#273 — Joe Rogan and the Ethics of Apology
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
143.47636
Summary
Sam Harris responds to Joe Rogan's apology for using the N-word on his podcast, and explains why racism is a symptom of an enduring problem in our society, rather than a cause of racism itself. Sam Harris is a comedian, writer, podcaster, and podcaster. He's been a friend of mine for a long time, and I've long been a fan of Joe's work. I've been critical of his coverage of public health messaging on vaccines and other controversial topics, but I didn't know what to do about it until I watched a video of him apologizing for it, and realized that it's not really an apology at all. It's an admission that racism is still an issue, and it's one that needs to be addressed, even in the context of a comedian's use of a racial slur, and especially in a world where racism is widely accepted as a normal part of everyday life. And there's a good chance that Joe is not a racist, and that racism isn't even a problem at all, as long as it's spoken of in jest and not in deliberate, deliberate, and deliberate ways. In this episode, Sam explains why that's not a problem, and why racism should never be tolerated in the first place, no matter who it is used in comedy, and how it's used in jokes, jokes, and jokes are not racist, even when they're used in a joking context. He also points out that racism doesn't have to be seen as such. as a problem in any context, it's a symptom, it s an ethical problem, not a symptom of racism, and therefore it s not a cause, but a symptom. of an underlying problem of our society. in which we all need to be cured not a cure, not a cure . or a cure in order to be and a cure or to be free of racism by people like Joe that are not . Joe's apology is an apology, and his apology is not an apology at all but it's an apology. , not that , and that it s is right because racism is not , the problem, so we need to about it if it s a problem , right?
Transcript
00:00:25.000
Okay, well, my friend Joe Rogan has come under considerable public scrutiny and personal
00:00:33.960
attack in recent days, and I want to say a few things in response to that controversy.
00:00:42.200
I've been critical of Joe's coverage of COVID and vaccines.
00:00:46.800
In particular, I was critical of his platforming Peter McCullough and Robert Maloney.
00:00:52.020
I reached out to Joe privately about that, and I've said a few things publicly.
00:00:59.360
As you might expect, I restrained myself in public because Joe is a friend, but I didn't
00:01:07.860
My primary concern was that given his vast audience, getting public health messaging wrong,
00:01:17.360
Joe is generally considered to have the biggest podcast on Earth, and he has greater reach
00:01:30.600
But it's a responsibility that Joe never sought, and has been slow to appreciate.
00:01:37.980
I mean, Joe is not a scientist, or an academic, or a journalist, or he's a comedian.
00:01:43.560
And because he's a comedian, whatever the topic, he can always pull the ripcord by saying,
00:01:53.380
This is something that I and many other podcasters can't do.
00:01:57.360
And he podcasts so much, he sometimes produces 20 hours of content a week.
00:02:03.760
So there's no way he can prepare for most of these conversations.
00:02:08.500
Nor is there time for him to edit his podcasts.
00:02:14.820
He's since stopped doing that, but the spirit of his podcast hasn't changed.
00:02:19.420
He just flips on the microphones and begins rolling with his guest.
00:02:24.220
And while he may know something about their work, he is rather often learning what they
00:02:29.940
think in real time, right along with his audience.
00:02:33.340
And then responding in the moment, based on his years of doing just this, having long and
00:02:41.240
searching conversations with an incredibly diverse range of guests, and letting his curiosity
00:02:48.320
On most topics, this approach to podcasting has served Joe and his audience very, very
00:02:57.280
And the fact that the Joe Rogan experience is the biggest podcast on earth is all the proof
00:03:05.100
But this approach to podcasting doesn't work so well for every guest and every topic.
00:03:10.860
Nor does being a comedian always provide an alibi for getting your facts wrong.
00:03:16.380
So I was very glad to see Joe pivot last week and acknowledge that on the topic of public
00:03:22.040
health, he could and should be more rigorous and careful in the future.
00:03:27.840
This was in response to Neil Young and other musicians pulling their music off of Spotify
00:03:35.320
So when I saw that video, I jumped on Twitter and said, well done, brother, because Joe promised
00:03:42.420
to treat the topic of vaccines and COVID with more care, and to bring on other experts to
00:03:48.160
balance the opinions of the heterodox people he'd been talking to.
00:03:52.100
As you all know, the pandemic is a topic I've hit several times, and I've been distressed
00:03:57.360
to see how other podcasters like Joe have covered it.
00:04:00.600
I thought Joe's Instagram video, promising to do things differently, was about as good as
00:04:11.020
He acknowledged that he was slow to understand the enormous role he now plays on our information
00:04:22.160
But now another controversy has erupted, for which Joe also felt the need to apologize.
00:04:28.580
Someone cut together a reel of moments where Joe said the N-word on his podcast, going back
00:04:35.320
In the second apology, Joe made it clear that in none of those instances was he using the
00:04:43.740
Rather, he was talking about the word itself, about its use in comedy, and about its magically
00:04:52.240
And in his apology, he went so far as to say that he was wrong to have used the word even
00:04:57.500
in this way, and that as a white man, it's just not his word to use, for any reason, in
00:05:05.380
I want to say a few things about this second apology, and about the way it's being received.
00:05:11.200
First, I should say a few things about Joe as a person.
00:05:14.680
Anyone who knows him, and you don't have to know him personally.
00:05:24.420
Anyone who has spent dozens of hours listening to Joe's podcast knows to a moral certainty
00:05:34.560
And there really is nothing more that needs to be said on that point.
00:05:40.740
There is simply no workable definition of racism that includes Joe Rogan.
00:05:47.240
And insofar as there is an enduring problem of racism in our society, people like Joe are
00:06:01.000
And he has an extraordinarily large and diverse set of friends and social contacts.
00:06:07.380
It would be hard to imagine someone less likely to actually care about the race of another
00:06:15.980
So if Joe Rogan is your version of a racist, you have reached a moral and political dead
00:06:24.780
What's more, I think Joe actually went too far in his apology about using the N-word.
00:06:29.840
It's totally understandable that he did, because he's been taking a tremendous amount of fire.
00:06:42.080
So I understand why he felt the need to disavow his prior use of the word entirely.
00:06:47.140
But let me take a moment to spell out why I think that's a mistake.
00:06:49.860
There's simply no question that American hysteria around the use of the N-word is pathological
00:06:58.880
and dishonest and destructive of people's integrity and an offense to basic sanity.
00:07:08.240
I remember an example over 20 years ago, long before social media and, of course, long before
00:07:17.540
We would have called it political correctness back then.
00:07:21.180
Where an aide to the mayor of Washington, D.C. used the term niggardly in a speech.
00:07:31.240
And it has no etymological connection to the N-word.
00:07:35.620
Needless to say, some genius in the audience got mightily offended.
00:07:39.880
And the controversy was such that the mayor's aide resigned.
00:07:47.300
This person was later reinstated in another role, I think.
00:07:50.200
But it's a sign of how far we've wandered from the path of progress that the NAACP, at the
00:07:57.600
time, recognized just how absurd and demeaning of its own interests the initial taking of
00:08:06.880
Julian Bond, who was the chairman of the NAACP, said, quote,
00:08:11.260
You hate to think that you have to censor your language to meet other people's lack of
00:08:17.040
And then he said, It seems to me that the mayor has been niggardly in his judgment on
00:08:29.140
Needless to say, we could not expect such a reasonable response from the NAACP today.
00:08:34.440
Here's what I think is patently true, morally and intellectually, and therefore politically,
00:08:42.380
The idea that a white person cannot say the N-word for any reason, when discussing its
00:08:52.460
use, when reading Huckleberry Finn out loud, when dissecting public controversies of the
00:08:58.900
sort that I'm discussing now, is completely insane.
00:09:03.580
To hold this view is to attribute magical properties to words.
00:09:08.080
It's the very essence of a childish relationship to language.
00:09:13.060
And it makes a mockery of the very real social problem of racism.
00:09:17.580
That is, bigotry as applied through the lens of race.
00:09:22.520
Leaving aside the question of systemic racism, because there's a lot to debate about the scope
00:09:32.340
And what has always been pernicious about systemic racism is that the people implementing
00:09:37.360
racist policies need not be consciously racist to perpetrate further harm.
00:09:43.600
But of course, the pendulum has also swung violently in the other direction.
00:09:48.640
And as I've said before on this podcast, I think it's safe to assume that there is almost
00:09:53.580
no desirable place to work, or study, or mingle in American society today.
00:10:00.220
In academia, in film, or television, or journalism, or tech, you could literally take the highest
00:10:14.260
There is almost no place, and perhaps there is no actual place at all, where being a person
00:10:21.780
of color isn't a positive advantage for gaining entry in the year 2022.
00:10:28.960
Of course, this excludes Asians, who are now white adjacent.
00:10:33.320
Again, there's a lot to debate about the ethics of all this, and there are certainly questions
00:10:37.480
about affirmative action and related policies where I don't even know what I think.
00:10:42.760
But we can leave all of that aside, because that's not the sort of racism we're talking about.
00:10:47.480
The racism of which Joe Rogan has been accused is real racism, psychological racism.
00:10:57.000
He likes white people better than black people, racism.
00:11:01.220
When we're talking about a person using the N-word to convey his racism, or using it in such
00:11:08.420
a way as to reveal his racism, whether he meant to or not, then everything depends on the beliefs
00:11:17.600
To know if a person is racist, we have to know what he thinks and feels about other human beings.
00:11:25.100
Most importantly, we have to know what sort of world he wants to live in.
00:11:29.800
To allege that a person is racist is of necessity to claim that he cares about the variable of race
00:11:37.920
in ways that he shouldn't, that he prefers certain groups of people for reasons that he shouldn't,
00:11:45.460
that he takes pride in things he shouldn't, and that he has contempt or at least disregard
00:11:53.100
for certain people based purely on the color of their skin or some other superficial racial
00:12:02.160
Real racists don't want people of other races to truly succeed, and they feel more or less
00:12:11.800
compassion for the suffering of other human beings based primarily on their racial identities.
00:12:18.540
This is why the some of my best friends are black calumny is so silly and destructive.
00:12:24.600
If a person is white and some of his best friends are black, I don't care what jokes he laughs
00:12:33.000
He is not a racist in any way that society should worry about.
00:12:39.180
And if you doubt that, there is something you don't understand about what it means to have
00:12:48.840
So, using the N-word as a racial slur is completely different.
00:12:57.480
And if you insist that the word itself is magically destructive, like Voldemort in the Harry Potter
00:13:06.240
If you insist upon treating its use by a person of the wrong skin color, in any context, for
00:13:13.200
any purpose, as some kind of diabolical incantation.
00:13:17.240
If you really believe that someone, somewhere, will be harmed by any conceivable use of the
00:13:26.260
term based merely on the color of the speaker's skin, you are just morally unprepared to solve
00:13:36.160
And any culture that takes this attitude is morally unprepared to solve real problems, too.
00:13:47.280
We are mired in a culture that appears totally unable to even identify, much less solve, real
00:13:56.960
Because it has grown hysterical over imaginary ones.
00:14:00.840
There were other things that Joe apologized for in this second video.
00:14:07.000
Things which it sounds like he should have apologized for.
00:14:10.140
These were things he said as a comedian that now sound bad even in context.
00:14:14.640
He told jokes in the past that he wouldn't tell today.
00:14:18.500
It's only decent to notice, however, that literally everyone, not just comedians, everyone, is in this
00:14:32.540
You simply can't judge comedy or any other cultural product from ten years ago by the
00:14:41.260
It's just not fair to, because it doesn't give an accurate picture of a person's state of mind,
00:14:49.400
And most important, if you watch Joe's recent video, there is no question that he offered
00:14:55.900
a complete apology for things he genuinely regrets saying.
00:15:01.400
What more could we expect a well-intentioned person to do?
00:15:04.600
I've noticed two reactions to Joe's most recent video, both of which seem like moral errors
00:15:13.580
First, there were people who smell blood in the water and who are now calling for Joe's
00:15:21.060
These are people on the left for whom no apology would ever be sufficient.
00:15:25.680
Though, ironically, these same people love redemption stories about murderers and rapists, provided
00:15:32.800
However, find me a black man who has shot a cop and then apologized for it, or in some
00:15:39.600
cases, hasn't apologized for it, and I'll show you vast numbers of people on the left
00:15:46.240
who are eager to see him brought back into the fold, and even canonized as some kind of
00:15:52.420
But find a white guy who told a bad joke in 2007, and these same people will want to see
00:15:59.400
That is a bit of hypocrisy that everyone left of center has to become allergic to.
00:16:07.700
And then, of course, are the responses from the right, or the alt-right, or the QAnon
00:16:13.420
adjacent, or the, I don't know what to call it, politically.
00:16:17.440
The, I'm way too online, and wokeness is the only problem I can keep track of, response.
00:16:24.320
Which, in light of the left's reaction, has declared that apologizing is always and everywhere
00:16:32.340
You can't give an inch to the woke mob, otherwise you're finished.
00:16:36.640
So all you can do is stonewall and double down.
00:16:39.380
From a purely PR point of view, these people aren't necessarily wrong.
00:16:49.600
Here's one thing that's important to be clear about.
00:16:54.600
Of all the people who could weather a controversy like this by saying absolutely nothing, or by
00:17:01.360
telling his critics to just go to hell, Joe is probably in the best position to do that.
00:17:07.100
Even if Spotify drops his show, Joe will be fine.
00:17:11.720
It would be trivially easy for him to create his own platform, where he'd be answerable
00:17:16.300
to no one, and legions of his fans would follow him there.
00:17:20.160
And he would still have the biggest podcast on earth.
00:17:23.460
But he chose to apologize, because he genuinely regretted saying certain things.
00:17:29.860
And he felt bad about how their resurfacing made many people feel.
00:17:33.500
And that's exactly how you would want him to respond.
00:17:40.660
And he did this because it was the right thing to do.
00:17:43.980
Here's the culture I think we want, or should want.
00:17:48.380
We want people, when they feel they have done something wrong, to apologize.
00:17:54.540
This is a way for them to express regret over regrettable things, and to communicate their
00:17:59.580
goodwill toward anyone they may have hurt, however inadvertently.
00:18:03.120
Anyway, I've never had to issue a public apology of the sort that Joe has released twice this
00:18:11.940
But if I ever felt that there was something I really should apologize for, I would find
00:18:16.240
it very depressing not to apologize for fear of the apology backfiring.
00:18:22.140
A sincere apology is a moral good, as is the forgiveness with which it is often met.
00:18:30.880
We want to live in a world where people offer sincere apologies.
00:18:36.140
And we want to live in a world where sincere apologies are generally accepted.
00:18:41.420
This is born of the recognition that no one is perfect.
00:18:46.940
Forgiveness, everyone is growing, and forgiveness itself is one of our highest virtues.
00:18:56.100
Forgiveness is a fucking miracle, and we want a culture that makes us better at both seeking
00:19:04.100
it and bestowing it, not one that views every apology as a source of shame and as an invitation
00:19:12.160
for further scorn, there really is a ray of ethical daylight here that we must recognize.
00:19:19.960
Asking forgiveness and receiving it is how we repair our relationships and the fabric of
00:19:31.400
Anyway, as I said, Joe is a friend, but I would like to think that I would defend anyone of his
00:19:36.860
character who found himself at the center of a similar controversy.
00:19:40.420
And Joe, if you're hearing this, you can rest assured that tens of millions of people who
00:19:47.460
have never met you know and love you for precisely who you are.
00:19:54.160
Because unlike almost anyone else, you have built your career by letting them do that.
00:20:01.280
And that is both remarkable and a true refuge at a time like this.