Joe Rogan on the Roseanne Backlash

and was the most troubled person in the world. Well, that's my defense of Roseanne. You know, all these people are coming after Roseanne. I'm like, you don't understand. She's batshit. She's not just batshit. She got in a car accident. She has severe brain damage. She's on all sorts of medications. She has multiple personality disorder. She's drinking. She's on Ambien. And she's 70 years old. What the fuck do you want? Right. What do you want from this lady? You know, and you spoke that way. And so did Norm. You know, Norm talked about Louis and Roseanne. And the same way you're like, yo, man, she's batshit crazy, first of all. Like, if you're going to her for, you know, if you're going to her for political discourse, you might want to reevaluate your life. Problems on you. That's your fault. Yeah, it's not her. That's your fault at some point. Yeah, and that doesn't mean either one of us agree with exactly what you wrote. It's just how she got there. But that's also why she's so funny. You know, if you go back and watch Roseanne in the early days. Bro, that show was fucking heavy. It was a great show. And her stand up, even before that, was fantastic. I put her in the top 20 of all time stand ups. She was brilliant. She was brilliant. She's also a monster man. Like, there was nobody like her before. Like, she was just this brash, I don't give a fuck. She was like a man. Yeah, man. Like, she'd kill like a world class stand up. Sure. I mean, I remember like when that show came on, just seeing that house. I had never seen a house like that on television before. You know what I mean? Closer to what we knew than what I had ever seen. My house didn't look like the Cosby's. You know what I mean? Maybe Archie Bunker, you know, was like a little bit closer. But when people are batshit crazy, and someone reacts to that with confusion, with contempt, I'm like, you understand they're batshit crazy. And it's part of why they got to where they're at. Yeah. Don't act surprised now that someone said something loony. Yeah. This many years after. You know what I mean? It just seems strange to me that now you're blown away. She's been saying batshit crazy shit for a long time. I think it's also part of this new culture that we have in where people just, they find a target and they attack. Of course. It's like, if you have, if there's any sort of weakness, like if you have chickens and one chicken gets sick, that's what that pecking order thing is. Sure. One chicken doesn't feel good. The other chickens just, they don't like make moral judgments on this chicken. They just find a target. There's something wrong with that chicken, so they start fucking it up. And this, it happens with dogs. It's an animal thing. It is. And human beings, we have to, if we're going to be real, if we're going to be compassionate, we're really going to be compassionate. We're really going to try to engineer a better culture and a better community. We've got to stop doing that. I agree. We've got to just stop attacking people. Like she didn't, I believe, I talked to her on the phone, just me and her. She did not know that lady was black. I believe she didn't know that. She goes, she looks Jewish. She looks like me. That's what she said. I believe you. I believe her too. I think she was just cracking a joke, fucked up on Ambien, been drinking and smoking weed all night. But no one cares what her intent was. All they care is, I got a green light. That's a target. We're going to go in. Well, here's my issue with the modern. The modern left is they talk compassion, but they pounce. I feel like a man with no country now. Me too. Because I don't, the modern left isn't something that I gravitate towards, and neither is the right. And when I was growing up and listening to Public Enemy, that left of, it changed. It changed, and I didn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you have these people, I don't know where I stand anymore, man. Well, I think there's this rational left-leaning people that are against discrimination and for welfare and for food. Look, I was on welfare when I was a kid. If people say I shouldn't be on welfare, well, what the fuck? My parents were on welfare. No, I came from a poor family. We had food stamps, and eventually they did better, and we got off of it. But if you want to tell me that that doesn't help, that fed me. Absolutely. So how could I ever go against that when that was a part of my childhood? Absolutely. All these things that people want to associate with being with left or right, I think there's just a gigantic problem with people being tribal. That's what it is. It's tribalism at its highest degree, which, since I've been alive, I haven't seen. Never seen it like this before. I think we know why. Well, it's facilitated not just by Trump, but it's also by the ability to communicate instantaneously. Of course. Without any consideration. You could just tweet something or make a YouTube video about something instantaneously. Sure. Roseanne's ability to tweet that quickly with the phone is why it's on her show. It costs millions of dollars. Yeah, people lost their jobs. ABC junk. It's like, yeah, now they're going to do the Conners. Guess what? That show's going to fucking sink like the Titanic. Of course. It's going to last three episodes. No Roseanne? Get the fuck out of here. It's Roseanne. Without Roseanne. Right. Three episodes. That's like flavor-free diet coke. Tastes like water. Just have water, motherfucker. It's diet coke, but without the flavor. It's true. What? It's true. And I don't, it's just the hypersensitivity and it's like the ability for anyone, right or wrong, to be able to say something right then. Where you would have, if you're doing Fear Factor and Rolling Stone interviews you, there's a thought process there. And there's editing. And you're sitting there and you're talking with a journalist. All of that's gone, man. Yeah. That's what it's come down to. You know, we all three of us have phones in our pockets. We can say something crazy right now if we stubbed our toes. Right. It's not. You stubbed your toes. Fuck this. And all of a sudden you're done. You're sunk. There's good in that because the tyranny of these gigantic organizations, like if they were tyrannical, if they did have an agenda, if they were trying to smear you, you were fucked. You had no recourse. Right. And they did that to many people, I'm sure. There's unscrupulous journalists. Sure. But also, journalistic integrity takes a backseat too because now they have to get clicks. Like these people, real journalists are fighting for their lives. Absolutely. Because these publications are going under. Well, real journalism is almost dead. It's not totally dead, but real. It's hurting. It's bad. It's hurting. But like I was. It's got emphysema. Like the Alex Jones thing, right, whether I agree with shit he says or not, corporations shut him down. And to me, that's scary. The corporations can decide what we are able to hear, really. Yeah. Well, I was having a good conversation about this last line with some friends, and they were talking about whether or not things like YouTube or Twitter or Instagram should be regulated like utilities, where anybody can use it. You have the right to get the power. Like if you have a house, you have the right to pay your money, you get your power turned on. It's a utility. Yes. Maybe a channel like that, whether it's YouTube or whether it's Twitter, maybe a channel should be treated like a utility. But then the question is, what is it exactly that is good enough to get you kicked off? Because I've seen some horrible shit that people have read, or written, rather, on Twitter, and they're still on. I've seen shit. Whatever he's being, whatever is why he was brought down, I've seen people say much worse shit. The big thing was the Sandy Hook. And it was that the Sandy Hook thing was, he said that he thought that it was fake. He's since disavowed that. Yeah. But they don't care if you disavow things. No, of course not. It's like they have this thing on you now. You said that the kids didn't die. They definitely did. Let's get rid of you. But are you saying that people aren't allowed to make mistakes? Are you saying that people aren't allowed to evolve their thinking? Are you saying that people aren't allowed to say things that are wrong? Because a lot of people say things that are wrong. But is it only things that are wrong about children? Like, what standards? Where's the line? I don't know where lines are anymore. And I don't know who's the one drawing. Well, it's these people that either are the CEOs, or the stockholders, or the CFOs, whoever it is that is in the meeting that's dictating these standards, they're deciding. And these are gigantic corporations that we were just talking about this. I don't think they ever anticipated this. I think when they made Twitter, they thought it would be, like Jamie was saying, it was a fun way to tell your friends, you know, Vinnie Paz and Joe Rogan are going to go into the movies. Sure. And that's what you would do. Of course. That's what Twitter was. It was just like, I'm eating pizza at the mall. Yeah. It wasn't anything crazy. Right. And then people started using it as a platform for, I don't know what.