Joe Rogan’s N-Word

Fuck Spotify.
Seriously.

Joe Rogan has apologized for using the n-word. Let’s try that again.

Joe Rogan has apologized for using the n-word about seventy times. There, that’s better. Although to be clear, he used the word seventy times. He’s apologized once.

This was not some inadvertent slip of the tongue. This was a pattern of behavior. Yeah, I get it, he says (as noted in the New York Times) that it isn’t his word to use. Really? What took you so fucking long?

Let me offer some personal history here. I’m a few years old than Joe Rogan and from the same basic part of the country. I was born in Massachusetts, he was born in New Jersey. After moving about the country a bit, he graduated from a high school in the more urban end of Middlesex county. I graduated from a high school in the rural end of Middlesex county. We both attended UMass/Boston[1] We both left the Boston area in the early 90, him before me.[2]

So as one person who grew up in Middlesex County and went to UMass/Boston, I have one thing to say to Mr. Rogan: get a fucking clue. Can you really tell me that you were unaware that white guys like you and me cannot ever utter the n-word? Are you that fucking clueless? Because I realized this, not in 2022, but back before 1980, when you were still in high school.

Before I get into a pertinent piece of personal history, I want to set the stage. Recently, I’ve watched some of the old episodes of The Jefferson’s, Norman Lear’s comedy about a suddenly successful man who owns a growing chain of dry cleaners. [3] There’s no way the first season of the show would be aired on broadcast televisions, given the frequency which which characters use the n-word. In the show’s defense, perhaps that was a good indication of how Black people from Queens spoke.[4] It probably didn’t seem odd at the time, though now it’d require a content warning, “Contains strong language which may offend some viewers.”

The sitcom ran for eleven years, from Joe Rogan’s childhood to when he went off to college.[5] It was still being broadcast when I was at UMass, but I don’t think it came up in a conversation I had about the n word.

This was in my second year at UMass, so somewhere between 1981 and 1982. I had stopped in at the Science Fiction Club[6] and was talking with a friend. I don’t know if the n word was actually used, but the idea of using it came up and I started pointing out why you just could not use the word, not if you were (liked my friend and I) two white males. We were joined by another friend and here I wished I remembered everyone’s names, but that detail has been lost in my memory. Let’s call the first friend Joe (that might be his name) and the second friend Scott (I’m sure I’m wrong here).[7]

Joe and I were two white men, in our late teens or early twenties, discussing the propriety of using the n-word. As I launched into my explanation of why you couldn’t use it, Scott came over. The one Black member of the science fiction club. Did I want to continue? I was already in on it, so I pressed on.

Every time I paused, ready to say “the n-word,” Scott stepped in with the actual word. Each time. “If you’re Black, you can say…” “but if you’re white, and say…” “you’re just appropriating a word you don’t own.” Every time. I compared it to words insulting to various other ethnic groups,[8] gender, or sexuality.[9] He eventually understood. We all understood, years before Joe Rogan set foot on the Columbia Point campus of the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

And that’s why I call bullshit on Joe Rogan. There are people I might believe if they say that they have only just now, in 2022, realized that this was not a word that they should be using, but none of them are comics from the East Coast who have landed multimillion-dollar podcasting deals. I’m sorry Mr. Rogan, then a high schooler, missed out on what I’m saying. It wasn’t profound in early 80s, it isn’t profound now. It’s fucking obvious. If you're not Black, don’t say the n-word.

You guys are still 
advertising this crap?

It should be fucking obvious to people that Rogan’s carefully crafted piece of P.R. regret is a heaping, stinking pile of bullshit. Spotify has pulled seventy episodes of Rogan’s podcast because oops! he said the n-word. I’m going to guess that if Spotify gave $1 of Rogan’s money to each person who has never said the n-word, he’d be working for free.

And I just had to go the iOS App store to see how contrite Spotify and Rogan are about this. Not one fucking bit.

The n-word that we should have for Joe Rogan is “No.”

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1. And we both left without a degree.  ↩

2. It’s all on his Wikipedia page. Well, the stuff about him.  ↩

3. I get that George Jefferson wants to interact with successful people, but why is he spending his money in renting a fancy high-rise apartment, instead of moving to a nice home in Westchester County?  ↩

4. The show was filmed in Los Angeles.  ↩

5. The University of Massachusetts, Boston. By the time he had showed up, I had stopped taking the T to Columbia Point (now called UMass/JFK).  ↩

6. I was the president and you’re not surprised.  ↩

7. If anyone involved has clearer memories than I do…  ↩

8. I was someone of Italian descent speaking to someone of Irish descent.  ↩

9. I was easing out of the closet.  ↩