Rocker Neil Young’s attempt to bully Spotify into discontinuing Joe Rogan’s wildly popular podcast contains a lesson for the cancel culture – but don’t expect them to learn anything from it.
Few things are as satisfying as watching a bully get a comeuppance.
It’s a staple of popular literature. Thriller writer Brad Thor often includes a sequence in which his hero, Scot Harvath, comes upon somebody bullying some victim and takes matters into his own hands.
It’s not so much revenge, which is only the Lord’s to take, but a sense of satisfied justice. It’s why Ralphie’s beatdown of “Scut” Farkus in “A Christmas Story” never gets old.
This past week, rock icon Neil Young tried to bully Spotify into discontinuing Joe Rogan’s wildly popular podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience.” The veteran rocker of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Buffalo Springfield told the streaming platform to unplug Mr. Rogan or else remove all of Mr. Young’s songs.
On Wednesday, Spotify said: Okay, see you later, Neil.
You could almost hear Lynyrd Skynyrd crooning to Mr. Young that, “A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow.” The rock band’s Ronnie Van Zant wrote “Sweet Home Alabama” (1974) after Mr. Young trashed the region in his accusatory “Southern Man” song in 1970 and again in 1972’s “Alabama.”
While “Southern Man” and “Alabama” have faded, “Sweet Home Alabama” is a timeless, monster hit.
“This idea that someone who has star status can go around stomping on people with whom he disagrees is wrong – and it actually is refreshing to see Spotify push back and say ‘No, we’re not going to censor Joe Rogan just because Neal Young wants us to.'” (Robert Knight, in an interview with AFN)
What prompted Mr. Young to act like a spoiled dictator was Mr. Rogan’s inclusion of COVID “misinformation.”
Mr. Rogan says healthy young people might want to avoid getting the shots and that adverse effects have been underreported. He also had Dr. Robert Malone in December on the podcast, which typically draws 10 million views. Dr. Malone, who holds several patents for the mRNA technology that produced the COVID-19 vaccines, is a leading critic of universal vaccination and flatly opposes giving children the shots.
“They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,” Young, 76, wrote in a letter to his manager and record label. So, Warner Music formally requested to Spotify that Mr. Young’s music be removed.
Meanwhile, Mr. Rogan’s $100 million contract with Spotify is still in effect and the controversy has only increased his audience. You’d think hip people like Neil Young would know that censoring a well-known figure is like trying to hold a slippery balloon under water. You’re going to get soaked.
The quality of Neil Young’s music is not at issue here. I have many of his albums and consider him a major talent. His “Cinnamon Girl” song is 100-proof guitar rock.
I had hoped that “Southern Man” was just a spasm of early political correctness, along with the later “Alabama” and his unfairly blaming Richard Nixon for the student deaths at Kent State in 1970 in the song “Ohio.”
Unlike other liberals, Mr. Young later apologized, sort of, for trashing the South. In his 2012 biography “Waging Heavy Peace,” he wrote, “I don’t like my words when I listen to it. They are accusatory and condescending, not fully thought out, and too easy to misconstrue.”
Wow. Good for him. So, I was disappointed to see him join the cancel culture’s assault on the free flow of information. It’s one thing to use your art to protest something. It’s another to try to silence views with which you disagree.
The music industry, Hollywood, academia and even much of corporate America, is in the grip of leftwing ideologues. Even professional sports teams thumb their noses at many fans by brooking no dissent at the league’s embrace of Black Lives Matter. One of the group’s founders has openly boasted that “we are trained Marxists.”
For a year or two after Colin Kaepernick (estimated net worth $20 million) and others took a knee during the National Anthem while officials did nothing, the National Football League lost some of its TV audience. But with a compelling product and the pandemic bumming everyone out, the fans came back. Meanwhile, the NFL began increasingly funding leftwing causes and displaying endzone slogans.
You have to wonder how many players with Black Lives Matter on their helmets have a clue about what they are promoting. Do they know that BLM has stated that it wants to destroy the nuclear family and end capitalism – which includes professional sports? And that something as uncontroversial as “Stop Hate” is part of the Left’s mantra that America is an incurably racist and evil country?
The cowed TV networks sure aren’t going to spill the truth. Coming up, it will be interesting to see American sportscasters kowtow to Communist China during the Winter Olympics in Beijing, which begin Friday. Talk about appeasing bullies.
Beijing’s ideological enforcers, who don’t want the Uyghurs or the Hong Kong crackdown mentioned, will make Neil Young’s clumsy attempt at censorship look like child’s play.
A version of this column ran originally in The Washington Times.
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Copyright American Family News. Reprinted with permission.
It seems that when the people who believe they are the hierarchy of America have reached their pinnacle of success they lose
much needed brain function. I kind of enjoy when people like Young run their liberal mouths thinking America will listen and then are publicly humiliated.
MORE like when they get too old.. Notice practically ALL the singers who’ve come out in support of neil young, ARE EQUALLY as old as he is…
Wokeness, cancel culture, and political correctness are destroying our society. The idiocy and crass stupidity of all who participate in these movements leaves one wondering if there is any sanity left. The ridiculous name changes and language modifications is merely PR for the celebrities pushing it. These lame attempts at showing off intelligence and sensitivity are grand failures, but it is alike a quicksand that keeps pulling these people deeper and deeper in.
When political correctness FIRST reared its ugly head, i was saying “THIS WILL BE THE start of our downfall, if we don’t nip this in the butt NOW, before it metasticises”..
GUESS WE FAILED TO DO so!
Rocker Neil Young’ is a has been and like all liberals he is a loser. Hey Neil, since you do not like the freedom of speech we have under the Constitution, go move to North Korea and you will get your wish, no freedom of speech. Of course, in North Korea the no freedom of speech will apply to an airhead like you, Neil Airhead.
For what it’s worth, Young is nothing more than an aging, progressive, Canadian attempting to make himself relevant with a generation who doesn’t even know who he is, nor cares.
So sad to see a man so forward with his opinions, indeed making his living off promoting his opinions, go to this point to stop someone else from expressing theirs.
Once upon a time CSN&Y were very good at pointing out that there were legitimate questions to ask. Now they seem to think they have the answers to them all.
Liberals have all the answers even before a question is asked. It must be so gratifying to be so intelligent. On the other hand what a let down they will experience when they are defeated in Nov and their opinions mean even less then they do right now.
As i saw on one youtube vid’s comment line..
Parents used to say to their kids “so because everyone else is jumping off a bridge, you now think YOU should jump off that same bridge”, Re the herd mentality the left seems to push.
NOW DAYS its morphed into “SO WHY have you not jumpped off that bridge already!”