Recently, Dr. Stephen Cha, commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Human Services, and Kaylee McGuire of the Department of Aging and Disability Services published a guest column in NJ.com calling out podcast host Joe Rogan by name. In the piece, they also criticized several other high-profile figures, including Kid Rock and Elon Musk, for using the R-word.
Their message was clear: the resurgence of the R-word represents a troubling step backward for disability rights.
“On a widely listened episode of ‘The Joe Rogan Experience,’ the host used the slur within seconds of the program’s start, celebrating its return as a cultural win,” the officials wrote. They didn’t stop with Rogan. Musician Kid Rock and Kanye West were also named for their recent public use of the term.
The criticism centers on a particular episode where Rogan appeared to celebrate the word’s return to everyday conversation. “Today, that woke nonsense is out the window. That word r*tard comes flying out of these kids’ mouths,” he said during the broadcast, framing its reemergence as “one of the great culture victories.”
For disability advocates and New Jersey lawmakers, this isn’t just about vocabulary. In 2010, the state took deliberate action to eliminate what officials described as “outdated and demeaning terminology” from its legal statutes, replacing it with “respectful, person-first language” like “intellectual disability.”
The commissioners positioned that legislative change as meaningful progress, now threatened by high-profile personalities normalizing language that many find harmful.
Researchers at Montclair State University documented a spike of more than 200 percent in online usage of the R-word following a Truth Social post from Donald Trump during his second term, in which the former and current president used the term publicly. Disability advocacy organizations quickly condemned what they characterized as an inhumane trend gaining momentum in public discourse.
This isn’t Rogan’s first experience with controversy over his choice of words. In 2022, he faced intense scrutiny when a compilation video surfaced showing him using the N-word 24 times across various episodes of his podcast. The backlash was swift and severe, with several prominent artists threatening to pull their music from Spotify, which exclusively hosts his show.
At the time, Rogan issued a public apology on Instagram. “I’m making this video to talk about the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly,” he said. “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 of 12 years of conversations of me on my podcast, and it’s all smushed together, and it looks horrible, even to me.”
