When comments hit the mark

The comments section is where I usually find solace

As a reminder, I am a Democrat. I am also a longtime Neil Young fan. When the Joe Rogan story broke the other night, and Neil Young said it was either him or Joe on Spotify, my husband and I got in an argument at the dinner table. It started slowly with my husband saying he wished Joe Rogan didn’t have a platform. I was stupefied and said, so now the left’s blanket response to hearing things we don’t like is to silence them? This man has 100 million listeners and because we don’t like something he’s saying, he should have a gag stuffed in his mouth? Cut off from speaking? Our argument grew heated and culminated in me saying (somewhat shrilly, I’ll admit) that I didn’t know how much longer I could stay here in leftist California if this is what the left has come to. There was silence in the room. My husband knew I was serious. I still don’t know how serious I am about moving.

All this as a preamble to: this morning, I read this article in the Washington Post, the headline of which was:

“I’m disgusted by Joe Rogan’s weak apology. My former colleague’s death at 47 makes it worse….People are dying because of Covid misinformation that Spotify packages as glib podcast fodder.”

This journalist, Margaret Sullivan, believes that Joe Rogan and Spotify are partly responsible for her the death of her colleague — a person who was obese, a group of people who, BTW, should have been protected as much as possible during all this, but the media refused to say that out loud and instead acted as if the MUCH higher risks from obesity couldn't be stated aloud because that would be fat-shaming, and so instead shouted from every headline, “Emergency!! We could ALL die from Covid!! You are ALL in danger no matter your age, health status, or weight!” They told us all to freak out and be scared of dying, even though common sense told many of us that we probably didn’t need to, which led to many of us growing skeptical about the media, which led to people turning to other sources of information, people who dared question the media’s party line. Enter Joe Rogan.

I was fuming about this article. Then I read this comment in the comment section:

“Rogan didn’t seem sincere enough in his apology? I can’t even believe we are still playing this game. The truth is that no apology would’ve been sufficient to you, so stop pretending there is any value to be had in this public shaming ritual. You are a journalist of some power and yet you use that power to reduce a complicated issue to just another display of virtue signaling. The argument alleging Joe Rogan’s responsibility for your friend’s death is much weaker than the media’s responsibility for why so many people like your friend did not trust the selective information the media has been selling. Regain public trust by being worthy of it.”

Thank you, commentor, for saying this so well and making me feel less insane.