah. You’ll say the R word but you won’t say the N word? Yeah! ‘Cause I’m more afraid of Black people than I am of retards! Duh! Don’t you know how jokes work, faggot? It’s all just supposed to be funsies!” – Joe Rogan, from his new special Burn the Boats.

So much funsies.

I’m neither a fan nor a detractor of Joe Rogan. To me, he’s a popular, but largely irrelevant, entertainer. Sort of like Matt Gaetz. Within comedy circles, Rogan was never considered a great comic. I don’t even know if he was even considered a “good” comic, in the sense that his frat bro shtick was already tired by the time he found success as the aptly named “Joe” on NewsRadio thirty years ago.

There’s no doubt, however, that he’s a natural broadcaster. His podcast is insanely popular making Joe Rogan insanely rich. While I’ve never sat through an entire eighteen-hour episode, I’ve watched enough clips to get a sense of his winning vibe as an everyman asking questions of people smarter than he’ll ever hope to be. I mean that sincerely; it works and his willingness to engage with offbeat or fringe guests without (often to his detriment) judgment is a great formula.

Can you believe this guy is complaining that he “can’t” say a certain word that begins with N?

Rogan has also made something of a name for himself as one of the self-appointed leaders of anti-wokism, going so far as to open a comedy club in Austin called “The Comedy Mothership,” whose mission is to be a censorship-free safe space for comedians too cowed by the woke mob to perform, I guess, the kind of jokes that Rogan told above.

Let me be clear: I’m all for comedians saying whichever words they like, regardless of the letters with which they begin. Say whatever you want, my ‘roided-up brother, but at least make a joke. What is the joke here?

Nothing’s less funny than explaining a joke of course, so let’s do that. The premise of the joke is that people accuse Rogan of hypocrisy because he’ll say “the R word but not the N word.”

So, what do we know about Rogan from the set-up to the joke? Apparently, that the people who enjoy Rogan would prefer that he used the N word more often. I have to be honest here – I’ve never once asked a comedian of whom I am a fan to use more slurs. Like, I’ve never gone up to Mike Birbiglia and said, “Hey Mike, that story you told about sleepwalking out of a hotel window was funny, but you know what would make it even funnier? If you threw in a couple dozen ethnic slurs.”

Granted, the comparison is a little bit apples and oranges because Mike Birbiglia is a great comedian.

So that’s the set-up: Rogan’s people want him to attack not just the mentally disabled but Black people, too. His response? The reason he doesn’t use the “N word” (a phrase I absolutely loathe, but I understand its utility), is because he’s too scared of Black people to say it.

That’s the joke. To break it down further: the joke is that the mixed martial artist Joe Rogan is afraid of Black people.

So, there’s a way in which this joke could work as social commentary, I guess, if Rogan went on to talk about why he’s scared of Black people (but unafraid of the mentally disabled.) There might be some good jokes there. Maybe their food is too spicy? Maybe they dress too well? Maybe because they don’t fall for his bullshit? I don’t know, but there’s an opportunity to say something about the misunderstandings between white people and Black people that, too often, make us fear each other.

Rogan’s could have done that but instead chose to end with this witticism: “That’s how jokes work, Faggot.”

Hold for rapturous applause.

Let me be clear: I’m not offended in any sense other than I’m offended at Rogan’s laziness and cruelty. Because that’s what this entire joke is, a lazy riff on naughty words that, allegedly, people are “no longer allowed to say.” It’s bigotry as victimization. And, like Rogan, it’s stupid.

Just as Rogan’s schtick was already tired when he first achieved mainstream success, his current “white dude pity party” is just as tired now. We get it, Joe. White dudes want to be able to make fun of trans people and Black people and Asians and whoever they set their little eyes upon – not because they have a point to make – but because Mommy told them no and it makes them sad.

“But Michael, he’s just being edgy.”

There are so many fantastic, edgy comics. What makes them great isn’t their “edginess.” It’s the quality of their jokes. Don Rickles, the greatest insult comic who ever lived, never said any of these words. His go-to insult: “hockey puck.” Was Rickles not edgy enough for you? Neither did George Carlin. Lenny Bruce did, in a bit about denuding the word of its power. Louis CK has a similar bit about the inherent hypocrisy of the phrase “The N word,” correctly claiming that it gives white people permission to express the same sentiment without uttering the Word Which Must Not Be Spoken.

None of these comics trade in easy stereotypes or the lazy shock jock tactic of doing whatever you can to get a rise from the crowd. And I understand how, in today’s climate, it’s easy to buy into the lie that people aren’t “allowed to say certain things,” without the “woke mob” coming after you.

There’s a kernel of truth to the sentiment but it misplaces the blame. Rather than acknowledging that the reason there’s hue and cry from those who have been traditionally targeted by comics is precisely because the same moral license that people like Rogan give to their audience to engage in similar shitty behavior outside of the comedy club, also gives the victims of this behavior agency to speak out against it. The rise of political correctness in the 80’s and 90’s wasn’t about censoring speech; instead, it was a belated recognition that speech is a powerful tool for oppression. Rogan obviously knows this but rebels against it. Why? I don’t know, but I suspect it has something to do with the red-pilled crowd’s fear of “feminization.” When you break that fear down further, it distills into the idiotic notion that empathy is women’s work. Therefore, to rebel against kindness is to assert one’s masculinity.

There’s just so, so much buried in one shitty joke.

Rogan has a massive platform and, like Lenny Bruce or Louis CK (I am not ignoring Louis’s shitty behavior, which I have written about here) Rogan could use the opportunity to deconstruct the impotency of bigotry, and the power of language to harm others. If Rogan had taken his joke the next step and used it to explore his own internalized racism and homophobia, that might have been interesting. It might have been good. It might even have been, dare I say, funsies?