You may never know what it’s like to enrage a growing number of living legends, but then you’re probably not Joe Rogan. Over the last week, the former host of a show in which people ate bugs has been called out for his lack of medical expertise, particularly when it comes to all the COVID misinformation he’s spread on his absurdly popular podcast. It started with Neil Young, who had untold hours of music yanked from Spotify, home to Rogan’s show. Joni Mitchell followed suit, as did Young’s old bandmates, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash.
Sharon Stone isn’t on Spotify, nor is she a musician, but that doesn’t mean that the Oscar-nominated actress is not enraged that Rogan has a very large platform on which he spews dangerous nonsense concerning a once-in-a-century public health crisis. So instead of yanking music from a streamer, she settled for canceling her subscription. And telling him where to go.
I’m w @Neilyoung cancel my @Spotify accounts in the name of Truth
— Sharon Stone (@sharonstone) January 28, 2022
“I just want to say COVID is not an opinion-based situation and Mr. Rogan thinking that his opinion or a disclaimer for the lives that he personally has affected and caused losses of, it’s not an opinion,” the star, whose humanitarian work includes helping people with HIV/AIDS, told TMZ. “Mr. Rogan is risking people’s lives with his idiocy and his professing that his thoughts about COVID are opinions, they aren’t opinions.”
Amidst mounting pressure in the wake of an escalating exodus from their coffers, Spotify announced they were putting disclaimers on podcast episodes concerning COVID. But that wasn’t enough for Stone.
“He should put a disclaimer that he’s an asshole and that his behavior is dangerous,” she said.
Though Rogan could have played hardball, he did release a kind of apology on Sunday, promising to do better to balance misinformation with actual information. (He then proceeded to share a debunked article.) While his mea culpa was good enough for Dwayne Johnson, clearly the iconic star of Basic Instinct thought otherwise.
(Via TMZ)