HOUSTON – Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard will be in attendance for her second UFC event Saturday night, and it comes at an interesting time for a good friend.
UFC commentator Joe Rogan, who normally emcees pay-per-view event weigh-ins, notably was absent Friday from the UFC 271 ceremonials at Toyota Center and will not be calling the fights. A “scheduling conflict” has been the reason given for Rogan’s absence, which comes in the wake of multiple controversies stemming from his popular “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast on Spotify.
The first controversy was in regard to recent guests on Rogan’s podcast sharing COVID-19 misinformation, prompting music artists to request their music be removed from Spotify in protest. The second controversy, which Rogan apologized for, surrounded a resurfaced video compilation of him repeatedly using the “N-word” on his show.
Droves of UFC fighters and personalities, including a fired-up UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya at Thursday’s UFC 271 press conference, have come to Rogan’s defense. Gabbard, a former Democratic presidential candidate and congresswoman from Hawaii, has appeared twice on Rogan’s podcast and considers him a friend.
While Gabbard agrees with what Rogan said in his apology for using the racial slur, she perceives the wave of criticism concerning his COVID-19 conversations are part of a bigger issue.
“He’s the nicest, most generous, humble guy,” Gabbard told MMA Junkie on Friday. “And I think he’s done the right thing in addressing these issues that have come up very directly, very honestly and has been very ready to admit how can he be better and apologizing. I think it’s what we would hope to get from from anyone really, and I think how not only a lot of the kind of corporate response has been, but also frankly the White House inserting itself into trying to cancel Joe Rogan points to the bigger issue, which is really the attempts by the power elite trying to silence and cancel people who dare to question the establishment narrative, who dare to maybe hold a different view.”
A matter of free speech
Gabbard does not take exception with musical artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell for exercising their free speech. The two musicians were among those who removed their music from Spotify in protest of Rogan’s podcast guests, particularly those who made COVID-19 claims contrary to guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Spotify and CEO Daniel Elk later released a statement that the company would not silence Rogan, though it did remove roughly 70 episodes of his podcast for its library.
“Neil Young is free to do whatever he wants,” Gabbard said. “The decisions that anyone makes or, you know, the decision that Spotify has made to keep Joe Rogan, I mean, people are free to make their own decisions. People shouldn’t be canceled for one decision or another, and the attacks on Joe Rogan from all of these different directions, starting with kind of conversations about COVID and the science of the vaccines and the different things, but it’s progressed beyond that, which really just shows from the beginning that this has been a very concerted attempt to try to deplatform him. And again, Joe Rogan is only one example. He is certainly not the only voice that has been kind of punished in this way.”
One frequent criticism of Rogan, which he addressed in a recent video, is he does not feature enough guests with left-leaning perspectives. A recent viral tweet showed a lopsided amount of right-leaning celebrities, politicians, and thinkers.
Gabbard, who was listed as a conservative in the tweet, sees that perception of how guests are chosen as inaccurate. To her, the guests are picked on a basis of Rogan’s intrigue in hearing new ideas from interesting people. She also pointed out that she thinks Rogan has not been given credit for his previous admissions of being wrong on his podcast.
“Joe Rogan is very transparent about who he is and the fact that these conversations he has are because he likes to learn and he likes to have interesting conversations,” Gabbard said. “He doesn’t pretend to be a journalist. He’s not pretending to be anything or anyone other than who he is. The beauty of free speech in America is exactly that – that whether you’re someone with the YouTube channel or you’re vlogging or you’ve got a podcast, you have the opportunity to say what you feel, voice your opinions.”
‘That’s what’s driving the divisiveness in America’
The key point Gabbard tried to drive home more than anything was that bad ideas should not be shot down with free speech, but that free speech should battle free speech until the best idea prevails – a far cry from what she considers to be deplatforming or silencing ideas that a certain group of people do not agree on. Those are part of human conversation and part of the natural growth of ideology, she indicated.
Gabbard admits she does not know how Rogan can have honest conversations with guests without margin for error, which is one of her biggest concerns with today’s society as a whole.
“It’s as simple as that, and understanding his curiosity and his interest in hearing different voices, I think,” Gabbard said. “We, as a country, are stronger when we allow for diverse conversations, different views to be brought forward that can help us maybe think about things differently or better, understand someone who’s coming from a different place. It’s a dangerous thing when people are only willing to stay in their little safe corner with people they agree with and therefore judge other eyes, build caricatures around anyone with a different viewpoint.
“That’s what’s driving the divisiveness in America, where I will only sit with my tribe because we agree with each other, and we think we’re all great and everyone else is wrong, and I think that’s what Rogan and others who encourage this kind of dialogue are encouraging people to think about things. Ask questions. (They) may affirm your beliefs, or it may cause you to start to think about things in a slightly different way, and that’s a good thing.”
