The story of the day is the continuing saga of Joe Rogan and the cheap calls of censorship on the other side. Yogi Berra originally coined the phrase Deja vu all over again. He was good for the zany one-liner. Right wing media and other social media commenters are caught in a loop.

The online dictionary defines censorship as the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, or news that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. I’ve said this a few times in these parts, but the first amendment guarantees no one access to a platform. So, people lobbying Spotify or applying pressure to Spotify has no bearing on whether Congress passes a law to ban Joe Rogan’s speech.

Now, the social media warriors have unleashed the hounds of war on Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. That’s their right. As you might suspect, they have played on the fact that Young’s audience trends on the older side of the ledger. Some of them are quite humorous, so I’ve reluctantly tipped my cap to some of their attempts of humor. Again, it is an example of people exercising their free speech to counteract others exercising their free speech.

Spotify chose to pull episodes of Rogan’s podcast. It started off with 70 and then it was pushed to 110 as the article above suggests. By the time you read this it could be more. These episodes were pulled based on liberal use of the “n” word during those episodes. There could become a point where his place is just too toxic to keep around.

Again, I will keep repeating myself until people get it through their thick skulls. You do not have a right to a platform. No really, you do not have a right to a platform. You can say what you want to say. You can record it so other people can hear it. Spotify and other platforms have the right to say no. Of course, this wouldn’t be so maddening if many of the same people that were up in arms about Joe Rogan were also not the ones in favor of banning books from school libraries across the country. The irony is palpable. Some day someone needs to explain the difference to me.

In this instance, a student in Grandbury ISD said it far better than I could. She told the school board that no government has ever banned books from public consumption and ever been seen in history as the good guys. At first blush, it would appear that banning a book from a school library and pressuring a platform to drop a podcast are the same thing. If you squint hard enough and close one eye it is exactly the same thing.

Except that isn’t reality. Rogan’s podcasts have been available on a number of different platforms. So, if Spotify were to drop Rogan you could easily see another platform adding him. People that want to find Rogan on their virtual radio dial will find him. No amount of snark, feaux outrage, or false equivalencies will ever change that fact. You do not have the right to a platform. School libraries aren’t really platforms. They aren’t making money off of your kid. They are there for their enrichment and therein lies the difference.

We live in a world of shoulds. It has been common for a people to mix up their coulds and their shoulds. Can Spotify pull Joe Rogan’s podcasts? Of course they can. Can your local school library decide not to carry certain books? That one is a little harder, but the answer is yes. The question is whether they should do those things. That’s the only question that matters.

This whole Joe Rogan situation has just blown up. If we have an inkling that we’ve seen this before it’s because we probably have. At least we have seen the Neil Young portion of the proceedings before. Young has made a habit of combatting on free speech issues. Who knows? Maybe he has learned something in the intervening decades.

We should start with the deja vu all over again portion of this story. This is not censorship. Nobody has drafted any law keeping Rogan from doing what he is doing. Nobody is throwing Joe Rogan in jail for what he has been saying. Spotify is a private company that has the ability to make its own decisions regarding content. What we are seeing is that artists also have the right to choose where their art is showcased.

I think I had one Neil Young CD from back in the day. I have no idea where it is. I don’t own anything Joni Mitchell has produced. I’m not even sure if either of them have produced anything this century. I did go to a Crosby, Stills, and Nash concert once, but Young wasn’t there. That’s about as close as I have gotten to these particular artists.

However, if you take a step back, this whole story becomes fascinating. One facet is the Joe Rogan facet of the discussion. Still, that’s only the beginning. Spotify themselves are just another platform for music and podcasts, but they have taken a serious hit. Meanwhile, a boycott that started with two artists that haven’t done anything relevant in at least 30 years suddenly has grown beyond that.

The final leg in these protests has been the consumer reaction. Businesses like Spotify sign guys like Rogan because it helps expand their brand. Rogan has millions of listeners and if Spotify can be the one place you can hear it then you have to subscribe to Spotify. It makes perfect sense.

As a consumer of music and occasional consumer of podcasts I get it. There are literally hundreds of musicians and podcasts on Spotify that I would never listen to. Rogan’s is one of them. It’s not a hardcore protests on my part. He just isn’t my cup of tea. I don’t begrudge him his spot any more than I would begrudge any gangster rapper that I would never listen to. They are there for people that enjoy their work.

The question for us and for people like Rogan is what responsibility they have. Rogan is first and foremost an entertainer. He was on New Radio back in the day. He hosted Fear Factor. He was a co-host on the Man Show. It’s difficult to look at that resume and somehow come away thinking he is meant to be taken seriously. I’m sure he would tell you the same thing.

Yet, he has his staunch defenders. I made this same point on Twitter last night and was lambasted by some guy that asserted that Rogan had on medical experts that know more than Dr. Fauci. Sure. Keep in mind that I said nothing negative about Rogan. All I said was that he probably wasn’t meant to be taken completely seriously.

The question was never whether Rogan had the right to say what he does, those artists have the right to pull their catalog, or consumers having the right to quit Spotify. The question was never whether Spotify had the right to pay Rogan or not pay Rogan. The question is how we manage to put things in proper context. Rogan is an entertainer. Entertainers can inform, but that is not their primary function. Somewhere along the way we collectively got lazy. When did we start relying on entertainers to be our primary outlet for information?