Joe Rogan's use of the n-word is another January 6 moment

[Ubiquitous]

(CNN)The podcaster Joe Rogan did not join a mob that forced lawmakers to flee
for their lives. He never carried a Confederate flag inside the US Capitol
rotunda. No one died trying to stop him from using the n-word.

But what Rogan and those that defend him have done since video clips of him
using the n-word surfaced on social media is arguably just as dangerous as
what a mob did when they stormed the US Capitol on January 6 last year.

Rogan breached a civic norm that has held America together since World War
II. It's an unspoken agreement that we would never return to the kind of
country we used to be.

A White person would never be able to publicly use the n-word again and not
pay a price.

Rogan has so far paid no steep professional price for using a racial slur
that's been called the "nuclear bomb of racial epithets." It may even boost
his career. That's what some say happened to another White entertainer who
was recently caught using the word.

It is a sign of how desensitized we have become to the rising levels of
violence -- rhetorical and physical -- in our country that Rogan's slurs were
largely treated as the latest racial outrage of the week.

But once we allow a White public figure to repeatedly use the foulest racial
epithet in the English language without experiencing any form of punishment,
we become a different country.

We accept the mainstreaming of a form of political violence that's as
dangerous as the January 6 attack.

Why Rogan's use of the n-word may not hurt his career
Some might say that comparing a podcaster's moronic musings about race to
January 6 is hyperbole. They will invoke "cancel culture" and political
correctness.

?He called his comments "the most regretful and shameful thing," adding "I
know that to most people, there's no context where a White person is ever
allowed to say that word, never mind publicly on a podcast, and I agree with
that," Rogan said after a video showed him using the n-word more than 20
times in different podcast episodes.

Rogan has also apologized for a video of him comparing a gathering of Black
people to "Planet of the Apes." He has said he is "not racist."

In the past, White public figures who used the n-word provoked universal and
unqualified condemnation. But Rogan has gotten some support.

His comments drew criticism from Daniel Ek, chief executive of Spotify, which
reportedly pays Rogan at least $100 million to carry his mega-popular
podcast. Ek said Rogan's racial slurs "do not represent the values of this
company."

But Ek also said Spotify will continue to stand by Rogan, who had the most
popular podcast on the streaming platform last year.

"We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are
crossed, but canceling voices is a slippery slope," Ek said in a memo to his
staff.

Another media mogul offered Rogan a lucrative new gig. The chief executive of
another social media company offered Rogan $100 million to bring his podcast
to its platform, citing Rogan's "legion of fans in desire for real
conversation."

And former President Donald Trump told Rogan he should "stop apologizing" for
his controversies -- including the racial slurs and spreading Covid-19
misinformation -- because he shouldn't allow critics to make him "look weak
and frightened."

Rogan's use of the n-word could even boost his career if it follows the
trajectory of another White entertainer, country music star Morgan Wallen.

Wallen's career seemed finished a year ago after he was caught on video using
the n-word in a conversation with a friend. Radio stations and streaming
services dropped him from their playlists. The Academy of Country Music
declared him ineligible for the 2021 ACM Awards. Wallen apologized but was
widely condemned.

A year later, "Wallen's career has ?not only rebounded but exploded,"
according to Billboard magazine. His songs are back on the radio and he had
the most popular album of 2021 in the US, according to Billboard. Wallen is
embarking on a nationwide tour, with many dates already sold out, and is
slated to headline music festivals this summer.

Country singer Morgan Wallen performs on February 9, 2022, at Madison Square
Garden in New York City.
Country singer Morgan Wallen performs on February 9, 2022, at Madison Square
Garden in New York City.
Rolling Stone published an article earlier this month with the headline: "Did
Dropping the N-Word Actually Help Morgan Wallen's Career?" The article quoted
a Nashville industry insider who said Wallen's popularity surged after his
use of the n-word because the backlash "made him a martyr... to people that
hold what I would say are prejudices."

A recent USA Today story said Wallen has become an "anti-cancel culture hero"
and quoted an executive who said that the more the mainstream criticizes
Wallen "the more power those who support his bigotry begin to feel."

Meanwhile, Rogan is now reframing the backlash over his use of the n-word as
a cancel culture battle.

"This is a "political hit job," he recently said, suggesting that the
controversy may actually help him.

"It's good because it makes me address some (expletive) that I really wish
wasn't out there," he told a guest on his show Tuesday. ?"You just have to
stay offline ... Life goes on as normal."

For decades, life would never go on as normal for a White person caught using
the n-word. This represents a momentous shift in American culture. There used
to be a consensus that any White person caught using the n-word or other
racial slurs would pay a hefty price.

In 2018, the actress Roseanne Barr had her popular sitcom canceled after she
made a series of racist tweets.

That same year, a top executive resigned from Netflix after using the N-word
in front of Black employees.

Celebrity chef Paula Deen lost her business empire and saw her cooking shows
canceled by the Food Network in 2013 after she admitted using the n-word
during a deposition in a lawsuit.

And the career of "Seinfeld's" Michael Richards cratered after he was caught
calling hecklers the n-word in 2006.

The price that White people paid for crossing this line wasn't legal. No one
called for them to be jailed or fined. But many were shamed and exiled from
their professional communities.

The prohibition against White people using racist language in public was so
severe that a person could see their career destroyed even if they used a
racial slur that most people didn't comprehend.

George Allen was a popular US senator who seemed to be cruising to re-
election in Virginia in 2006 when he was filmed? using the word "macaca," a
type of monkey," to describe an Indian-American volunteer with the campaign
of his opponent.

He lost his re-election bid after both Republicans and Democrats criticized
him. His political career never recovered.

Using the n-word became a rhetorical red line because it represents arguably
the most shameful part of US history: slavery and the Jim Crow era.

Neal Lester, an Arizona State University English professor who has taught a
course on the n-word, noted it has been described as "the most toxic in the
English language," a term "almost magical in its negative power," and a slur
that "occupies a place in the soul where logic and reason never go."

"The word is inextricably linked with violence and brutality on Black psyches
and derogatory aspersions cast on Black bodies," he said in an interview. "No
degree of appropriating can rid it of that blood-soaked history."

It took a lot of work to ban the n-word from the public square. That shift
wasn't about political correctness. It was about our survival as a
multiracial democracy and our standing in the world.

The n-word became forbidden in the US public sphere around the mid-20th
century when a consensus emerged that "public racism" was sabotaging
democracy, some academics say. But in the decades before that, White
entertainers and politicians talked like Rogan all the time.

World War II helped change that. The war against Nazism and revelations about
the Holocaust raised awareness of racism, while America's new role as a
leader of the "free world" caused White elites to see racism as the nation's
Achilles heel, wrote Robert L. Fleegler, a history professor at the
University of Mississippi, in a paper titled, "Theodore G. Bilbo and the
Decline of Public Racism, 1938-1947."

Bilbo, a US Senator from Mississippi, felt free enough to tell White
supporters during an election campaign in 1946 that "I call on every red-
blooded White man to use any means to keep the n***ers away from the polls."

Bilbo won the Democratic primary and faced no opposition in the general
election, but his Senate colleagues barred him from taking his seat in the
chamber because of his open racism.

In the years that followed, Southern White politicians still used racially
coded words like "state's rights," but most avoided using the n-word in
public, Fleegler wrote.

The civil rights movement also created a stigma around Whites using the n-
word and other racial slurs. The assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr. and the eruption of race riots after King's death showed White Americans
what could happen when a group of citizens were treated with systemic
disregard for their humanity. ?

Using the n-word came to be seen as a vulgar relic of a shameful past, said
Jacob Levy, a scholar and author of an essay titled "The Weight of the
Words."

"The norm against publicly legitimizing Klan-type racism was built up over a
long time," Levy wrote, "calling on white Americans to do better than they
were, partly by convincing them that they were better."

The theories vary. Some cite the rise of social media, the growth of White
supremacist groups and a right-wing media ecosystem that has mainstreamed
racist rhetoric.

Former President Trump played a part, too. He rode a trail of racist, sexist,
and antisemitic statements all the way to the White House.

All these factors converged to create a chain effect that led to what one
scholar calls "defining deviance down." That's what happens when a country
starts accepting offensive language it rejected before, wrote Steven
Levitsky, co-author of the book, "How Democracies Die."

"When unwritten rules are violated over and over, we become overwhelmed --
and then desensitized," Levitsky wrote. "We grow accustomed to what we
previously thought to be scandalous."

Something else happens that's even more deadly. When people in positions of
power use dehumanizing language to describe other groups, atrocities often
follow.

This is not ancient history: Consider what happened less than 30 years ago in
Rwanda when some 800,000 civilians were slaughtered in a three-month period
in 1994. Hutu extremists targeted both the Tutsi minority, who were a
majority of those killed, as well as moderate Hutus.

What triggered the violence in part were the messages that came from people
in positions of power in Rwanda. Many, like Rogan, had a public megaphone and
an audience.

In a New Yorker essay on "How Norms Change," the author Maria Konnikova
described how Hutu leaders took to the radio calling Tutsis "cockroaches,"
sanctioning the violence that followed. She said that "norms can shift at the
speed of social life" when the wrong leaders command the public's attention.

"To a great extent, the norms in Rwanda shifted so rapidly because they did
so from the top: Influential radio stations broadcast a powerful, persuasive
and constantly repeating message urging listeners to join killing squads and
organize roadblocks," Konnikova wrote.

? Genocide is a worst-case scenario. But we don't have to look as far as
Rwanda to see how quickly civic norms can change when people in power start
lowering standards. Earlier this month the Republican National Committee
drafted a resolution calling the deadly January 6 insurrection "legitimate
political discourse."

CNN's Stephen Collinson responded in a column, "The Republican Party is ever
closer to the destination to which it has long been headed under former
President Donald Trump -- the legitimization of violence as a form of
political expression."

Rogan's use of the n-word may also be drawing us closer to something else:
destroying any plausible shot at building a genuine multiracial democracy.

The January 6 insurrection was so dangerous because it violated a political
norm. The citizens in a healthy democracy are supposed to accept the peaceful
transfer of power, not to use violence as a tool of political protest. That's
what most Americans agreed to leave behind after we fought a bloody Civil War
over a political and moral issue: slavery.

The universal condemnation that used to greet White people who publicly used
the n-word was also part of a civic norm that made a multiracial democracy
possible. That word was a vestige of a hateful Jim Crow era that most
Americans agreed to leave in the past. It was considered un-American.

This is the America that former President Ronald ?Reagan evoked in his famous
"shining city on a hill" 1989 farewell address. He described us as a nation
"teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace," with doors
"open to anyone with the will and heart to get here."

What are we when a White entertainer with a huge public following can use the
n-word repeatedly -- and get a $100 million offer to bring "real
conversation" to another platform?

What are we when Rogan's employer can say that his company has "clear lines
around content and take action when they are crossed," but that line doesn't
include using a word that was used during the enslavement, rape and torture
of millions of people.

Rogan once called himself a "f---ing moron... a cage-fighting commentator"
and not a "respected source of information, even for me." He is something
more now. He is unleashing lethal forces that he may not understand.

He is also a blinking red light, warning that the civic and political rules
that once held the nation together no longer apply.

We are poised to enter an era where a White person can use the n-word
publicly and not only survive but thrive if they portray themselves as a
victim of cancel culture. It's a world where hate speech and violence are
rebranded as "legitimate political discourse," and "public racism" returns to
ordinary life.

Don't let the Rogan n-word controversy devolve into another tired discussion
about cancel culture. This moment is bigger. If Rogan goes on with business
as usual, all of us -- not just Black people -- will pay a price. Our country
won't be the same.

--
Let's go Brandon!

[BTR1701]

In article <sue629$cp6$1...@dont-email.me>,

Ubiquitous <web...@polaris.net> wrote:

> (CNN)The podcaster Joe Rogan did not join a mob that forced lawmakers to flee
> for their lives. He never carried a Confederate flag inside the US Capitol
> rotunda. No one died trying to stop him from using the n-word.
>
> But what Rogan and those that defend him have done since video clips of him
> using the n-word surfaced on social media is arguably just as dangerous as
> what a mob did when they stormed the US Capitol on January 6 last year.

It's not arguably anything like that to anyone who isn't batshit nuts.

> Rogan breached a civic norm that has held America together since World War
> II. It's an unspoken agreement that we would never return to the kind of
> country we used to be.
>

> A white person would never be able to publicly use the n-word again and not
> pay a price.

You mean like Biden did?

> Rogan has so far paid no steep professional price for using a racial slur
> that's been called the "nuclear bomb of racial epithets." It may even boost
> his career. That's what some say happened to another White entertainer who
> was recently caught using the word.
>
> It is a sign of how desensitized we have become to the rising levels of
> violence -- rhetorical and physical --

There's no such thing as 'rhetorical violence'.

> But once we allow a white public figure to repeatedly use the foulest racial

> epithet in the English language without experiencing any form of punishment,
> we become a different country.

So get to work on Joe Biden. After that-- when you've shown us that this
isn't just another leftist double standard that you're only using as a
political cudgel-- we can address Rogan.

> We accept the mainstreaming of a form of political violence that's as
> dangerous as the January 6 attack.

Saying a word is not violence no matter how desperately you want to
redefine language for us.

> In the past, white public figures who used the n-word provoked universal
> and unqualified condemnation.

Rogan used the word as schtick, to be funny, and he said as much.

Trevor Noah took great umbrage with Rogan saying "I wasn't being racist,
I was just being entertaining."

NOAH: "No, Joe, you were using racism to be entertaining. You may not
have been trying to offend black people but you knew that offending
black people would get a laugh out of those white friends that you were
with."

Yet what does Trevor Noah do on his show every single night? He does
racial essentialism for laughs.

If you go all the way back to 2015, when Noah was originally introduced
by Comedy Central to take over for Jon Stewart, there was a bit of a
controversy when a bunch of Noah's old jokes were publicized. Racist old
jokes. Anti-Semitic old jokes. Anti-Asian old jokes. Misogynistic old
jokes. In other words, the exact same thing that's happened to Rogan
here, and this guy who kept his job after his own racist comedy came to
light is now demanding that Rogan lose his.

NOAH IN 2015: "To reduce my views to a handful of jokes that didn't land
is not a true reflection of my character, nor my evolution as a
comedian."

Comedy Central announced they would stand by Trevor Noah regardless of
his racist past: "Like many comedians, Noah pushes boundaries. He's
provocative and spares no one, himself included. To judge him or his
comedy based on a handful of jokes is unfair. Trevor is a talented
comedian with a bright future at Comedy Central."

Amazing how those standards fly right out the window when the comedian
in question isn't a leftist Democrat, isn't it?

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, Noah has a *whole* different
standard for Rogan than he did for himself. And the cherry on that shit
sundae? At the time of Noah's controversy, Rogan expressed support for
Noah and advocated that Comedy Central keep him on.

> Meanwhile, Rogan is now reframing the backlash over his use of the n-word as
> a cancel culture battle.
>
> "This is a "political hit job," he recently said, suggesting that the
> controversy may actually help him. "It's good because it makes me address

> some shit that I really wish wasn't out there. You just have to stay

> offline ... Life goes on as normal."
>

> For decades, life would never go on as normal for a white person caught using

> the n-word. This represents a momentous shift in American culture. There used

> to be a consensus that any white person caught using the n-word or other

> racial slurs would pay a hefty price.

Then how come Joe Biden is president of the United States right now?

> What are we when a white entertainer with a huge public following can use the

> n-word repeatedly -- and get a $100 million offer to bring "real
> conversation" to another platform?

What are we when a career politician with a history of being chummy with
segregationists can use that word repeatedly and not only be elected
president by the very people who are crying about Rogan, but have his
use of the word downplayed and dismissed by them even as they
hysterically claim Rogan's comedy bits herald the end of American
democracy?

> What are we when Rogan's employer can say that his company has "clear lines
> around content and take action when they are crossed," but that line doesn't
> include using a word that was used during the enslavement, rape and torture
> of millions of people.

What are we when a Trevor Noah's employer can dismiss his racism and
misogyny merely by saying "he's provocative and pushes boundaries"?

> We are poised to enter an era where a white person can use the n-word

> publicly and not only survive but thrive if they portray themselves as a
> victim of cancel culture.

"Whaaah! We want to cancel people for saying things we don't like but
now they're fighting back and making us look bad for canceling them.
Make them stop!"