Neil Young and Joni Mitchell may have lost money by taking their music off Spotify in protest of Joe Rogan's penchant for spreading COVID misinformation, but Spotify lost even more money; its stock tanked earlier this week. It also lost more musical artists; Graham Nash (who turns eighty today) and India.Arie pulled their music off Spotify as well. India.Arie pulled her music off for comments made on Rogan's show about race.)
So it should comes as no surprise that Rogan (above) apologized for having COVID deniers and vaccine skeptics on his podcast, and he has vowed to try to harder to present all points of view on COVID. While Rogan himself has an iffy stand on the vaccine (though he has usually dismissed it), he says that his main objective is to air as many different views on any given topic, and he says he hopes to give more time to COVID believers and vaccine supporters to balance out the debate.
"I'm not trying to promote misinformation. I’m not trying to be controversial," he said. "I've never tried to do anything with this podcast other than just talk to people and have interesting conversations."
That should be the end of the the issue, buy it won't be. Rogan now has to prove that he means it when he says he wants to broaden the conversation on this and any other topic. You know the old Russian proverb: Trust, but verify.
We'll be listening. Well, not literally, at least not for me.
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UPDATE: I have just learned that the comments made about rave on Joe Rogan's show were made by Rogan himself. He said of black people and their varying skin tones, and I quote: "Unless you're talking to someone who is like 100% African, from the darkest place, where they're not wearing any clothes all day, and they've developed all that melanin to protect themselves from the sun, you know, even the term 'Black' is weird." :-O
ANOTHER UPDATE: The music of Crosby, Stills and Nash is no longer on Spotify. CSN joined to support Neil Young despite Crosby being on the outs with the others.
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