Joe Rogan’s decades-old stand-up material is circulating online again, this time drawing attention to a bit from his stint co-hosting Comedy Central’s The Man Show alongside Doug Stanhope in the early 2000s. In the routine, Rogan jokes about watching content featuring Traci Lords, the adult performer who famously used forged identification to enter the industry as a teenager.
Lords’ real age came to light in 1986, after which distributors pulled most of her early work from circulation in the United States.
During the set, Rogan said, “Who makes these random age limits? 21 to drink, 18 to vote, how can if a kid graduates college at 16 he’s a genius. But Traci Lords does some fantastic adult content at 16 and suddenly it’s wrong. It’s against the law. Listen to me, I’ve seen those videos and that was no way it was a [ ] girl.”
The Man Show originally ran from 1999 to 2004 and was created by Adam Carolla, Jimmy Kimmel, and producer Daniel Kellison. Kimmel and Carolla left the series in 2003, with Rogan and Stanhope subsequently taking over as hosts. Rogan also helped bring his longtime friend Eddie Bravo onto the show’s writing staff.
The resurfaced clip has prompted renewed discussion about how material from that era should be viewed today, particularly when jokes that were originally presented as comedy are taken out of their context and circulated decades later. Some have argued that the routine should be understood within the conventions of early-2000s stand-up, while others believe the subject matter itself warrants scrutiny regardless of when or why the joke was written.
The clip is also not the first piece of footage from The Man Show era to attract renewed attention years later. Kimmel, for example, faced criticism after old footage of him impersonating NBA player Karl Malone while wearing blackface resurfaced in 2017.
He addressed the controversy publicly in June 2020, saying, “There is nothing more important to me than your respect, and I apologize to those who were genuinely hurt or offended by the makeup I wore or the words I spoke.”
Rogan has not issued a comparable public statement specifically addressing the resurfaced Traci Lords material. The discussion has instead centered on several aspects of the clip, including the fact that The Man Show had a writing staff and that the routine was performed as comedy rather than presented as a literal statement of Rogan’s views.
Not everyone was willing to let the joke off the hook that easily. Some argued that regardless of who wrote the line or how many years have passed, the substance of what was said still deserves scrutiny, particularly given that Rogan has referenced watching Lords’ films on his podcast in the years since.
