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.
"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."
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.
A statement is no more or less true for having been uttered by Einstein or by Stalin.
Nicely put.
Traditional media is all about opinions and to tell you what you think. Quick! Put this idea in this box! If you think this then you must be that. There is not enough room for people to be wrong or explore alternative ideas. There is such angst, as if the society was so fragile that one badly categorized idea would make all the society crumble. Quick, it has to be correct on the spot before it spreads further!
The irony is that the article recognized that but then couldn't help himself to condescend to the public and Joe Rogan at the end. It gave a pretty good description of the Joe Rogan experience and then failed at replicating it.