Joe Rogan - Tom Segura's "R Word" Controversy

So Tommy Buntz, tell me about the controversy surrounding your use of the R word in your last special. Oh yeah, it was quite... That was bizarre. It was a lot man. Well, it was also what I found interesting about it was people were lying about the bit and they were doing it in articles and they were doing it in email campaigns. They were lying about the content of the bit. They were changing what you were saying in the bit and they had to be doing it on purpose. They definitely didn't listen to the bit. Yeah, and I think it took me a while to figure out what really was happening was that someone's agenda or idea of what they want to accomplish is to highlight a campaign to eradicate saying a word. And then they had a channel to pursue by having a comedy bit that did it, that they could be like, let's go after it like this. But it didn't... They didn't go... I mean, you know, basically what... It's funny thing is that like that joke was something that I worked back... I did that bit backwards. In other words, I had the end piece of the bit was what I was doing by itself, which was a story about I saw a witness to fight in Philly of a white guy and a black guy in the park. And the white dude was screaming end bombs and it was nuts. So I would tell that story. And then I would... I worked backwards into getting into the story because I always try to figure out like if something funny happens or I want to tell a story, it's always better to figure out why are you telling the story. Then just to be like, here's a story. So I told the story of like the fight in the park. Then I worked into like I figured out right before that I'm talking about racial slurs and how, you know, most racial slurs are not acceptable. And then I figured out though, like, unless they're like white racial slurs are totally acceptable. Like you call people mix and crowds and frogs, pollocks, guinea wops, like this whole list of that. And then I worked before that of just the way into saying that was like, well, I should talk about words that you can't say that kind of changed over time. Right. So it was just like one of those jokes is like, oh, it's helping me get into the bit, you know, so I started the bit by saying you can't say retarded anymore. That's the first line of the of the entire bit. Yeah. Which ended up being like eight or 10 minutes long. And then people would say to me, like, to start when I started getting mail about it, they're like, you know, you can't say retarded. And I go, that's the line that I say. Like, yeah, that's the line in the joke. But they didn't hear the bit. I just heard that you were doing a bit about the word retarded. Once it blew up, like once it got to a huge amount of like when it was an organized orchestrated campaign. You're right. There was people messaging me that would say, I heard you want to kill all children with downs. And I'm like, what? And where did you see that Facebook somewhere said it? Someone said it. That was the messages I started to get. And how many people at the height of it signed this petition to get you kicked off in Netflix? Over 100000. Yeah. Wow. But here's the thing. I mean, I I don't want to portray myself as a victim or anything. Right. Like I I did a bit. I can handle people not liking it or liking it. I mean, a lot of people messaged me that they were into it. And I just didn't share those because you don't want to be like, here's someone that said they like it. You know, right. And people and people, even people with children and siblings and with the answer, message me. I just didn't post those messages. But I don't know. I'm not the victim in this whole thing at all. I learned. I feel like I learned that when people are super upset about something, you have to let them just be upset. And be outraged if they want to be outraged. You know, that's your right. It of course it's uncomfortable to me that you can't get out in front and be like, hey, you're you're misrepresenting it. Right. Because people like even in the campaign language, it said like we want this bit taken out of the of the joke. We want the trailer for the special removed. And I was like, why? And then I realized that the trailer has a joke that they're confusing with the joke where I say retarded. Like they're they think the two are related. What's the one in the trailer? The one in the trailer is I say like some something's funny. Disabilities are not funny, but some are. And it's a whole bit about obscure things like a foreign accent syndrome and. Oh, it was where you sit on the head and then they start speaking French accent. So that was the set up to that bit. Right. And they were. But they were saying they were basically making it where that set up is about downs or something. Do you mean like that? But they happen 40 minutes apart. One has nothing to do with the other. But by not watching it, by just watching the trailer, they're going, oh, see, this is like how he's making fun of us. Right. Well, you shouldn't even have a point where you could say some disabilities are funny. Right. You can't do that. Right. Yeah. That's what that's what I was told. It's it's what it is. It's this new power that people have to complain. I mean, people have always complained, but they haven't had the instantaneous access to complaining. Right. And then you can get. And here's the thing I learned about kind of like mob mentality, too. It was like kind of fascinating to what I mean. I was in it. So it's different. Once I could step back, I realized that once you got a certain message out, you know, people would read the thing that says this guy hates people with downhangs. And I'm like, what? And that's not a hard thing to get behind. Oh, yeah. So then people would just they would sign it. And I would also get messages that said things like, I didn't know evil like you existed in this world, you know, things like that. And I'd be like, what? And you're ISIS. I mean, like really crazy stuff, man. And I think I didn't engage nearly, you know, the the amount of people that that would contact me. But I did engage a few. I did like go back and forth with one guy. He was like he opened. He was like, you fucking cocksuck and piece of shit. I would stab you if I saw you on the street and I go, what's this all about? That was my like my opening thing to him. And he was like, I heard you. You want to kill like everybody with Down syndrome. And I'm like, what are you talking about, man? And then we had a back and forth about about the bit. I'm like, you should go watch it. You know, just watch it and then get back to me. And then he writes me. He was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. The way I spoke earlier, I didn't mean to say fucking seriously. You're going to stab me. Yeah. If you saw me, you would have killed me. You'd be in jail forever. They'd be like, defendant, please rise. Yeah. Why just stab Mr. Segura? I didn't see the bit. I didn't watch. I didn't watch the bit. Somebody told me he was saying terrible things about it. And now in people's defense, who got upset, some people watched it and they're like, I saw it. And I think it's horrible. And I think, you know, I'm like, OK, you know. Yeah. But there's some people that if you just say the word, say the word retarded, like that's it. It's all it's over. You can't do that. It's like so many other words. Yeah. But it's gotten to the point where you don't even say the word nigger, like just saying it. It's like, holy shit. What are you doing? People will say the N word instead of it. Right. And you're not even calling something it, but it's just acknowledging it that that's a real word. It's like a forbidden thing. So that's this campaign is to refer to it as the R word. Like don't say it. Right. You should never say it. I mean, it's weird, man. Yeah. I mean, you know, people people were some people were very, very upset about it. And, you know, I get why someone could be upset about it. It's not like I go like, I don't even understand how you could be upset. I mean, the natural thing, I think, if you're a comic is you want to walk someone through the joke. And then you realize later is like somebody who's who's who's advocating to stop saying a word doesn't care the details of the joke. I mean, the joke. Here's the other thing that sucks about reading. People would read transcripts. It's like transcripts have no intent tone. You know, if you just read people's like, I know we've talked about what you're closing on now, which will probably close out your special. If you just type that out and give this one, they'd be like, you are awful. Like you're a horrible man. But it's it's a couple of things. It's like it's in the context of a comedy show. Yeah. Where there's an unspoken agreement between performer and audience. It's the intent. Like what how did you intend this bit to go? Right. Tone. I mean, is it said satirically, ironically, that bit, what I'm doing in the bit is is basically lamenting but accepting that words are changing. Right. Like that's the tone of it. I'm going like, can't say retarded anymore. That fucking sucks. But I'm also like, all right. You know, I mean, like you're saying, OK, you can't do it. And I make an example. Like one thing that people got really upset about was like I said at the end of this bit of the retarded part, I say, like you got now you got to be like that. Your idea has an extra 21st chromosome, if you ask me. Right. And then the next part, the very next line that they would cut out when people were sharing this thing is I go like, not the same, meaning that the example is a purposely bad example. Right. The joke is that if you were to say 21st chromosome, it's absurd. It doesn't work. Right. It wouldn't make sense. There it, but people would attack me and go like, you're telling people to start saying that I'm like, no, I'm sharing that it's a bad idea. I saw someone getting mad at someone calling someone stupid because they were saying that's ableist. Do you know what ableist is? Ableist, oh yeah, because you have, you're of sound. You're able. Yeah. You're able to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you are mocking someone who's diminished mentally, oh, you fucking idiot. That's ableist. Yeah, sure. Which is crazy. Yeah. You're able bodied. Their brain doesn't work so good. You are an ableist if you call them stupid. I mean. It's going to get to the point where if you give up certain words, I mean, if we keep going like this, it's going to get to the point where we're just going to have a very hard time communicating effectively. Sure. I totally agree. I mean, there's, I don't know. And here's the thing, it is an endless cycle. Yeah. I mean, we just don't have that next unacceptable word. Right. You know, like everybody knows, I think a lot of people know that as far as somebody who's, doesn't have, is developmentally disabled, retarded was kind of the latest term that was once acceptable. Mm-hmm. And I think that's the point now. I mean, that is kind of the point. But before that, you know, moron was a medical term. Was it? Yeah. Mongoloid idiot was what they used to call down syndrome children. That was like. A hundred years ago. Yeah, it was on the birth certificate. Right. But I'm saying, you know, people who are saying, you know, just to stop saying, they're not wrong, you know, but there is also another word down the pipeline, right? There's something else that's coming. Yeah. So, you know, if you're going to be a medical word or term and then that'll be used to insult people, that's the way people use language. Once we identify this is the word people use to label someone with a developmental disability, people in the slang will grow from that. Yeah. People will start using that. Well, what's interesting to me is that when we're talking about words, you're not going to change the way people think. So words are supposed to convey intent. Yeah. And that's why the sounds that we all agree mean a certain thing. Yeah. And the more depth, the more access to words you have, the more you can sort of flavor your conversation. So I understand what you're saying. Like if you're saying this guy, I kind of get it, but you feel like this fucking guy. Yeah. I'm like, well, Tommy's really mad. Yeah. You know what I mean? And to take that out. Yeah. It's like, I don't know. So sometimes you take those things out when you're like on a television show or something like that. But all television shows, because of that, all censored television shows only exist within a certain band. Yes. A certain frequency. They never get out of that. Like the Joey Diaz frequency is like, oh, there's no fucking roof. Yeah. There's no fence. True. This frequency that you get on like late night talk shows or a sitcom, this very narrow band that there's no cunts in that band. There's no motherfucker. All those things are not in there. Which is what you're all. I feel like whenever you're, for me, when I'm watching something like that, part of my brain is always like, go find a motherfucker somewhere. You know, it's like, you kind of want it. Well, especially now we're just, we're so used to being free. Yeah. Especially us because of podcasts and live stand up. You know, and I was going to bring this up like your show, like your show that you do with your wife, your mom's house, that anybody just wanted to go cherry pick things and write them down, write some of the things you guys joke around about where you're clearly joking. Yeah. But take it and write it down in quotes. And then Tom said to his wife, Oh yeah. And by the way, 100,000 times worse than anything in life stand up I've ever said. Yeah. Is set on that podcast. I mean, it's not even comparable. Exactly. It's so much worse. The content. Yeah. It's like, we don't go into the show of like, let's be offensive, but we play in a no rules like have fun environment. Yeah. You know, it's like free flowing, just say whatever. And that's the fun of the show. Yeah. And it's also everybody knows you're joking. Yeah. Yeah. The fan base is like 100% on board with like, this is un, you know, uncensored, just loose fun going for it, going for jokes. What I also found too, is that during this whole controversy after your special was released, you got bigger. It's like people, they, by doing that campaign and then people who did investigate, they go, actually, this guy's really fucking funny. I mean, I got, I used to, you know, again, I never publicized these things because it's gross, you know, to be like, check out this compliment or whatever. Right. But like, I got so many messages from people who were like, I saw this thing on the news because it was on a lot of local news that there's a controversial Netflix thing out. People would message me. Well, this thing. So I decided to check you out. New fan just bought tickets to see you at blah, blah, blah. So I started to get a bunch of messages like that. Oh, for sure. Because you're going to get 30% of the people that aren't even going to read it. They're just going to call you a piece of shit. But the other people are going to go, what is going on over here? And the next thing you know, they're going to investigate and they're going to go, what? They're doing this guy dirty. Yeah. Yeah. And then boom, I got a lot of, I got a lot of support that I never, like I said, I never made light of the fact that people were being supportive, but people were being very supportive. Well, it just seems like there, there's different, there's different rules now for standup and you got to really cover your ass. But in your case, you did cover your ass and they disingenuously left that part out. Like they deceptively left that out when they were writing down what you had said. They didn't put it in the context. That's true. And then, you know, part of you goes, uh, man, like is, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to paint myself as a martyr or you know what I mean? And like people who are going down this path of, you know, they have family or friends with disabilities. It's like, uh, I'm not going to, my whole thing was never to attack them. So I'm not going to try to make it a battle that I have to win. So once, once I saw like kind of what I thought clearly was happening, I was like, you know, just let people vent their frustration about if it's about me or what I said, just let it happen. And, um, you know, cause I don't, I don't hold it against them that they're, that they had, that they're upset about this issue, you know? And even though you're like, you're saying your instinct is, is once to go like, hold on, why don't you put it clearly what I said after a moment of it? I realized that like, that kind of wasn't the point for me in that, in that time. I was like, just let people, because I also figured out that if people, yeah, a lot of people were going to read it, say something and go like, this guy's fucking worse. And it's kind of feels good sometimes to be like, you want to know who a bad guy is? This guy. Yeah. And you know, even though you want to be like, Hey, I'm not that bad of a guy. If someone wants to just go there, you just kind of have to let it go and then let the people who were enjoying it or who were investigating it and finding like, Oh, it's a little different than it's being presented. Yeah. It also seems like