On Michael Ian Black's Joe Rogan Criticism.
A rebuttal of Black's puritanical paradigm for comedy.
Michael Ian Black takes a fellow comedian to task over a joke in his August 5th piece, Joe Rogan says "faggot" and the crowd goes wild. (substack.com).
Here’s the section from Rogan’s new comedy special (Burn The Boats) that Black quotes:
“A lot of people say, ‘Hey man, you’re a fucking hypocrite ‘cause you’ll say the R word but you won’t say the N word? Yeah. You’ll say the R word but you won’t say the N word? Yeah! ‘Cause I’m more afraid of Black people than I am of retards! Duh! Don’t you know how jokes work, faggot? It’s all just supposed to be funsies!”
Does that provide the full context for the joke? No, but more on that later. There are two underlying assumptions that Black wants you to believe as he analyzes the joke:
He’s neutral when it comes to Joe Rogan (he’s not).
His focus is really on why the joke’s not funny (it really isn’t).
Abou That Joe
Black begins with a classic “bless his heart” paragraph.
I’m neither a fan nor a detractor of Joe Rogan. To me, he’s a popular, but largely irrelevant, entertainer. Sort of like Matt Gaetz. Within comedy circles, Rogan was never considered a great comic. I don’t even know if he was even considered a “good” comic, in the sense that his frat bro shtick was already tired by the time he found success as the aptly named “Joe” on NewsRadio thirty years ago.
For someone who is neither a fan nor a detractor, that’s a pretty damming indictment. He’s so indifferent that the first person who comes to mind is a politician we can safely assume Black despises. Even his attempt to balance the criticism is conveyed with a series of backhanded compliments.
There’s no doubt, however, that he’s a natural broadcaster. His podcast is insanely popular making Joe Rogan insanely rich. While I’ve never sat through an entire eighteen-hour episode, I’ve watched enough clips to get a sense of his winning vibe as an everyman asking questions of people smarter than he’ll ever hope to be. I mean that sincerely; it works and his willingness to engage with offbeat or fringe guests without (often to his detriment) judgment is a great formula.
Black repeatedly resorts to taking cheap shots at Rogan’s expense. Regardless of whether it’s carefully or clumsily constructed, these stereotypical quips attempt to create a caricature of Rogan. It is present throughout the column with phrases like:
“frat bro shtick”
“everyman asking questions of people smarter than he’ll ever hope to be”
“my ‘roided-up brother”
“And, like Rogan, it’s stupid”
“Rogan’s schtick was already tired when he first achieved mainstream success, his current “white dude pity party” is just as tired now”
You have to wonder if Black’s column ended only because he ran out of different ways to imply or directly call Rogan a dumb white guy.
There’s nothing wrong with those lines. After all, banning lazy jokes and stereotype driven quips would eliminate about 86% of Speak Truth To Flour content. Using it here undermines the sincerity of Black’s complaint, which he alludes to later in the piece when claiming “I’m not offended in any sense other than I’m offended at Rogan’s laziness and cruelty.” Hey you stupid white guy why can’t you be sensitive and show respect to all people regardless of their identity is an…interesting tactic.
Black moves on to Rogan’s comedy club in Austin, Texas.
Rogan has also made something of a name for himself as one of the self-appointed leaders of anti-wokeism, going so far as to open a comedy club in Austin called “The Comedy Mothership,” whose mission is to be a censorship-free safe space for comedians too cowed by the woke mob to perform, I guess, the kind of jokes that Rogan told above.
It would be one thing if Black was frustrated over the emergence of an outlet that expresses political/ideological views which differed from his. This is not Newsmax or The Daily Wire that’s drawn Black’s ire here: it’s just a comedy club. Regardless of Rogan’s views or any perceived culture associated with the club, shouldn’t a professional comedian like Black celebrate the net gain in opportunities for comics? Moreover, there’s nothing here to suggest that the Mothership is ideologically slanted. The only complaint that Black articulates is that the club commits the sin of being a (checks notes) … “censorship-free safe space.” That’s a bad thing?
Rogan actually addresses this during the special.
But one of the weird things about owning a comedy club is other people’s reactions to it. I think Fox News had the dumbest reaction. They’re like, “Joe Rogan created an anti-woke comedy club.” I’m like, oh you mean a comedy club? Like a regular one? That’s like saying I got a meat-eating steakhouse.
While the overuse of the term “woke” has eroded any clarity on what it precisely endorses, one thing is certain: it requires an all-encompassing adoption of whatever beliefs that are held. That mindset is reminiscent of what former President George W. Bush told the world after September 11th, “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Any positives Rogan’s Comedy Mothership contributes to the industry are irrelevant if the club isn’t marching in lockstep under the woke doctrine.
About That Joke
Let me be clear: I’m all for comedians saying whichever words they like, regardless of the letters with which they begin. Say whatever you want, my ‘roided-up brother, but at least make a joke. What is the joke here?
Let me be clear: Never trust anything anyone ever says after the phrase “let me be clear.” You have to admire the gravitas of someone claiming they are all for comedians using whichever words they like but doing so in a post where the other 900 or so words are dedicated to groaning over the use of certain words.
Nothing’s less funny than explaining a joke of course, so let’s do that. The premise of the joke is that people accuse Rogan of hypocrisy because he’ll say “the R word but not the N word.”
So, what do we know about Rogan from the set-up to the joke? Apparently, that the people who enjoy Rogan would prefer that he used the N word more often.
So that’s the set-up: Rogan’s people want him to attack not just the mentally disabled but Black people, too. His response? The reason he doesn’t use the “N word” (a phrase I absolutely loathe, but I understand its utility), is because he’s too scared of Black people to say it.
This is the first attempt to address the comedic value, unless you count Black previously claiming “Within comedy circles, Rogan was never considered a great comic.” (In the argumentation family tree, within comedy circles is a second cousin of experts say.) Unfortunately, he’s offering the shallowest possible interpretation of the joke here. This wasn’t a standalone joke. It was the ending to a prolonged bit about stigma that surrounds certain words. Without giving away multiple punchlines, Rogan begins by talking about this controversy:
Rogan explains that all or most of the clips were of him directly quoting the works of others, including song lyrics and bits from other comedians. He transitions into a series of jokes about all the different ways we use words like “retarded” and “faggot” without meaning to reference the people those terms are typically associated with. He also looks at situations where we actually use them affectionately and/or with people in our lives that we care deeply about. The use of “faggot” in the part Black quotes serves as a callback to an earlier part of the bit. The crowd isn’t going wild because Rogan says that word, they go wild because it’s a payoff to everything that came before.
By placing all the focus on the terms used by Rogan and interpreting the joke in the most obtuse, literal way possible, Black himself becomes the butt of the joke. Rogan presents a complicated assessment of words that Michael Ian Black is either incapable of understanding or unwilling to acknowledge. Words do not exist in a vacuum. They don’t share the same static quality that numbers do. Participants, situation, and intent matter.
Why does he ignore everything leading up to that quoted section? We don’t know if it was simply being lazy (he only saw the quoted part somewhere and didn’t bother to research further) or a deliberate choice. Even if we exclude the rest of the bit Black still doesn’t get the quoted section. It’s not a joke about hypocrisy and definitely isn’t appealing to the crowd’s innate desire to get to be more racist, as Black asserts. It’s a quip about how ridiculous it can be to try to comprehend the intricate hierarchy and etiquette for “offensive” words.
Of course, none of this really addresses Black’s central claim that the joke isn’t funny. That’s because, despite all of Michael Ian’s assurances to the contrary, he doesn’t care about that. Perhaps the closest he comes is a discussion about whether Rogan’s comedy is “edgy” and comparing him to vintage comics (Don Rickles, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce). Ultimately, Black isn’t critiquing the comedic worth of the joke, in and of itself. There are no discussions of style, like volume, pitch or Rogan’s pacing and pausing. He isn’t breaking down the sequence of lines or structure of the joke.
Black does offer some alternative content for the joke.
So, there’s a way in which this joke could work as social commentary, I guess, if Rogan went on to talk about why he’s scared of Black people (but unafraid of the mentally disabled.) There might be some good jokes there. Maybe their food is too spicy? Maybe they dress too well?
Yeah, this ain’t it chief. What other kind of hilarious comedy routines could you write if you followed Michael Ian Black’s (or Blackian?) strategy for jokes?
So I got married recently and just wait till I tell you about my new wife. She’s highly empathetic and her cooking is amazing.
The other night a couple of Mormons came knocking on my door. Let me tell you, when I say they were dressed professionally, I mean they were very well dressed. They started talking to me about the gospel of Jesus Christ and I kept thinking to myself, wow, these two are really passionate about their beliefs.
Rogan has a massive platform and, like Lenny Bruce or Louis CK (I am not ignoring Louis’s shitty behavior, which I have written about here) Rogan could use the opportunity to deconstruct the impotency of bigotry, and the power of language to harm others. If Rogan had taken his joke the next step and used it to explore his own internalized racism and homophobia, that might have been interesting. It might have been good. It might even have been, dare I say, funsies?
There’s no scenario where that is funsies. Even if you subscribe to the Many-Worlds Theory, you could visit alternative universe after alternative universe and never find one where deconstructing the impotency of bigotry is associated with funsies.
Returning to Black’s referencing of vintage comics, you can picture Michael Ian travelling back in time and confronting Rodney Dangerfield as he walks off stage after a set. “Rodney, that stewardess joke you made wasn’t funny because it failed to both acknowledge and rebuke our unconscious gender bias regarding women in the workplace.”
This is Black’s true intent. He’s not criticizing the joke because it isn’t funny, he’s criticizing the joke because it doesn’t match his own ideology. Black isn’t offering advice on how to punch up a joke, he’s demanding that Rogan tell a different joke. A lay person passing judgment on a comic or joke because they don’t agree with it is regrettable. A professional comedian doing the same is unconscionable.
As Rogan says during the special, “Just jokes folks, no one’s getting hurt.”