After stirring up controversy last week by defending Joe Rogan from calls to censor or cancel the podcaster from Spotify, comedian Jon Stewart has once again dipped back into the situation, which he now jokingly calls “Rogan-gate.” On the latest episode of The Problem with Jon Stewart podcast, the former Daily Show host did admit to being too quick to “grant more understanding and nuance” to Rogan because he personally knows the guy. While interviewing experts, Stewart conceded that there are valid criticisms to be made about the misinformation Rogan spreads on his show. However, things took a turn.
The root of Stewart’s issue is that he’s concerned with “who gets to decide” who has a platform, and that goes beyond just the controversy over Rogan. But to emphasize his point, Stewart brought him his anti-Iraq War stance from the 2000s, which he says was also deemed “misinformation” at the time and could’ve led to Viacom pulling him off the air. Uh, Jon, where are you going with this? Via Mediaite:
“I mean, in the Iraq War, I was on the side of what you would think, on the mainstream, is misinformation. I was promoting what they would call misinformation but it turned out to be right years later,” he continued. “And the establishment media was wrong, and not only were they wrong in some respects, you could make the case that they enabled a war that killed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people and never paid a price for it and never had accountability.”
We could be very wrong here. We could. Or maybe he just phrased his point weirdly. But… is Jon Stewart positing that Rogan’s “misinformation” about COVID could also one day be proven right, and therefore, he should be allowed to continue to spread it just in case? Is that what happened here?
Hmm… Nope. Do not like it.
(Via Mediaite)