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You can't have your schtick and eat it too

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They say everything is relative, but Jon Stewart seems to be taking it to the absurd, comparing his stance on Iraq with Joe Rogan's stance on vaccines and effective treatments.  Stewart is one of many comics who have come out against "cancel culture," fearing that they will have nothing left to make fun of.  After all, comedy is all about being irreverent.  However, it is a little different when comics purposefully spread disinformation, getting paid $100 million in the process.  This is what musicians like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are complaining about, and why they pulled their music from Spotify.  It isn't so much about cancel culture as it is about stating your position, which is what Jon has done many times in the past.  These musicians knew perfectly well Daniel Ek would never pull Joe Rogan.

One of the things COVID has revealed is the sad nature of our society today.  We no longer seem to accept facts as binding, but rather as something we can play with and bend to suit our arguments.  This is what galled so many people about Rogan's lengthy interview with Dr. Robert Malone.  It was filled with so much misleading information and falsehoods that you could spend weeks parceling it out.  Here is a brief fact check by Linda Qiu for the NY Times.  Not that it matters, as those watching The Rogan Experience see Dr. Malone as a respected virologist, one that has been making the rounds on conservative podcasts, and hence knows what he is talking about, so he must be right.

This is no longer about comedy at this point.  Joe isn't doing a half-hour fake news broadcast like Jon did for Comedy Central for so many years.  He's conducting interviews, with the occasional wisecrack, but for the most part dead serious.  He even made himself a Guinea pig at one point by taking Ivermectin  to combat his reported case of COVID-19.  In his interview with Malone, he cited a study done in the Uttar Pradesh province of India, where cases "flatlined" after using Ivermectin as a prophylactic.  This example didn't bear up well under scrutiny.  However, Jon feels his friend is being unfairly targeted in the media just the same.

If Jon had spread such blatantly false information on The Daily Show he would have been similarly called out.  Much of the misinformation surrounding the impending invasion of Iraq was coming out of the White House, as we had multiple independent sources that discredited the Bush administration's claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, i.e chemical and biological agents.  After all, the UN had inspection teams on the ground in Iraq.  Their findings were bore out by subsequent inspections after the invasion.  So, Jon wasn't peddling misinformation, and even if he was, he was doing so within the context of a self-described comedy news segment.

Joe has no such excuse.  He has repeatedly stated he is presenting alternative opinions, which he apparently subscribes to himself.  In this sense, he is more like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity than he is Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah.  There is no disclaimer for his Spotify podcast that this is comedy, and judging from my conservative friends' posts on facebook it is not taken as such.  His interview with Dr. Malone has gone viral.

What Jon also fails to note is that this is part of a concerted effort to discredit the White House policy on COVID.  Dr. Malone didn't first appear on The Joe Rogan Experience.  He initially popped up on Steve Bannon's podcast last August, and has been making the rounds ever since.  Rogan was simply his latest stop, but it has proven to be his most successful outing.  He is now the darling of the Right-wing, often cited in Congressional floor debates over COVID policies.

In this sense, it isn't much different than the Bush administration's attempt to convince everyone that Iraq had WMD's and that a preemptive strike was necessary if we didn't want Saddam Hussein to unleash these alleged biological and chemical weapons on the world.  Colin Powell was used as the front man for the administration at the United Nations, which he later deeply regretted.  At one point, he pulled out a vile of anthrax, which he claimed Hussein had access to.  We can only hope it wasn't the real thing he had in his hand.  Unable to convince the UN Security Council, the Bush administration launched the war with its "coalition of the willing."  The United States was very much in the minority on this war, and paid huge consequences for it.

So, why is Jon so anxious to defend Joe Rogan, and call out musicians for their principled stands?  Seems to me that the Comedy Club is not just a venue but a union of sorts, and that these comics will defend each other come hell or high water.  They see themselves as having some kind of autonomy from public norms, even when they aren't doing comedy.  It doesn't matter if their provocative positions are harmful to others, physically or emotionally, that's what comedy is all about!

I'm sorry, Jon, that doesn't wash.  You can't have your schtick and eat it too.  In other words, you have to accept the consequences for your brand of humor. 

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