Rogan was a shockjock for a long time, so literally his job was to say things that shouldn't be said and to be irreverent about it, generally without meaning to hurt anyone. He took that into the early days of his podcast. Most of what you will see are things that are over 10 years old now, and in one case of an effort to smear him, a piece of 20 year old standup footage. Howard Stern and other comedians like him, used to also use the word, but most quit before he did. He ONLY did it when quoting others, NEVER in his own words.
He does literally have many black friends, from UFC as a commentator he's been very supportive of black fighters and hosts. And has had many guests of every race on his shows who remain friends. So I'm by no means comfortable or blessing this but that's where the context is. He doesn't do it anymore and he does understand how today's standards HAVE changed.
We have to decide who we want to cancel and why and choose carefully. I understand musicians leaving Spotify for the pay issue alone. I never really understood them using that service or how it got so much buy-in for so little. Knowing that Rogan is generally a well-meaning person causes me to say, we can't keep canceling people.
Choose not to buy if you wish, but unless he is trying to be a menace, we need to respect speech and as Jon Stewart said, engage so we can help, teach and correct. He does seem to evolve. My aunt chose to get vaccinated because of Joe's having Dr. Sanjay Gupta on. Sanjay made the case for her to feel safe getting it done despite her health issues. If he had't been on there, I don't know if my aunt would have gotten it done.
He’s a generally honest guy with a huge audience of every stripe, and he’s respectful to people in front of him so they can actually talk, something rarer and rarer. We can cancel him and throw him deeper into bad things, or people can continue to engage and make wins improving him.
