The Problem with Celebrity Pastors

There was a guy that we made fun of a bunch on the show who was a pastor to a lot of famous people. He was like the hip young pastor. We just got busted? Yeah, just got busted. Banging some chick. And we made fun of him because I'm like, look, there's no way this guy's religious. This is what I was saying. Because he was wearing these shorts that showed what I called his dick route. Like he wears these shorts that go way low, which you just don't wear your shorts like that unless you want someone to think about your penis. That's why you wear your shorts like that. Or maybe in the 70s it would be. But I don't mean that. There's no reason to. Guys who wear their shorts that low, they're being overtly sexual to people that they don't even necessarily know. You're trying to, and you want everyone to look at your chiseled body. There's a reason why monks dress in these very modest clothes that cover everything. They don't even want to think about their body. That is a part of the religion of both celebrity and social media. That this guy has got these traditional Christian ideas fused in with the religion of celebrity, in with the religion of social media. And then you're seeing that it doesn't really work. Because what's the reward for those behaviors? The reward is he wants to fuck. That guy wants people to lust after him and it wound up sabotaging him ultimately. Absolutely. I think, yeah, it's now a morality story of some kind. A moral sale. This is a kind of celebrity fame kind of pursuing that goes wrong. It's a trap. Because if you achieve, what if you're lusting after this attention and this sexual praise and you want people to lust after you, you also want them to think of you as being someone who is more enlightened than everyone else, which is why you're willing to stand in front of them and give these emotional, profound sermons in the first place that resonates with all these lost young people. Right. Right. And historically, there's a lot of overlap between celebrity and religious preaching. People like Billy Sunday or others that the religious leader becomes a celebrity and some of those lines get blurred. It all becomes entertainment. For celebrities, there's a need for that because they feel very lost and disconnected because they've achieved the thing that they've always desired and they still feel lost. Everyone looks at certain celebrities and go, oh my God, you've made it. Your life must be heaven. And they're depressed and all fucked up and we don't have any sympathy for them. There's no one who's going to be sympathetic to Justin Bieber with $300 million in the bank and having sex with anybody who wants to. Fuck you for being depressed, you little piece of shit. You've been famous your whole life. But for him, it's probably very confusing because first of all, particularly the really young people who became famous while they were young, I had Miley Cyrus on who I think is incredibly talented, brilliant, brilliantly talented. Her voice is fantastic. I mean, it's so soulful, but she got famous when she was 12. I have a 12-year-old man. I can't even imagine. I can't imagine being the boss and filling arenas when you're 12. It's madness and no one survives it. I mean, maybe a few have gotten through it and they're sane, but most of them don't. And that's where celebrity preachers come in, where someone can harness your celebrity and it boosts them up and they can also provide you maybe even if it's disingenuous, but some sort of a structure that makes you feel like there's more that you can cling to something that's going to make sense of this all and that something is Jesus or Muhammad or whatever it is, whatever it is that you cling to, whatever structure that you cling to, Buddha, whatever it is. Right. And that can be exploited, especially in those situations, I think, because of what you're saying, the gap or absence of, oh God, I got here. And is this all there is? I think with the children in particular, because it's not, oh God, I got there. I've never been normal. Yeah. Well, especially. It's like having cement, but you've never added water. It's never, there's something missing. Yeah. Well, you didn't grow up. Right. And many of them don't make it. They don't survive. And, you know, obviously drugs can be one way to... It's the most common way. To deal. Yeah. You know, try to deal. Yeah. I'm well aware of a lot of people in the whole Hollywood show business world that grew up famous and almost none of them survive. Yeah. Yeah. Rob Lowe did though. Rob Lowe got famous really young. He's super normal. Right. He might be like one of the only ones I've ever met and I've hung out with him. And I've hung out also more importantly with him and his son who's also really normal. Really well adjusted. But he also got clean and sober early on. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So yeah, I mean... He made it. He made it. But he's also very few. He's also very beautiful. Yeah. It's probably easy to be Rob Lowe. Right? Imagine. And he's got to be what? He's 40? 30? No, he's older than that. He's older than me. I'm 53. He's one of the few that got famous very young and has navigated it through with grace. But I think the ones that are children that grow up child stars, the ones on the Mickey Mouse show and that kind of shit. Yeah. Good luck. No. I mean that's brutal. So they find the celebrity preachers. This is often what happens. They find gurus. That's him. They find celebrity preachers. Right. Right. Yeah. Someone tries to make sense of things. Put our faith in. And that there too is a pretty common universal aspect of human life. And the problem is. We have something to believe in. Those poor gurus, they fall into the trap too because now they can leech off the success of these famous people and become famous themselves. Right. And maybe they haven't really immunized themselves, inoculated themselves to the power of celebrity. Sure. It's a very intoxicating drug. You've got to understand how to avoid it. Right. And avoid the pitfalls of it. It's not easy. Yeah. Well, again, that's the life that everyone wants. I mean that's part of the pressure, I assume, for a lot of people. Yeah. It's just the American public, the global audience can be transfixed on you. And also want what you have. But I think we can really learn from those preachers. Those preachers that only go after, not only go after, but attract celebrities. There's something to that weird sort of parasitic genre of preacher. Right. No, I agree. I think it's ripe for study. I'm not sure there's been any kinds of- They should. Well, certainly. Maybe you should write a book on it. We've seen that. Well, I'm sticking with drugs, man. That's a drug. For now, I don't want to go- Celebrity's a drug. It's a intoxication. This is sort of what we're after in some form. Celebrity, I think there's a drug in, there's several drugs that are mixed together in sort of a concoction. There's a drug of celebrity, which for sure is a drug. And then there's also a drug, being the person who has the answers. Definitely. And there's something that people do when they convince other people that they have the answers, that it elevates their mood and their perspective. There's some weird guru drug. So there's the guru drug, and then there's the celebrity drug. We're identifying a whole nexus of drug. And with that guy, it was the sex drug, because he's a beautiful man. He's a handsome, tall, ripped, shredded preacher guy. Right, right, right. So a lot of drugs going on there. Well, and I wonder how extensive it all was. Extensive? Well, in terms of his, whatever kinds of activities he was engaged in that got him in all this And I think with people like, and this is where I'm going to give a simplistic perspective. I think he could have benefited from real drugs. So I think a person who's involved in those three weird drugs could have been, they've really, really could have benefited from psychedelics. Yeah. Because psychedelics would have let you say, hey, hey, hey, hey, do you see what you're doing? Because I see what you're doing. Right. The psychedelics would have said, I know what you're doing. You're pretending. You're pretending to be profound. You're pretending to be pious. You're pretending to be enlightened. You're pretending to be above it all, but you're not. Yeah. Yeah. You're just one of us. Right. And that can be pretty destabilizing, you know, for someone like that, but also transformative. That's where there's real benefit in those destabilizing. I think so too. Well, I tell people I like getting paranoid from pot. It's one of my favorite parts. Because when it's over, I feel good. It's like a near death experience that you always survive. It didn't happen. It didn't happen. You're okay. But also there's a lesson in it. That fear comes with a lesson and that insecurity comes with a lesson. And I think part of the lesson is appreciate the moment of life. Appreciate life. Appreciate this. Right. And when you're all fucked up on pot and you're like, oh, everything's crazy. Like when it's over, you can like, you relax and you can appreciate things in a different way. Right. Episodes of the Joe Rogan experience are now free on Spotify. That's right. They're free from September 1st to December 1st. They're going to be available everywhere. But after December 1st, they will only be available on Spotify, but they will be free. That includes the video. The video will also be there. It'll also be free. That's all we're asking. Just go download Spotify. Much love. Bye bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.