Choice quote:
"a good point coming out of the wrong mouth doesn’t count for squat"
While I'm no fan of Alex Jones, the tone of the article towards the end saddened me. The article seemed like it was approaching a genuinely insightful conclusion, but veered at the end in a somewhat jarring contradiction of the conclusion the first half was approaching.
The author's primary complaint about Joe Rogan and his followers is that they show a lack of empathy by having too much compassion and seeing value in people who don't deserve it. Defining empathy as a the absence of compassion for bad actors and idea that the world would be a better place if only we were less willing to see value in people who think differently from us is something I would usually expect people to conceal in public writing, but here it's presented as obvious.
I posted another comment on one of my least favorite lines, but this one shocked me also. WTF are you talking about? It may not be harmless, but it does count for something. The author is glorifying ad hominem fallacious reasoning. This is just choir preaching for people that accept scarlett letter shunning at face value, without questioning. I don't agree with all of Rogan's "free speech" rants, but it's a more nuanced point. The author assumes we all agree that there should be a blacklist of people forbidden from public discussion.
The author also displays a stunningly ironic lack of intelligence here:
"Free speech and its consequences, particularly the deplatforming of right-wing political provocateurs, is a push-button subject for Rogan, and it’s where he gets himself into the most trouble. Especially when he talks about Twitter, a company that brings together Joe’s two biggest blind spots: his basic misunderstanding of the concept of censorship and his tendency to see the world through a thick cloud of Axe Body Spray. (No, Joe, Twitter banning white nationalists from its privately held publishing platform is not censorship—it might be a risky corporate policy, but it is not censorship.)"
The First Amendment and Censorship are related, but two distinct topics.
The author also seems to suffer from the common illness of believing he has the ability to read minds:
"Rogan’s most recent Netflix special is often funny because Joe Rogan is a professional stand-up comedian, but if you look past the jokes themselves and focus on the targets he’s choosing, the same patterns emerge. Hillary, the #MeToo movement, why it sucks that he can’t call things “gay,” vegan bullies, sexism. Of all the things in the world for a comedian to joke about right now, why these? “I say shit I don’t mean because it’s funny,” he says during the special, which is something all comedians say, and is sort of true but also sort of not. People reveal their deepest selves in the subjects they keep revisiting, and the hills they choose to die on. With Rogan, you can often see and hear the tension between what he knows he’s supposed to believe and what he really thinks. Joe Rogan may be all about love, but beneath the surface he’s seething."
He also seems to believe he Knows how people should Behave, and how to accurately measure aggregate harm in society:
"Joe likes Jack. He likes Milo Yiannopoulos. He likes Alex Jones. He wants you to know that he doesn’t agree with much of what they say, but he also wants you to know that off camera they’re the nicest guys. If we all have fatal flaws, this is Joe’s: his insistence on seeing value in people even when he shouldn’t, even when they’ve forfeited any right to it, even when the harm outweighs the good. It comes from a generous place, but it amounts to careless cruelty. He just won’t write people off, and then he compounds the sin by throwing them a lifeline at the moment when they least deserve it."
And then finally capping it off with this gem:
"My Joe Rogan experience ended because he wore me out. He never shuts up. He talks and talks and talks. He doesn’t seem to grasp that not every thought inside his brain needs to be said out loud. It doesn’t occur to him to consider whether his contributions have value. He just speaks his mind. He just whips it out and drops it on the table."
If you're trying to make a point about the author, you should state it. All I see except for the brief mention of censorship is a collection of quotes.
I was following the convention of putting my comments in plain text, and quotes from the article within quotation marks (with what I consider key portions italicized for (my) emphasis).
Apologies that that wasn't clear, hopefully this explanation clears up any misunderstanding.
The idea that you have to not only be the "right" mouth (whatever the hell that means) but also _prove_ that you're the "right" mouth are the exact type of thought crime / virtue signaling principles that I think Rogan and his audience rallies against.
The author even further cements their bias when writing about how Rogan constantly talks about his left-wing views, but that his "actions" somehow point him to being more right-wing (though the author only points to things Rogan has _said_, but I digress) - as if Joe needs to do more to prove he's a left-wing ally (aka "virtue signaling") and the occasional right wing guest makes him worthy for "re-education" to make sure he becomes the "right mouth" for the right points.
I think you're misunderstanding. It doesn't count for squat because it generally won't be listened to if it comes out of the wrong mouth. Much like this point has been misunderstood by a whole chain of people below you circle jerking over this comment, seemingly because they are generally inclined to defend Joe Rogan.
While I'm no fan of Alex Jones, the tone of the article towards the end saddened me. The article seemed like it was approaching a genuinely insightful conclusion, but veered at the end in a somewhat jarring contradiction of the conclusion the first half was approaching.