The beleaguered host, who has been accused of spreading COVID vaccine misinformation on Spotify’s The Joe Rogan Experience, also recently apologized after he was shown using racial slur the N-word on the show on several occasions.
On Sunday, Twitter account PatriotTakes shared a video clip that showed the broadcaster laughing as Cuban-born comedian Joey Diaz spoke about Black people crowding a Popeyes Chicken restaurant in an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood.
Diaz said in the undated clip: “You know where I have a good time on Tuesday? You want to have a good time with Black people—and I’m not being f****** prejudice or funny—if you want to see Black people in their natural environment you go to f****** Popeyes Chicken on Tuesdays.
“They give you a wing and a breast, 99 cents. And I made the mistake one night, I go, ‘Terry, you wanna go?’ I like Popeyes Chicken… I went to Popeyes Chicken, and it’s the one on Laurel Canyon. Like, if you go to Popeyes Chicken on Hollywood and Cahuenga it’s full of brothers. There ain’t nothing you can do.
“But Laurel Canyon, you’re like, ‘There ain’t gonna be a brother in [here].’ I didn’t even think about that on the way in. I’ve been there before on a Sunday.”
When Rogan asked if the restaurant was serving a special, Diaz explained: “It’s a wing and a breast for 99 cents. Dog, they come out of the f****** woodwork for this. Packed! You understand me? Around the corner.
“But the best was I’ve seen a real motherf****** gangster brother. This guy ate 20 pieces of chicken and didn’t get off the phone not one f****** time. That’s a real bad motherf*****. The only time he got off the phone was to ask the b**** for hot sauce. I sat there and watched the whole time.”
“Still sucking in the bones,” said a visibly amused Rogan, as Diaz continued: “Sucking on them, breaking them in half while he was on the phone telling his b****, ‘F*** it, I’m getting my d*** sucked tonight.”
Changing the subject toward the end of the clip, Rogan said: “Another thing that people got mad at me for, for asking why is that I keep seeing Black dues talking on speakerphone out loud by themselves.
“I see it all the time in public, Black dudes holding the phone next to their face going, ‘Yo, what it is? Uh huh, OK.’ And they’re talking on the phone when it’s not near their face. And people got mad at me.”
Brian Redban, who served as the show’s producer between 2009 and 2013, then cut in to say that his ex-girlfriend did the same thing, prompting Diaz to quip: “She’s Black.”
When the clip was shared on Twitter, author Tabatha Southey expressed her outrage, writing: “Again, Rogan’s racism and misogyny are not a bug. They are a feature. His entire success rests on how accessible he makes these things to the casual racist and bigotry user. Joe Rogan is the graphical user interface of hate.”
Another Twitter user said: “I have defended racism passed off as comedy before & now realize how wrong I was to do so. A true comedian, doesn’t have to be racist to be funny. Lotsa ppl do it all the time. Joey might be AMAZING, idk him, but can you honestly say this isn’t racism?”
“Rogan platforms people with terrible takes,” tweeted another. “He behaves as though he’s not responsible for his content but he selects his guests.”
Also on Sunday, PatriotTakes shared another undated video that showed Rogan branding people “sensitive” after facing apparent backlash over saying that a large number of Black people don’t tip in restaurants.
“People are super goddamn sensitive,” he said in the clip, which also featured Diaz and Redban. “I made one f****** joke. I think there was something real obvious in the news, I forget what it was. And my response to it was, ‘So they’re telling us some s*** that we already knew. What’s next, you’re gonna tell me that many Black people don’t tip?’
“Which, by the way, I’m not saying all, but I’m saying many. I’m saying it’s a known thing that if you work in restaurants a lot of times Black people don’t tip. If you’re Black and you tip, God bless you. I’m not saying anything is wrong with that.”
Rogan, who is of Italian and Irish ancestry, then veered off and branded Italian people “f****** monkeys” and “douchebags” during the conversation.
“I’ve said on many occasions that my people are f****** monkeys, those f****** dummies, those wannabe Soprano dummies,” he said. “There’s so many dumb Italians. It is embarrassing to be Italian all the time.”
He then said that there were a few “bad motherf******” that he admired, saying: “By and large, the great percentage of Italians are douchebags. And that’s me. We’re just being realistic. There’s nothing wrong with that.
“But for whatever f****** reason I say this thing about Black people tipping and people are calling me racist and all this f****** s***.”
Newsweek has contacted representatives of Rogan and Spotify for comment.
Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Nils Lofgren, and the members of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, are among a host of stars who have removed announced their intention to remove their music from Spotify in protest of Rogan’s stance on COVID.
Grammy-winning India.Arie, who also said that she would be removing her music from the streaming platform over Rogan, shared a video of the former Fear Factor host using the N-word several times over various episodes of his show.
Rogan later said that his use of the slur was “the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly,” though he said that the clips were “taken out of context.”
While Spotify has thus far stood by Rogan, it has now employed a new policy of adding advisory warnings to shows discussing the COVID pandemic.
It was recently reported that dozens of episodes of Rogan’s podcast were quietly pulled from Spotify amid ongoing controversy over the show’s content.
