Joe Rogan Releases Statement Addressing N Word Usage In The Past

Variety has claimed  that Spotify shares dropped by 6%  between January 26 and January 28 after Neil Young made the announcement he would be pulling his music from them for refusing to deplatform Joe Rogan..

“Shares of Spotify fell 6% from Jan. 26-28. Over the same time period, the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index rose 1.7% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.1%. For the sake of comparison, Netflix’s stock recovered a bit, up 4.9% over the last three days, after getting hammered following its Jan. 20 earnings report.”

And Rogan is certainly feeling the heat. In spite of having previously published a statement that addresses the controversy – and spotify adding a disclaimer Rogan has opted to now issue a second statement.

In the statement Rogan explains:

“Hello friends. I’m making this video to talk about the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly. There’s a video that’s out, that’s a compilation of me saying the N word. It’s a video that’s made of clips taken out of context of me have 12 years of conversations on my podcast, and it’s all smushed together. And it looks f–king horrible, even to me. Now, I know that to most people, there’s no context where a white person is ever allowed to say that word, nevermind publicly on a podcast. And I agree with that. Now, I haven’t said it in years. But for a long time, when I would bring that word up, like if it would come up in conversation and stain, instead of saying the N word, I would just say the word I thought as long as it was in context, people would understand what I was doing. ”

The compilation itself is pretty damning:

 

But Rogan insists it was all in context:

“And how times have changed so much since then, or about how Richard Pryor use it as one of the titles of one of his albums. Or I was quoting a Lenny Bruce bit, or I was quoting Paul Mooney bit or I was talking about Quentin Tarantino used it repeatedly in Pulp Fiction, or I was talking about how a Netflix executive ironically, used it, because he was trying to compare it to another offensive word.”

 

“And he said it out loud, and they fired him. I’m not calling anybody, we’re just saying the word out loud. I was also talking about how there’s not another word like it in the entire English language. Because it’s a word where only one group of people is allowed to use it, they can use in so many different ways. Like have a white person says that word, it’s racist and toxic. But a black person can use it. And it can be a punchline, it could be a term of endearment, it could be lyrics to a rap song, it could be a positive affirmation. It’s a very unusual word. But it’s not my word to use. I’m well aware of that now.”

“But for years, I used it in that manner. I never use it to be racist, because I’m not racist. But whenever you’re in a situation where you have to say, I’m not racist, you fucked up. And I clearly have fucked up. And that’s my intention to express myself in this video to say, there’s nothing I can do to take that back. That I wish I could. Obviously, that’s not possible. I do hope that if anything, that this can be a teachable moment, because I never thought it would ever be taken out of context and put in a video like that. And now that it is, holy shit, it looks bad. And it’s part of also me doing this podcast for 1000s of hours, 1000s of episodes, over 12 years, I said a lot of fucking stupid shit, which is fine when you talk about most things, but not when you’re talking about race. And there’s another clip that I have to address. ”

“There’s a clip from 11 years ago, I was telling a story on the podcast about how me and my friend Tommy and his girlfriend, we got really high, we’re in Philadelphia, and we went to go see Planet of the Apes. And we didn’t know where we’re going. We just got dropped off by a cab, and we got dropped off in this all black neighborhood. And I was trying to make the story entertaining. And I said, we got out. And it was like we were in Africa. Like we were in Planet of the Apes. I did not nor would I ever say that black people are apes, but it sure fucking sounded like that. And I immediately afterwards said, that’s a racist thing to say. Planet of the Apes wasn’t even in Africa. I was just saying, there’s a lot of black people there. But then I went on to talk about what a positive experience it was and how much fun it was to go to see this movie in a black neighborhood. It wasn’t a racist story, but it sounded terrible. ”

“And like I said, you can have clunky stories about anything, but not about race. And so I deleted that whole podcast, but obviously somebody made a clip out of it and taken out of context. It looks tough, but it looks terrible, even in context, it’s a fucking idiotic thing to say. And I was just trying to be entertaining. I certainly wasn’t trying to be racist, and I certainly would never want to offend someone for entertainment with something as stupid as racism.”

“My hope is that, look, I can’t go back in time and change what I’ve said. I wish I could obviously that’s not possible. But I do hope that this can be a teachable moment. For anybody that doesn’t realize how offensive that word can be coming out of a white person’s mouth, in context or out of context. My sincere and humble apologies. I wish there was more that I could say. But all of this is just me talking from the bottom of my heart makes me sick watching that video. But hopefully, at least some of you will accept this and understand where I’m coming from. My apologies. And much love my sincere deepest apologies and much love”

 

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