And now the odds of her winning five gold medals are history, her odds of winning ANY gold medals are very long.

Makes you hate American media. They need a face for the Olympics, they decided it was Shiffrin, just like they decided it was Bode Miller back in 2006 in Torino. And not delivering, despite being the overall best in the world, Bode was forever branded a loser, when in truth the Olympics are just one set of races, subject to the vagaries of the system, and the fact that Bode went on to win three medals in Vancouver, one of each color, was not good enough, the focus was now on Lindsey Vonn.

Vonn won gold in the downhill, and a bronze in the Super-G, so she became America’s sweetheart. Julia Mancuso’s two silvers in Vancouver, to go with her gold in Torino and bronze in Sochi…Julia WHO?

If you’re a student of the game you know that Shiffrin has not been as dominant since her father died. But life intervenes. You also know that Annemarie Proser-Pröll, probably the best women’s ski racer ever, not that anybody recalls, never mind remembers history, took a year off to take care of her sick father, otherwise…we wouldn’t be talking about Lindsey Vonn challenging Ingemar Stenmark’s record of 82 victories. Moser-Pröll won 62 times in 11 seasons. She won the gold in the downhill at the Lake Placid Olympics. Whereas Vonn won 82 times in 19 years, and there were two more events, the super-G and combined. Unlike Vonn, Moser-Pröll could win in all three events of the time, instead of today’s five. But at first Moser-Pröll was not photogenic, she was significantly overweight. She ultimately slimmed down considerably and still won, but most Americans have never heard of her. The machine needs a new face, and they got it with Vonn, and they expected it with Shiffrin.

Shiffrin was a machine. She finished seemingly every race and won in slalom again and again. Once again, if you watch ski racing, you know this is essentially unheard of. Hermann Maier wasn’t as good. Marcel Hirscher was the closest thing to Shiffrin, but he didn’t ski downhill, with its higher odds of injury.

Now you can’t completely count Shiffrin out in super-G and downhill, but the odds are very long, especially in the latter. As a matter of fact, Shiffrin skipped the speed events recently to concentrate on the so-called technical events, slalom and giant slalom, in preparation for the Olympics. After she recovered from Covid. She had to deliver for America, she was the great blonde, white hope!

But along the way, a new contender came along. She’s just as good as Shiffrin in the slalom, AND NO ONE HAS EVER COME CLOSE! Petra Vlhova has already won five times in slalom this season, Shiffrin only twice. Psychologically, this is very difficult for Shiffrin, who always knew she was better, she could hold back on the first run and cruise to victory in the second, knowing she had just a little bit more in the tank than anybody else. But now she’s got to go all out, all the time, which increases the odds of mistakes, like today.

Let’s see… Today. A steep, icy course. Vlhova herself bungled. Shiffrin got past the first problem area, where others had fallen and bungled, but further down…she went over.

I’m sure Shiffrin’s mind was now in front of her skis. She’d gotten through the hard part, she was on her way. But she lost her edge, her skis slipped out from under her.

Now if you watched it on TV, you were stunned at the angle she was at to begin with. Everyday skiers don’t even come close.

But there’s no joy in Mudville tonight, the mighty Shiffrin has gone down.

And if it were the normal season, Shiffrin would shrug and move on. Everybody makes mistakes. Never mind this race being on a new hill covered in manmade snow which is notoriously icy. Good for later skiers, but a bit tougher overall.

So the odds of Shiffrin delivering like Lindsey are very long. You won’t see her on late night TV, she won’t be on the cover of magazines and newspapers, she disappointed America, she’s nothing but a LOSER!

Anything but.

It’s one race out of the season. But America only pays attention to the Olympics.

Everybody knows that Shiffrin is a legend, superior in her skills to Vonn, even Bode testifies as to Shiffrin’s talent. But she disappointed America, she blew it when the light was upon her, forevermore she’ll be known as the woman who didn’t deliver.

Forget her victories in the past, even gold medals. Doesn’t matter, she was not in the spotlight, she was not carrying the weight of the entire country onto the slope.

Now in Europe, they know how good Shiffrin is. Bode too. They’re heroes. They’re Americans, but their legends really live overseas. And Shiffrin is one for the ages. But in the eyes of America, she’s no Lindsey Vonn.

Shiffrin is 26. She could regain her edge and break Stenmark’s record of 86 victories in 19 seasons. And sure, when Stenmark competed there were two fewer disciplines, but he, unlike Shiffrin, doesn’t ski the downhill. But Shiffrin has even won in the downhill. She’s a five event skier, like Bode Miller, a true oddity in this era of specialization. And Shiffrin has won 73 times in 12 seasons. Quite an achievement.

Now in truth ski racing is no longer the sport it was in the sixties, when Billy Kidd came out of Stowe, Vermont to challenge and beat the Europeans. Kidd was slight. Today everybody works out in the gym, year-round, something Kidd never did. Today’s ski racers are jocks, they’re about as similar to the average citizen as an NFL player. Because if you’re not in the absolute best shape, you have no chance to win.

And in truth, almost all sacrifice their education to compete on the circuit. And when their careers are over, they can trade on their fame, or they could go back to school, but when they finally get in the groove they’re a decade behind everybody else.

And no one is more regimented and focused than Shiffrin. Which is what makes her so great. She famously skied gates on powder days at Burke Mountain Academy, which is like showing up at school on a snow day, unheard of. That’s what it takes to be a champion.

But no one sees all that, especially in today’s world where everybody’s hyping themselves online ad infinitum.

The fact that Shiffrin can compete at all with the weight of expectations upon her astounds me. You’ve got to be loose and flexible in ski racing, anxiety and pressure make you tense.

So I’ve got no problem with Mikaela Shiffrin falling in today’s giant slalom, none at all.

Unfortunately, America does.

Is not yesterday’s fandom.

Every other day I have people attacking me for what I said about Taylor Swift’s performance at the Grammys over a decade ago. When I research further, I find that most of these people were barely born when this happened. But they need to defend their hero.

But Taylor Swift was not like her contemporaries. She was a teenager singing from the heart. She was perceived to be genuine. She represented the demo. AND STILL DOES!

A week or so ago, Damon Albarn of Blur/Gorillaz, attacked Ms. Swift, saying that she did not write her own songs. The blowback was instant. Ms. Swift responded and then her minions piled on and Albarn retracted his statements nearly instantly.

This is also different, stars of yore didn’t bite back. Nor did they have the communications methods to do so. As a matter of fact, most hatred went unnoticed and unread, the internet amplifies hate today, but there are so many more things to hate in the channel.

And hate is the word. There is nothing subtle about it. Not only are you wrong, you must be excoriated, intimidated, the goal is to get you to crawl back into the hole you came from and be silent. Which keeps many people from playing at all, or playing once and then giving up. But unless you’re part of the maelstrom you’ve got no idea what is truly going on in America today, because it’s a war.

Now Taylor Swift has been around for a long time, she broke in 2006, over fifteen years ago. When MySpace was still a thing. And not only was Facebook not dominant, Instagram and Twitter, the entire social media world of today, didn’t exist and had no traction. So really, Taylor Swift is an outlier, her career began in the aughts, under a different paradigm, because today no one can have the footprint of Swift, NO ONE!

This is what the music industry media disinformation machine obscures. Rihanna revealed she was pregnant last week. But she hasn’t had a record in half a decade, she’s in the rearview mirror. Most people shrugged, even though the story is everywhere. In truth, Rihanna gave up music for the mainstream, the penumbra, the opportunities that stardom has delivered, she’s no longer a musician. And she broke the year before Swift, and although she was in the spotlight, she had no rough edges. And sans rough edges you can’t grow a fan base today.

This is what those on the way up don’t realize. That they will never become ubiquitous, not even world famous. Oh, people might know them around the world, but not MOST people, even though the publicity machine will hype them to high heaven. But in today’s multifarious world you don’t have to pay attention to any media that doesn’t appeal or agree with you.

Which is why pop stars come and go. Their fans are not dedicated, it’s all about the songs, it’s momentary. To have a dedicated fan base you have to think smaller, like a metal band.

Metal is thriving. It never ever crosses over to the mainstream, it puts up poor streaming numbers, but its fans are some of the hardest core extant. They relish being outsiders, they’re not just fans of the music, but the whole ethos. You go to the show to be with like-minded people. It’s us versus them. The fact that people outside this world can’t even understand the music, never mind the fandom, only bonds believers to the act and the scene even more.

Used to be people were fans of the system. Now they’re fans of INDIVIDUALS!

It was AM radio in the sixties. Then FM. Then MTV. Now there’s no overarching distribution medium that bonds people to it. Certainly not a streaming service, nobody believes in Spotify, never mind Apple or Amazon. If these outlets were smart, they’d try to gain adherence from their users, akin to the “I Want My MTV” campaign, but they’re run by techies, not marketers, if you don’t understand fandom you cannot create it, never mind nurture it.

It must be an identity. Not only are you a fan of the person and their output, you’re against anything that intrudes upon it. So, one can’t believe in a streaming music distributor, because if it has everything, there’s nothing to hate. You need context.

And fandom can be of a scene, like with metal above. Kind of like the jam-band scene, listeners may be mellower, but they will tell you they listen to nothing else, and everybody else’s music is crap.

Which is what the Joe Rogan story is all about. Forget the content, it’s HIM versus the WORLD!

What’s the first thing a Roganite will say in his defense? HAVE YOU LISTENED TO HIM? Because if you did, you’d instantly become a believer, otherwise you’re the enemy. You either love him or hate him, and his fans will defend him to their death. If you think this is about content, you’re missing the point.

Not that content hasn’t built Rogan’s rep. He’s hosting the outsiders, the people who get traction nowhere else. Which appeals to his outsider fans. What do they say, Rogan has 11 million listeners? That’s a drop in the bucket, especially considering it’s a worldwide number, and Rogan does have fans around the world, and Rogan’s podcasts is the BIGGEST!

Everything is niche. Except maybe the Super Bowl. Then again, America puts on blinders as large men hit each other and cause brain damage. But everybody else is watching football too, we can root for our home team (the idea of the Dallas Cowboys being America’s Team are long gone), and watch a contest which is essentially a fight to the death. It gets our ya-ya’s out. We can yell and scream. We don’t have to hold back. Letting go is approved, whereas every day your behavior is limited by society, what you can do or not, there’s a psychological cloud atop every American, limiting their behavior. This may or may not be true, but people feel it. Because their teams have amplified the message and there are no refs in real life. The word police. The sexual behavior police. People feel constrained and they cannot escape it, nowhere is off the grid, everybody’s connected, so they REACT!

And in order to react, you must have something to believe in. And it doesn’t matter if what you believe in is right or wrong, or if the person delivering the message is heinous, they’re INVESTED in this person and their message, and to show weakness is anathema.

Older people who grew up in the last century, yesteryear, just don’t get it. They think we can all get along. NO WAY! Because for me to get along I have to give up my fandom, my allegiance, and it DEFINES ME!

Otherwise what defines you?

Certainly not your job. It’s low-paying labor or service or else you’re a cog in the machine at the tech company. And the rulers of this country, the billionaires, believe you should be happy, since you’ve got a flat screen, alcohol and maybe even legal marijuana. I mean what else could you want?

TO BE HEARD, TO BE CONSIDERED!

For a while there, people were fans of corporations, especially tech corps. But that was before solidification of the sphere. When Apple was an upstart, an underdog doing it differently, you could align your beliefs with the company. But then the sun shined on the company and its manufacturing and labor processes came into view and no matter what was said in the company’s defense, it didn’t wash. The truth is everybody wants the cost efficiencies of cheap labor, America has voted for lower prices even if it means people have to get on the plane last and take no luggage, and if you go against this you lose.

And Amazon has got its warehouses.

And Google and Facebook have manipulated the online advertising world.

And we get inane doublespeak, like Mark Zuckerberg railing against Apple’s iPhone privacy/anti-tracking options by saying the customer will be hurt, they won’t have as targeted ads. HUH? The users want NO ADS! And Zuckerberg also said this would hurt smaller merchants. Do you really think Americans care about these people? It’s everybody for themselves in America today, and these small companies don’t have enough FANS!

And how do you gain fans?

By being different. It hasn’t been this way since the sixties. The more unique you are, the more different you are, the more you speak your mind, the more people love you. If you post and no one reacts, you’re doing it wrong. As for veracity? Most of the myths of rock and roll are just that, they were manipulated publicity stunts. Rogan knows if he hosts outsiders, his fan base will go rabid, for they feel like they’re outsiders, everybody feels like an outsider today. And the truth is there’s so much in the channel that most egregious statements and behavior never get widespread attention anyway. It’s not like Rogan has just started pushing the envelope of accepted science, he’s been doing this for years! But now with the pandemic and Neil Young’s focus a light is shined upon his behavior and we find…he’s not a prince. But this guy has been in the marketplace FOR YEARS! The biggest podcaster, essentially unscathed. Who else has not been exposed? Spotify quietly removes over a hundred Rogan podcasts, but it can’t cancel him, for one thing his fans will go INSANE! And when your future is bleak, you’ll do insane things to defend your hero, you’ll even show up at protest rallies with a gun. Whereas if you’ve got something to lose… That was the amazing thing about 1/6, all those people entering the Capitol, it didn’t even occur to them that their behavior could come back and bite them in the ass. After all, Trump continued to get a pass, why shouldn’t they?

And people fight over that which doesn’t even affect them, because it’s part of that team ethos. Like that woman who ran for the school board (and won!) even though she HOME-SCHOOLED her kids! This never would have happened in the past. But there’s this feeling if we give just an inch, they’re gonna take more from us, and our backs are gonna be against the wall.

The acts of the late sixties and early seventies realized this. They wanted to be on FM, they didn’t care about AM hits. That was a derided club. “Stairway to Heaven” didn’t have to be a single, it didn’t even have to be SHORT, it wasn’t made for that market, but for the band’s fans and FM. You could believe in the bands of yesteryear. Embracing exploration of your mind when the establishment said to close it. And what really put the antiwar movement on the map was when the acts got involved, in songs, in statements and at protests. They took a side. If you don’t take a side you don’t have hard core adherents. And the lesson we learned from Woodstock was primarily THERE WERE SO MANY OF US!

That was the revelation. That 400,000 people had to be there, they couldn’t be left out, that was the power of the music. Country Joe made a whole career based on his antiwar cheer and song.

Do you see this today?

Mostly not. Musicians yearn to be brands. They’re fearful of pissing off a potential audience member. What they don’t realize is pissing off customers IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS! That’s right, the Dixie Chicks were stars in the country ghetto, but once they came out against George Bush the rest of the nation became aware of them and to this day, almost two decades later, they’re heroes, icons to people who didn’t even know their music before Natalie Maines made that comment.

On a national level, it’s scary. But on a musical level, the opportunities are rampant. Why do you need to be in the Spotify Top 50? That’s a race if you win you can only lose, because unless you keep putting up numbers on the board listeners fade away, and since you hit the heights once, people think you don’t need their fandom, their support, so they fade away, follow other interests. One of the main drivers of hip-hop is the battles between the scenes and the acts. East coast versus west. Kanye versus essentially everybody! Kanye is akin to Rogan, an ongoing train-wreck. You’ve got no idea what he’ll say. And oftentimes it’s loony tunes. And you’d think he’d lose his entire audience, but his believers stand by him, even when he puts out mediocre music, they still think he might deliver in the future.

And Van Morrison and Eric Clapton chose sides too late. Turns out their fans were not as hard core as those of the acts today. Back then the scene and its music were paramount. You might argue who is best, Clapton, Page or Beck, but you’d still listen to all three. But today? NO WAY! You wouldn’t want that chink in your armor

The only reason Neil Young’s anti-Rogan statements had any traction was because of his hard core fans. From day one he’s gone his own way, and not always admirably, like abandoning his already booked tour with Stephen Stills. But his iconoclasm is addictive to his fans. You never know what Young will do, you’re always watching him, you’re a believer even if you don’t like half of his output. Because he aligns with your identity. He’s taking a stand for YOU! He’s not compromising where you’re told to, FORCED TO, compromise all day.

That’s right, you work in the warehouse and your breaks are timed and your output is monitored, you feel more like a machine than a human being. Which is why the STEM people ultimately lose, the battle is fought with the heart, not the head. Otherwise why would people continue to support candidates who support legislation that’s against their interest?

Now there’s another paradigm shift yet to come. When the boomers fade away. Perception is the boomers had it good and screwed it up for everybody else. Also, the boomers are invested in the past. The boomers are responsible for the chains.

Will the whole system blow up, will democracy die before the boomers?

That’s quite possible. Because as you can see above, the underpinnings of our society are broken. We live in a Tower of Babel society when we keep being told there’s one government, with our interests at heart. NO ONE BELIEVES THAT, except for people like Biden and Obama and the rest still living in the past. Trump channeled the anger, he stoked the belief of his adherents and didn’t care about those he pissed off. But on the left? They still think it’s the twentieth century.

So when Joe Rogan crosses the line…

The first question is whether he did or not. And we can’t even agree on the rules to judge his behavior, it’s open season, all the way around.

And Spotify, the host, is hands-off. It wants no part of this battle. It hopes it fades away. And Rogan built its now dominant podcast platform and they don’t want to let go of their flagship podcast.

No one wants to touch this, except for the fans on both sides.

The establishment hopes this fades out, just like so much gets plowed under in today’s tsunami of information.

But one thing is for sure, Rogan’s fans are never giving up, NEVER!

As for Young’s?

To a great degree they’re asleep at the wheel.

Felice told me Scott Galloway took his podcast down from Spotify, and he pointed to Roxane Gay’s opinion piece in the “Times” as an explanation.

I’d proffer that most people defending Joe Rogan have no idea who these two people are. And that’s fine, no one can know everything, but you don’t want to live in an echo chamber.

I go to the Fox News site every day. I listen to the channel on SiriusXM. Do I agree with everything they have to say? No. But I want to know what they are thinking, I don’t want to live in a bubble, I want to have context.

Furthermore, they sometimes say something, even Tucker Carlson, that makes me think, that stimulates me to do more research. Same with the Op-Ed pages of the “Wall Street Journal.” But Carlson and his ilk have poisoned the water. Despite quoting from the “New York Times” ad infinitum, they denigrate it and constantly tell YOU not to read it, that it’s untrustworthy hogwash. And that is possible, but you’d have to read the “Times” to form an opinion.

Just like all the people saying one has to listen to Joe Rogan. I certainly have, but this is not what we’re talking about, the fact that even a high percentage of the show might not be inflammatory, that does not mean he gets a pass on the rest of it. Whoopi Goldberg mischaracterizes the Holocaust, and she’s off the air for two weeks. Joe Rogan spreads misinformation and he escapes unscathed. And Joe reaches more people!

I point you to Rabbi Joshua M. Davidson’s letter about Whoopi to the aforementioned “Times”: 

“According to a nationwide survey of millennials and Gen Z conducted in 2020 by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (https://bit.ly/3gnDvT8), more than 60 percent of respondents were unaware that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and nearly half could not name a single Nazi death camp. And more than 10 percent believed that Jews actually caused the Holocaust.” https://nyti.ms/3sfdew8

If you’re not horrified by this, you’re an anti-Semite.

You think if you know something, everybody else does too. But the years keep passing, they’re constantly making new people, it turns out we have to educate young people, which is why misinformation is such a huge problem. There are a ton of Holocaust-deniers. Should they be able to have a platform on Spotify?

So, what does writer Roxane Gay have to say?

1. We don’t live in a vacuum. With a large audience comes a responsibility to the truth, things you might get away with saying amongst your friends don’t pass muster if they’re widely disseminated.

And Ms. Gay also makes the point that we DON’T live in a vacuum, we are all in it together and we have to behave accordingly.

But the heart of the matter is:

2. “I would never support censorship. And because I am a writer, I know that language matters. There’s a difference between censorship and curation. When we are not free to express ourselves, when we can be thrown in jail or even lose our lives for speaking freely, that is censorship. When we say, as a society, that bigotry and misinformation are unacceptable, and that people who espouse those ideas don’t deserve access to significant platforms, that’s curation. We are expressing our taste and moral discernment, and saying what we find acceptable and what we do not.”

BINGO!

Furthermore:

3. “Too many people believe that the right to free speech means the right to say whatever they want, wherever, whenever, on whatever platform they choose, without consequence. They want free speech to exist in a vacuum, free from context, free from criticism. That, like the idea that living in an off-the-grid yurt frees one from the demands, responsibilities and complicities of human society, is an illusion.”

There’s that nonexistent vacuum again.

And hammering the nail in:

4. “Spotify does not exist in a vacuum, and the decisions it makes about what content it hosts have consequences. To say that maybe Mr. Rogan should not be given unfettered access to Spotify’s more than 400 million users is not censorship, as some have suggested. It is curation.”

And this is why misinformation is so dangerous:

5. “Misinformation has contributed to tens of millions of people believing the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. It contributed to the Jan. 6 insurrection. And misinformation has helped prolong the Covid-19 pandemic and encouraged people to do dangerous things such as injecting bleach or taking Ivermectin…”

Finally:

6. ” The platforms allowing this misinformation to flourish and intensify consistently abdicate their responsibility to curate effectively. Instead, they offer tepid, ambiguous, and ineffective policies. They frame doing nothing as a principled stand to protect free speech, but really, they’re protecting their bottom line.” https://nyti.ms/3slhslB

Instead of having a knee-jerk reaction based on what you’ve heard from your team, you’d be better off DOING YOUR OWN RESEARCH by hearing opposing ideas, which will help you formulate and solidify your thoughts.

Which is why I’m excerpting so many of Ms. Gay’s words here. Because to get someone to click on a link can be nearly impossible, never mind get them to read what you’ve linked to, especially if it’s in the “New York Times.

But none of the haters e-mailing me ever goes this deep. All they say is it’s CENSORSHIP! We’re all entitled to FREE SPEECH! And we don’t know enough about Joe Rogan.

We’ve watched and listened to clips of Joe Rogan, is that not enough? Are we supposed to buy that 1/6 was “legitimate political discourse”? Are we supposed to deny what we saw and heard?

Ms. Gay has illustrated how it’s not censorship, and it truly is not. Certainly not under the law. And she’s taking Spotify to task for being hands-off, which it is, all in the name of profits and the tech wall, where nobody with a platform wants to give an inch, especially if it’s gray, they can think in black and white, zeros and ones, but not concepts.

And I’m going to let you in on a dirty little secret. If you’re running a billion dollar company you don’t have TIME to read and explore every opinion. So, you RELY on direction and feedback to be in touch with what is going on at your company, the impact of its actions, the context.

I’ll listen to your explanation why Rogan deserves a pass, I just haven’t gotten a reasonable one yet. Just full throttle hatred saying it’s censorship and he should be able to say and do whatever he wants, irrelevant of the consequences. But no one should believe this, NO ONE! No one is inviolate, some day they’re going to come after you, and you want the same rights, the same protections. Hell, that’s how we got into this mess, because white people were and still are afraid of losing power, their dominance. And the future always comes, and more often than not it’s positive. What is inherently wrong with having a rainbow of colors in society? I think it actually ends up reducing hatred.

So read this Roxane Gay piece.

And I don’t think Joe Rogan should be excised for all time from Spotify. But I do believe he should pay a price, just like Whoopi Goldberg. He needs to be told the truth, he has to reflect on the fact that his words have consequences. Just like Trump’s. Trump said, with no verification whatsoever, that he won the election. And now tens of millions of people believe him, even though there’s not a shred of information supporting this.

And don’t tell me it’s both sides. Democrats lost the governorship in Virginia, they didn’t say there was a flaw in the system, that really their candidate won, THEY ACCEPTED IT!

No one wins all the time.

Unless you rig the game. And if you do, people lose faith in the game. Integrity is everything. Do you really want to support the sign stealing of the Houston Astros? I think not.

Which is just my point, to think. Roxane Gay has framed this issue in a way that anybody can understand it. Assuming you’re open to new information, which sadly too many people are not.

“India.Arie Shares Clips Of Joe Rogan Calling Black People ‘Apes’ And Using N-Word”: https://bit.ly/3seXhWx

Morgan Wallen is caught drunk, surreptitiously, uttering the n-word and he becomes a cultural pariah. To the point where a year later, many people still believe he should continue to pay a price and be banned. Furthermore, Spotify removed his music from its playlists, they DE-EMPHASIZED IT! But Joe Rogan utters the n-word on camera, refers to black neighborhoods as PLANET OF THE APES, yet he’s defended and gets a pass?

Well, 1/6 was legitimate political discourse.

HUH?

If India.Arie was Doja Cat, Joe Rogan would be paying a price. But since Arie is not at the top of the commercial game right now, her story gets no traction and is paid no attention.

But let’s go back to Neil Young, et al. The Rogan supporters are laughing, seeing Neil as out on a limb, out of touch, they believe the joke is on him. But if they’d lived through the sixties, when Mr. Young’s thoughts were formed, they’d see a quite different picture.

Most people were FOR the Vietnam War. We were the United States, we never lost. (Although now we’ve lost in both Vietnam and Afghanistan. Why were we in those wars again?) But there was a coterie of antiwar protesters in the EARLY sixties who spoke up. They too were derided and marginalized, but as time wore on and the war escalated, more and more Americans started to reevaluate their position. And the antiwar protests got traction. Nixon went to speak with protesters at the Lincoln Memorial. The national viewpoint on the war changed, it needed to end, which it ultimately did, however slowly. Hell, Nixon won in ’72 by falsely claiming that PEACE IS AT HAND. Yeah, right.

Leaders. Pushing the envelope. That’s what it’s about.

But by the end of the sixties, all young people were questioning authority and beliefs. Not questioning science, (everybody believed in science, it put men on the moon and brought us LSD, never mind Tang), but mores.

I learned that term as a freshman in college, in anthropology. According to the Oxford dictionary, “mores” means:

“the essential or characteristic customs and conventions of a community”

But then we were all in it together. Hell, one of the biggest, most sustained hits of the era was the Youngbloods’ “Get Together.” Now we’re all torn apart, and it’s all about what’s good for me, screw you. And we play to the dumb, not the educated, the educated are scorned. Meanwhile, most of the so-called educated are not, they take business courses, STEM, English and art majors are laughed at, but without a well-rounded background you’re myopic, you can’t see the forest for the trees, you can’t make educated decisions, you question as opposed to running on instinct, or following the herd.

And now we’ve got a cultural division. And I feel for those on the wrong end of the stick, the uneducated poor. The truth is they were not looked out for in NAFTA and the computerization of America. But that does not make the educated elite dumb, that does not mean you should take all their opinions off the table.

And, unfortunately, the elite have had enough. When people tell you not to believe your eyes, there’s always gonna be trouble. 1/6 was “legitimate political discourse.” Yeah, right.

So the truth is Neil Young is on the bleeding edge, he’s a beacon, it’s just that the ignorant and uninformed don’t know it. One person takes a stand, and then others learn the lesson and they do so in the future. One guy, Neil Young, brought this whole question into focus, which is multifarious to begin with. How do we fight misinformation? Is Spotify just a distributor or a publisher? What exactly are censorship and free speech in the online world? What responsibility do all these platforms have?

Yes, it’s all up for grabs. And what do Spotify and the rest of the platforms have to say? TRUST US! We’ve got it HANDLED!

I ain’t trusting Mark Zuckerberg, a myopic techie who can’t get along with people. Just because you’re powerful and rich that does not mean you are smart.

And Morgan Wallen is different from Joe Rogan. Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous” was just another record, no different from the rest of the millions of titles. But Joe Rogan has a direct relationship with Spotify, they paid him $100 million. And Spotify is MORE LENIENT with Rogan??

Every day people e-mail me that boomers are out of touch because they’re too old. But the truth is, when you get older, you’ll realize older people are wiser, because they’ve had more EXPERIENCE! Do we really want all our social issues decided by thirtysomething techies?

Once again, Morgan Wallen has the right to say whatever he wants, but we don’t have to AMPLIFY IT! Why wasn’t his excision from radio playlists seen as censorship of free speech? Oh, that’s right, radio stations can do whatever they want, and they’re regulated by the FCC!

False equivalencies, jammed down our throats. Everybody’s opinion is equal. There are two sides to every story. No, most times that’s not true, and certainly not with science.

Do I think Joe Rogan should be shut up permanently? No. Just like I think Morgan Wallen is entitled to get out of persecutory jail. But why does Wallen pay such a significant price while Rogan pays NONE, not even from the same company!

But Rogan says he’s just an overworked comedian, he didn’t mean it, he’ll try harder. But Wallen is caught drunk and says one bad thing and he’s blasted away?

Come on.

Bottom line, if you get Covid and you’re not vaxxed the odds of hospitalization are double digit times higher. And in many places, Covid deaths now exceed what they were two years ago. And there’s math involved, Omicron might not be as deadly as previous variants, but it’s plenty dangerous. And if you get it… Hell, Karl Rove’s sister died of Covid! You see Covid doesn’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican. Go unvaxxed at your peril.

But we’ve got Joe Rogan proffering falsehoods again and again, just saying he’s trying to illuminate the other side. But sometimes, the other side should not be illuminated, it’s bogus. One lying doctor says vaccines cause autism and the entire world changes. Do you see the power of misinformation? Hell, that’s what the right is BUILT UPON!

Spotify has a responsibility. Joe Rogan needs to pay a penalty. Because they’re letting him skate, and then everybody else is encouraged to do the same damn thing. Which is how we got into this mess. Politicians and business people lied on the stand and now the hoi polloi have no problem telling lies in court, none whatsoever, they BOAST ABOUT IT! Civic responsibility? WHAT’S THAT?

The truth always outs. Like with Zucker at CNN. It may take a while, but you can’t hide it. The truth is Joe Rogan has a history of false and racist statements. Unlike too many in society, I think he can be rehabilitated, but just pledging to do better is NOT ENOUGH!