Joe Rogan - Mike Ward was Fined $40,000 for a Joke

Two, one. Hello, Mike. Hey, Joe. Hello, Pant. Pantellus. Pant. You can call me Pant. Pant. Pantellus. Pantellus. One word. Yeah, one word. Like Roseanne? Or like... Or Godzilla. Okay. Cool. Alright, dude. Well, nice to meet you guys. Well, I've met you before. But nice to meet you. For people who don't know, let's just give them right off the bat. Your story, what happened to you, how you got in trouble in Canada for a joke. Yeah. Real trouble. Yeah, real trouble. I got fine $42,000 Canadian or American? Canadian. Which was like now... It's close to $42,000 in American reference. It was, yeah, let's say like $38,000 American. And there's a thing in Canada called the Human Rights Commission that every province has one of those. I had a joke about a little boy that was famous. He was a singer. He was a disabled boy. And the joke, it wasn't even that mean. It was just this little kid that was disabled. And he was kind of like a Make-A-Wish foundation type kid. Right. And he was famous in Canada? He was famous in French Canada. He had sang for the Pope. And the joke was, like I was super happy for him at first. This little deaf boy, he's dying. His dream was to sing for the Pope. And then he became like front page news on, you know, everywhere in Montreal. And then he got a record deal. And then he sang for the Canadians. Then he came out with a book. And then at the end I was like, why isn't he dead yet? Like wasn't he supposed to die? That's just the basic joke. Like he's a little kid. A dark joke. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's what I do is dark humor. Like I'm not Ray Romano, right? So I did that joke and never did that joke on TV. Did that joke in a special. That it didn't air on TV. I cut a couple of things out for TV. But I get a letter from the human rights people saying, you owe 80. At first it was they wanted 82,000 for the joke. They were like, we listened to the joke. We think that this boy's family deserves 82,000 because of this joke. What a weird number. Yeah. And I thought they were like, this is how fucking stupid I am. When I got the letter and I saw Human Rights Commission, I thought I was getting an award or a prize or something. Because I do a lot of benefits and stuff for I raise money for disabled people. So I was like, fuck, it's a bad time. They recognize me as a good dude. Oh my God. I read this and then I called my manager and I'm like, fuck, they want 80,000. And we were like, okay, let's just get the best lawyer we can. So I found the best lawyer in Canada that does free speech stuff, met him. And he told me the reason why it was 80,000. 80,000 is a weird number. If they ask 2 million, you're going to fight it. But 80,000 is big enough to kind of scare you, but not enough to really scare you. So you'll go like, look, okay, can I give you a 40? And then they'll go, okay, give me 40. Can I ask you a question? So this bit, you said you cut it from the special, right? So how did they know about it? I did this interview on TV and the reporter talked about the bit. He had never seen the bit. Oh, so how did he know about the bit? Someone told him about the bit. But the bit was in the special. So it was on the internet. Oh, so you could watch it? Yeah, you could watch it on the internet. And this special had been in movie theaters in Canada. It's just when we sold it on TV. Is this in French or in English? Yeah, it was in French. That's why it was weird. Whenever people were talking about the bit, there were like, it was especially in Canada and in England, where it's very left leaning, people were talking shit about the bit. And I was like, you can't even understand that joke. It's in a language you don't speak about a person you don't know. So people almost made it look like I just picked this random disabled boy and I was making fun of his disability. But I was making fun of the fact that he had become famous because everyone thought he was dying and then he didn't die, which is a, you know, for him. It's a dark joke. That's all it is. It's not even that particularly mean. No. It's a question, really. You're not saying, hey, why don't you die? I spent money, you little fuck. You didn't say that. No, you said, how come he's alive? Yeah, exactly. And when I did the thing for TV, I cut a couple of things out that I thought could get me in trouble because I figured, you know, when you put out a special and people pay for the special, you should be allowed. And I still think this and, you know, this, I think everyone should think this way. If like, if you put out a special, you should be allowed to say whatever the fuck you want to say. But if you sell your special to like CBS or ABC, then of course they're going to cut shit out. Of course. But like your last special on Netflix, it'd be crazy if Netflix said, look, Joe, we fucking loved your special, but this, you got to cut this out. You got to cut this out. Well, to Netflix credit, that's one of the reasons why they're so amazing. They don't give you hardly any input at all. They go, hey, we really liked it. It's like they don't do anything. Yeah. They, you know, I had some controversial shit in this one and my last one. They just let it go. It's much appreciated. Yeah.