There was a compilation video of Joe Rogan using the n-word in older episodes of his show making the rounds this weekend. Just for the record, I didn’t see the video until this morning, and even then I could only find part of it, but it clearly wasn’t fake because Rogan wound up deleting a significant number of old episodes off of the platform and issuing a five-minute apology on Instagram, though he did say that the instances of him saying the word were taken out of context. This led to yet another round of complaints and demands that Spotify remove his show from their service. But Spotify CEO Daniel Ek isn’t budging from his previous position on the issue. While he was critical of Rogan’s past language, he informed his employees yesterday that Rogan was not going to be canceled, saying that he does not believe that silencing Rogan’s voice is the answer. (Associated Press)

Joe Rogan’s mouth has put Spotify in a tough spot, but the streaming giant is apparently not ready to part ways with the popular podcast host despite intense criticism over his anti-coronavirus vaccine comments and racial slurs.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said in a message to employees released Sunday that the company would not part ways with Rogan.

“While I strongly condemn what Joe has said and I agree with his decision to remove past episodes from our platform, I realize some will want more,” Ek said in the note. “And I want to make one point very clear – I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer.”

Ek went on to write that “canceling voices is a slippery slope.” But he did support removing the episodes featured in the compilation clip.

Based on the portion of the video that I was able to find, there isn’t much to go on. It’s chopped up so badly that each bleeped instance lasts barely a second or two. It seems obvious that it was compiled by someone trying to get him canceled, but when you chop someone’s comments up that badly there is always the question of “context” that Rogan already raised.

Unfortunately, in the current climate of social justice and all the rest, there is no room for any sort of “context” when it comes to the n-word. It’s just been accepted that no white person is ever allowed to say it while Black rappers can fill their songs with it from cover to cover. I’ll leave you to be the judge of how right or wrong that may be, but I will say that in a more rational world, there would be a significant difference between one person calling a Black person the n-word and a person who invokes the word as part of a discussion about race and language. From the little that can be heard in the compilation video, it sounds a lot more like the latter.

In barely one day, however, the focus of this debate has almost entirely shifted from the video itself to how Spotify will handle the situation. In very dramatic tones, artists and critics are characterizing this as a “defining moment” for Spotify and “where the line is drawn” for social media platforms. I would simply note that there have been some liberals who have been found to have old tweets and posts where they used very politically incorrect language in the past who have been allowed to apologize and move on.

In another interesting twist, it was only a few weeks ago that a white, Democratic state representative in New Hampshire used the n-word repeatedly in the assembly chambers while talking to a teenage Black activist. While she was removed from a committee seat and from the progressive caucus, she’s still in office. And what was the defense raised on her behalf by some fellow Democrats? You have to consider this in context.

Apologies and “moving on” won’t be the case with Rogan, apparently. The current breathless conversations taking place in the MSM and on social media have determined that anyone not supporting the complete and total cancellation of Rogan in every aspect of polite society will now be one of “the bad people” who must be defeated to save democracy or something. I really wish I could act more surprised over the response to this, but that’s just the 2020s in a nutshell, or so it seems.