by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Because everything is fucked, we find ourselves in a situation where Joe Rogan is the voice for millions of mostly white mostly men who feel disenfranchise. What’s interesting is Rogan is a gateway drug to the fascist MAGA New Right. One of his quirk is he’s not exactly a fan of Saturday Night Live.
So, he brings on all these washed up, has been comics who also hate SNL. Rogan often asks leading questions about SNL in hopes that people will agree with him and shit on SNL.
It seems like this probably comes from Rogan’s secret longing to have been on SNL at some point in the past. SNL is a sink-or-swim workplace and this is something that is latched on by Rogan whenever he criticizes the show.
But the key thing is, Rogan’s hatred of SNL is a prism for us his overall worldview. Rogan is a standup comic who was a minor player on Newsradio decades ago. It’s just he’s lucky that he’s able to hide who he is by wrapping everything in an earnest masculinity that really appeals to bros who think they’re at risk of being canceled by “the woke cancel culture mob.”
Yet, I think we need to step back and appricate who Rogan really is. I would suggest that the best equivalent would be Jon Stewart at his height. Both men love the power they have, but whenever there’s any blowback on stray comment he makes, he falls back to “but I’m a comic!” as a defense.
Anyway, I dunno. The whole situation is annoying.
