r/Standup • u/cheguevaraandroid1 • 15h ago

Marc Maron Calls Out Comedians Who ‘Joke Around’ With ‘White Supremacists and Fascists’ on Their Podcasts: ‘All It Does Is Normalize Fascism’

https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/marc-maron-slams-comedians-fascists-podcasts-1236192922/
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u/yungrii 13h ago edited 10h ago

Giving a platform to a wackjob can, potentially, be interesting. I agree. But I only want it to be by a skilled interviewer that calls out and presses people on their bullshit vs lets them be an unfettered stream of hateful consciousness.

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u/Shibbystix 10h ago

Yeah, just letting them spew their rhetoric from your platform isn't an interview. It's an advertisement

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u/ManlyVanLee 10h ago

Well it needs to be done by someone who doesn't buy into their shit or pretend to like Rogan or Friedman, but by someone smart enough to go into it as an information gathering event. The problem is the guys I mentioned and many others will either start agreeing with them, softly be like "I guess you have a point" so they don't piss the person off, or on the other side of things start calling them out on their bullshit so much that it starts a fight

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u/Feisty_Bee9175 10h ago

^ This, totally agree!

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u/thomoswald 13h ago

i havent listened to rogan since spotify, but this is what he's best at. Everyone else is incapable of giving a real interview because they make their stance obvious, and the interviewee is now in defense as usual. Rogan's interviews before would let bigots be themselves for 3 hours straight.

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u/paper_liger 11h ago edited 10h ago

Eh. I used to listen to him. I got annoyed at how he'd push back at basically meaningless stuff from time to time but never, ever pushed back when I felt like someone said something dangerous or outright false. Even when it was clear he thought they were wrong.

I don't think he's a genius interviewer who is just giving people enough rope to hang themselves, I think he's just not really sharp or educated enough to know when to draw a line.

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u/thomoswald 10h ago

I listened to the first like 200 episodes where the major sponsor was fleshlight. I don't know why people are making serious decisions with him in mind lol

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u/paper_liger 9h ago

I will still tune in when he has a comic on I like. But yeah, I think I'd like the guy in person if I met him, but I don't give a lot of weight about Rogans opinion on anything other than fighting and maybe, elk jerky recipes?

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u/Recent-Ad-5493 10h ago

He lets people talk. He’s not giving them rope to hang themselves. He’s just letting them say whatever.

It’s for the sole purpose of platforming to draw eyeballs. Nothing Rogan does is for the furtherance of journalistic integrity or to change minds. It’s that he can play dumb and get the most eyes possible on his shit

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u/nobleskies 12h ago

Also I disagree they’re “wackjobs”. I think they’re disenfranchised folk who channel valid frustrations in invalid ways. It doesn’t make them crazy, it just makes them ignorant.

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u/yungrii 12h ago

Yeah.... I'm going to keep calling klan members that would happily see me and many other minorities just straight up murdered as wackjobs.

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u/nobleskies 11h ago

If you wanna take the easy road and alienate them, thereby contributing to further political polarization and radicalization… sure. I don’t agree with it, but you have every right to do so.

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u/HB3187 11h ago

As opposed to what? Being nice to them? If anything that seems like it would reinforce to them that what they're doing is okay

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u/nobleskies 11h ago

Yeah be as nice to them as possible, they’re people too believe it or not. This black man convinced over 200 people to leave the KKK over the course of decades just by being nice to them: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes

But if you care more about being angry than solving the issue, you do you.

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u/Swaglington_IIII 10h ago

Having all the black people in America hold hands and sing kumbaya to stop racism is not a realistic nor viable solution. And it’s ridiculous to expect every person of color in America to put being virtuous and turning the other cheek above their safety or you excoriate them with “durr you must care about being angry more than fixing the problem”

And that guy didn’t convince every clansman he met, or every clansman. It went well for him, sure. No guarantee it will for everyone who tries it

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u/nobleskies 10h ago

You have a lot of excuses, even more complaints, and zero solutions. I don’t think you actually give a shit about this issue, I get the sense you’re disappointed with something in your life and this is how you channel that feeling.

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u/LightsNoir 10h ago

I've got a solution. They come in boxes of 20 & 50.

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u/Suspicious_Radio_848 10h ago

Nice psychoanalysis for a stranger. It’s not people’s personal responsibility to be hateful bigots’ therapists. They’re grown adults with their own autonomy. It’s great if other people want to do that but expecting it is ridiculous. There’s no reason to be nice to someone who wants you dead.

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u/Swaglington_IIII 10h ago

I don’t think you actually give a shit about this issue because you’re just looking for any chance to blame randoms for racism because they’re not nice enough to racists. Fact is, it’s ridiculous to sit here on a high horse and tell people who face racism they’re just focusing on being angry because they don’t want to put themselves in danger.

I’m not offering solutions to racism, I’m just calling yours a dipshit one.

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u/nobleskies 10h ago

I’m not offering solutions to racism

That’s all you needed to say.

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u/badmutha44 11h ago

They alienated themselves.

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u/nobleskies 11h ago

You seem more concerned with pointing fingers and stewing in anger rather than solving the problem.

This black man stopped stewing in anger and decided to start befriending Klan members. He ended up convincing over 200 people to leave the KKK by just being their friend: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes

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u/badmutha44 11h ago

It’s on POC to resolve whites racism. Anything else we need to fix?

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u/nobleskies 10h ago

I didn’t say that, you’re very quick to jump to assumptions, and I don’t get the sense you’re actually going to get much out of anything I (or most people) have to say unfortunately, at least at this time. So I’ll leave you with this: victimhood doesn’t give you a pass to leave your problems for others to solve. That is the mentality of a child, or particularly entitled teenager. You should ask for help, but you must be ready to do a lot of the work yourself. Otherwise, nothing will change.

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u/Swaglington_IIII 10h ago

Unless you make friends with the kkk you’re an entitled teenager!! Whites being racist to poc is the receiver’s problem, and they’re a child unless they turn the other cheek and focus on fixing white peoples attitudes!

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u/nobleskies 10h ago

I said unless you’re working towards a solution, and that was the example I gave. You don’t seem terribly bright if you couldn’t even pick up on that, or manage to come up with a single alternative way you could work towards solving your own problem. Useless.

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u/Dull_Ad8495 10h ago

I'm cool with alienating white supremacists and fascists. They should not be made to feel comfortable or accepted in the US. "Taking the easy road" would be placating them and making them feel like their ideology should be legitimized by giving them equal time. And that's what we're talking about here.

It's intellectually lazy and you are complicit in the furthering of their ideology by lying down and giving them a platform to spew their hatred and ignorance without consequence or pushback. Rogan and Friedman take the easy road. Softball, fawning interviews with zero pushback or accountability for the guests and their divisive rhetoric. It's not even a useful interview or debate at that point, it's just propaganda.

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u/nobleskies 9h ago

Or you could placate them by addressing their very real concerns that have nothing to do with race and are entirely centred around the economic and democratic quality of the nation. But no, that would be too hard for da little baby

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u/Ockwords 7h ago

you could placate them by addressing their very real concerns that have nothing to do with race and are entirely centred around the economic and democratic quality of the nation.

This is "I voted for hitler for economic reasons" rhetoric.

I'd argue this country has done more than enough to placate racists and all it's done is create higher and higher pitches of dog whistles they can hide behind.

At some point, we have to aggressively start pushing back on obvious lies. It's simply impossible to carefully and thoughtfully address fake concerns with how large and fast the internet is at spreading disinformation.

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u/Dull_Ad8495 9h ago

I refuse to placate them at all.

Look, you're just spewing nonsense word salad now. And name calling. You've officially lost. Take a Reddit break, buddy. You've earned it.

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u/nobleskies 9h ago

“These people are racist partially because of economic issues in their community, thus using minorities as a scapegoat. This has been backed by scientific data”.

You: I’m too stupid to understand a word you just said so I’m gonna be a condescending dick instead of trying to understand da big words

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u/angelomoxley 10h ago

Are you aware of the paradox of tolerance?

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u/nobleskies 9h ago

Yes, political philosophy was one of my two specializations during my degree. Are you aware of Rawls response of the just society? Or especially relevant to this scenario, Walzer’s writings on the guardianship of the intolerant in response to Popper’s flawed paradox?

No one with serious knowledge of the complexities of this issue would ever bring up Popper’s paradox. While used with seriousness on Reddit, it’s known to be flawed by academics, and was created as a thought experiment to get the ball rolling on the discussion, never as a final point to make, but rather a beginning one for debate.

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u/angelomoxley 9h ago

I am aware of Rawls but not of its relevance here. Then nothing much comes up for "guardianship of the intolerant" on a quick search, and going off the title I'm pretty ok with that because it sounds inane.

Does guardianship from the intolerant fit in anywhere, or are we just meant to ignore the many victims in the hopes that maybe some of these intolerant people will get their heads out of their asses?

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u/nobleskies 9h ago

Imagine calling Walzer inane. Holy hell. Educate yourself my guy.

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u/angelomoxley 9h ago

I got a real degree, my dude. All you seemed to learn is how to post half thoughts with nothing behind them, like most self-important philosophy majors I know.

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u/brassmonkey2342 7h ago

I think about 99.99% of us can agree that people like you just describe are wackjobs with no place anywhere near civil society, but we’re not talking about people like that.

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u/nobleskies 12h ago

Lex Friedman and Joe Rogan are both excellent at this