If Joe Roganâs comments and use of the N-word are to be taken as seriously as some seem to want to take them then what do we do with Mark Wahlberg?
Should people be expelled from society for any and every use of the N-word?
By Matthew Fraser, Editor in Chief
If any one man has consistently been at the centre of controversy over the past few years, it has been Joe Rogan. Whether as the man who helped make Jordan Peterson become a household name or his connection to right-wing firebrands and odious characters like Gavin McInnes, Rogan has been an easy name to throw in and start a problematic conversation. Most recently, Rogan has earned himself a title as a heavyweight misinformation champ due to his vaccine opinions and COVID treatments. However, he has once again been accused of holding racially prejudiced ideas.
Recently, a compilation video resurfaced of the podcaster saying the N-word over the years on his podcast; alongside that video, another video resurfaced of him making crude comments about a black neighbourhood where he saw the movie The Planet of the Apes. In respect to his Planet of the Apes comments, Rogan apologized in the same video clip immediately after the comments while in the compilation video an apology was not included. However, shortly after these videos went viral, Rogan recorded and released an apology.
In his apology, Rogan refers to the video as the âmost regretful and shameful thingâ for which he has had to publicly atone. However, even his apology has not been enough as many have continued to call for Roganâs cancellation on Spotify while CNN recently compared Roganâs past use of the N-word to both the January 6 insurrection and the Rwandan genocide. But I have started to wonder if this is really what people want and if so, are they willing to stick by the guaranteed results?
If Roganâs comments and use of the N-word are to be taken as seriously as some seem to want to take them then what do we do with Mark Wahlberg? In 1986, while Wahlberg was 15, he and a group of white friends began throwing rocks at a group of black children and chasing them. According to reports from The Guardian, Wahlberg and his group were heard shouting âKill the n—ersâ throughout the attack. This attackâamongst othersâcame to light when Wahlberg appealed for a pardon in 2014.
Roughly two years later in 1988, Wahlberg would assault two Vietnamese men in one night, beating the first with a stick until the man lost consciousness and the stick broke before hitting the second man so brutally that he thought he had blinded the man. The second man was injured so severely that Wahlberg was charged with attempted murder.
Kristyn Atwood was one of the children Wahlberg assaulted that day in 1986 and when she spoke to the Associated Press she stated: âI donât really care who he is. It doesnât make him any [sic] exception. If youâre a racist, youâre always going to be a racist. And for him to want to erase it I just think itâs wrong.â This seems to be the opinion of those who wish to cancel Rogan for his use of the N-word, but the two situations are clearly not the same. Wahlberg committed racially motivated violence against people while Rogan used a word in a context he initially thought was defensible. Even if you want to hold Rogan to account, Wahlberg was charged for attempted murder based on the racially motivated assault he committed. If Rogan is bad, Wahlberg must be worse.
But it’s not just Rogan who has used insensitive language in the past, Matt Damon recently made an admission that invited an extraordinary amount of condemnation upon him. In an interview released in early August of 2021, Damon revealed that he had only recently stopped using the âf-slur for a homosexualâ after he told his daughter a joke that featured it and she wrote him a âvery long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous.â As reported by NBC News Damon allegedly only retired the slur after this conversation with his daughter. Though Damon attempted to backtrack and claim he had not been personally using the slur in his life, the damage had been done.
I would certainly accept an argument that Wahlbergâs crimes were much worse than Roganâs but in the case of Damon, things are much more comparable, and in a sense more hurtful. Damonâs use of the F-slur seems to be more recent than Roganâs use of the N-word and it appears that he had been using it in front of his kids. Thatâs pretty bad. So if people like Neil Young and India Arie felt the need to pull their music from Spotify over Rogan, actors like Will Smith and Elliot Page should pull their work from Netflix or refuse to work with Universal Studios in response to Wahlberg and Damon.
However, this might just showcase an underlying flaw to the strategy used to target Rogan. I suspect that if white people were honest with themselves, they would be fully aware that if the standard became using one slur in any circumstance should get you fired, next to no white people would have jobs. The white unemployment rate might literally hit 80 percent overnight.
President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden have both been exposed for using the N-word and if the context was not important for Rogan, it should be equally unimportant for the Bidenâs. If you want to be moral, Joe Bidenâs political career has been infinitely worse for black people than anything Rogan could ever dream of doing. Additionally, PM Trudeau wore blackface repeatedly and that is certainly as offensive as the N-word so he should be jobless too. I would wager that there is an extraordinarily slim group of white people who can claim to have never used a slur or dressed in a racially insensitive manner.
However, the most interesting question may have been the one posed by Charlamagne Tha God; what do people want to happen to Joe Rogan and any other white person who gets exposed for currently or previously saying the N-word? This wonât be the last time someone gets exposed for this, so how do we want to address it in the future. If the answer is cancellation, there wonât be very much for anyone to watch or listen to in the near future, I can promise you that much.
