Posted On: Saturday - September 26th 2026 7:15AM MST
In Topics: History Pundits Media Stupidity
Famous podcaster Joe Rogan is a pretty clueless guy. That's not necessarily a big drawback for his line of work, as it's often nice to see an interview in which the interviewer just asks the quick questions to the interview the interviewee, rather than arguing and filling in his own opinions. It's been a while, but I've seen this in Tucker Carlson's interviews too. (That's NOT the cluelessness particularly but the hands-off way he interviews people.)
I've seen Mr. Rogan a dozen or couple of dozen (maximum) times in short clips, to see interesting talk by people I want to hear from. Then, by mistake and obsessiveness, I watched his WHOLE 3 hour of Donald Trump in December of '24. Our Peak Stupidity post title, Press the Meat: 'Tard v 'Tard, makes it sound terrible, but some good came out of this interview. Any viewer could see that Trump was no Brandon or Kameltoe. He could talk coherently for 3 hours and even note that he only had to go because he had the energy to to to another even thereafter!
What wasn't helpful was that Trump could not focus for very long on anything important. Joe Rogan sat there, interested in the MMA fighting talk and the TV personalities and such, but he was in no shape to ask any good serious questions for a guy we had our hopes on to stop the Population Replacement Programme. In THAT, we've come out pretty well, but we sure weren't going to find out any details in a Joe Rogan podcast, even after 3 hours. Joe Rogan has almost NO background political knowledge. He can talk a bit and let the other guy talk a LOT, but he is in no shape draw out any more information that is freely
Just the other day, I came across a Gateway Pundit article that drove home my opinion of Joe Rogan - Comedian Yakov Smirnoff Describes Escaping the Communist Soviet Union to a Stunned Joe Rogan. Yakov Smirnoff was one of the relatively small number of people* living under European Communism (the USSR and the East Bloc countries) who came to the west, because they weren't ALLOWED to leave. I doubt there were many comedians who came either besides Yakov Smirnoff for that reason, along with that comedy is not normally a lucrative "industry" under any sort of Communism.
Mr. Smirnoff was a fairly funny guy, with clean humor and bad grammar** as his jokes made fun of his old country. including the part about you weren't allowed to leave. His standard format joke, one that goes like "In America, you can always find a party. In Soviet Union, The Party always finds you!", has spawned other jokes and memes along that format, even ones making fun of that format.
Here goes: In 1980s America, Yakov Smirnoff make fun of Soviet Communism. In 2020s American Communists make fun of Yakov Smirnoff! Thank you, thank, you, now back to Joe Rogan ...
Really, Joe Rogan was stunned? I had to take a look at the GP post, and I see that Joe Rogan seems to have had no idea about that whole 2nd (half of the) world Communism thing and the Cold War.
I've written before that it HAS been a long time now since European Communism fell (the official version, anyway). The end was from 1987 through '89. Unless he's a historian, his family came from the other side or was heavily involved in it militarily or something, an American under 45 y/o couldn't be expected to realize the great importances of the 40 year long Cold War. I looked up Mr. Rogan's age. He's 59! He was born in 1967.
Many families don't pay any attention to politics. That's all fine until politics pays attention to YOU! (Shades of Yakov Smirnoff there, but this goes back to before his comedy routines.) So what, right? Mr. Rogan had his own life of MMA fighting and what-not. Still, he was a young adult already, from 20 to 22 y/o, at the time of the Cold War's end.
It's not at all the case that I think podcasters should be required to go to some Podcasting School. It's great that some guy with some random background made it this big and has millions of viewers. That very much beats the old way with the 3 guys (and sometimes Commie Chung) being the only people you get political news from or, later, 24-7-365(6) CNN v Fox.
However, I'd just rather listen to a guy who has some knowledge of American history, even just the recent stuff. It'll take another post to explain this for younger Peak Stupidity readers, but Communism and the Cold War was pretty much THE foreign policy for 40 years. Yet, 59 y/o Joe Rogan seems totally clueless about it.
Here's the video for the record. You're probably not gonna want to watch 2 hours and something video from these guys, but this is only 16 minutes of it.. However, Yakov Smirnoff turned me off early on with his Statue of Liberty poem and "give more your poor huddled.." bit at the beginning. In 19th century America, statue stand for Liberty. In 20th and 21st century America, statue call for invasion of country. Rim shot, please! OK, at least, please clap.
Fine, Joe Rogan doesn't want people embedding his podcasts. So be it.
PS: I wonder if old Yakov still tells this one: "In America, you watch television. In Soviet Union, television watches you!"
* I had a good friend long ago whose family had escaped from one of the East Bloc countries via Africa, where his Dad held some type of aid position as a vetinarian.
** The poor English has always been part of the act for a lot of foreigners. I remember this even from one survivalist blog of a writer from a former Baltic country. All these people could get editing help, if they wanted it.
Comments:
M
Saturday - September 26th 2026 8:13AM MST
PS
"The poor English has always been part of the act for a lot of foreigners."
Shaw wrote the play Pygmalion (made into the movie My Fair Lady). The idea is that he can turn a street urchin ("flower girl", which really meant streetwalker) into someone who could pass for a countess. Shaw was arguing against the idea that you were born an aristocrat and therefore were inherently that.
Anyway, a line stuck with me. One of the people who was fooled said she had to be foreign nobility. Nobility because of the lessons, foreign because she spoke English *too* correctly.
The idea that foreigners speak English too correctly doesn't seem to be true anymore. Instead you have to speak badly so that people will catch on and say "Gee, I think that guy's not from around here..."
"The poor English has always been part of the act for a lot of foreigners."
Shaw wrote the play Pygmalion (made into the movie My Fair Lady). The idea is that he can turn a street urchin ("flower girl", which really meant streetwalker) into someone who could pass for a countess. Shaw was arguing against the idea that you were born an aristocrat and therefore were inherently that.
Anyway, a line stuck with me. One of the people who was fooled said she had to be foreign nobility. Nobility because of the lessons, foreign because she spoke English *too* correctly.
The idea that foreigners speak English too correctly doesn't seem to be true anymore. Instead you have to speak badly so that people will catch on and say "Gee, I think that guy's not from around here..."
Yes, I saw "My Fair Lady" when I was a kid, M. I didn't remember that scene. Too perfect, no that's not these new foreigners' problem.
In the case of the example of the guy with the survival blog, I'm pretty sure he would write in bad English on his blog so the readers would see him as an authentic Bosnian/Serb/whatever who had been through violent times in the 1990s so had good advice. I mean his site seemed well-read enough (from comments) that you'd think he could have gotten someone to edit out the worst of it. That's not to mention that he'd been in America for a couple of decades and ought not to be THAT bad.
I will write a post on a short article (with video) of a dot-Indian woman all butt-hurt about her job prospects in the US due to Trump's having levied the $100,000 fee on employers of H1B visa prospects. After these years in the US and after graduating from Duke, her grammar was OK, but her accent had me missing one important part of what she had to say. (I went over and over it too.)