Earmuff alert in Tweet.
I am tired of hearing about this person. I am also tired of his merry band of libertarian nihilists. I know my brand is not to disparage, and vent that much, but what else am I supposed to say?
Houselessness is an absolute crisis in this country. I know, add it to the list, right? We have dealt with, and had ignored, climate change, houselessness, civil rights, basic equal justice, health care, women’s health, (remember when breast cancer was summarily ignored in the 1980’s?) The absurd inhumanity is almost satirical, something I would have expected on Saturday Night Live when it was more clever.
But what satire is left to create? What was once over the top farce is now reality. Republican candidates are literal cartoon characters. I know crime is high, and I know good and well some of the unhoused are mentally ill, and therefore, committing regrettable acts. But they are not a virus, or some kind of refuse to sweep up. Here is the conversation, for full context, between Rogan and Tom Segura.
Tom Segura: When you see stuff like that on the streets, at least in Los Angeles or California, that’s protected property. Like by law. That’s that’s person’s property by law.
Joe Rogan: Oh, a homeless person’s property is protected?
Segura: Absolutely. If you were to try to move that or take that—
Rogan: You’d get arrested. Hilarious. But they wouldn’t arrest you if you shot somebody. Maybe you should just go shoot the homeless people.
Segura: I like your ideas.
Rogan: And if nobody claims it. I mean nobody does anything about violent crime in LA anymore.
The response:
Theo Henderson, an unhoused advocate who created the podcast “We the Unhoused,” said the comments could absolutely cause violence directed at people without homes.
“It’s repulsive,” Henderson said. “It’s infuriating because it’s not only out of touch, but the reality is that unhoused people are targeted by housed people. To advocate trying to shoot at unhoused people or just giving these dog whistles to people that do not see unhoused people as human beings — I can’t believe you’d advocate for it.”
Theo, and real American heroes like Theo, are not helming a multi-million subscriber podcast. They don’t have the reach people like Rogan do. This is a large part of what I try to accomplish through what I write, to act as a megaphone. Because the anonymous heroes deserve that reach. But millions upon literal millions of mostly man-children listen to Rogan on a daily basis, and get their inspiration for the watch battery spark of intelligence from him and people like him.
So let’s close this diatribe out with this, do not remember only the names Joe Rogan and Tom Segura alone. Remember too Theo Henderson.
Theo is a hero. He doesn’t have a cape, but if we do our part, we can give him something even better:
A bigger voice.
-ROC
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