This weekend I posted what I considered a hilarious facebook post. I wrote:
“The irony of an early 70’s hippie rocker trying to censor someone is not lost on me.”
It was a subtle nod to Neil Young’s statement to Spotify that if they continued to host Joe Rogan on Spotify, they would like him to take his music off of their streaming Service. Young said it had to be Young or Rogan, but they couldn’t have both.
This stemmed of course from Rogan’s podcast where he has hosted hundreds of guests of all varieties about a ton of different topics. Apparently two or three guests were anti mask and anti vax and Rogan’s critics accused him of spreading “dangerous misinformation” because of these guests and his lack of calling them out.
So Neil Young decided to do something about it. Good for him. He’s used his power and fame and platform to try to make change and to stop Rogan’s platform from any more “dangerous misinformation.” However, I thought it was funny and ironic that he was attempting to personally use that platform to do all that since when he started, a group of people attempted to stop him and his like from the messages they shared in the early days of rock and roll.
So I shared that irony on Facebook, and instantly two of my more progressive acquaintances, one who I hadn’t seen in 5 years and one who I hadn’t seen in over a decade, came at me and shared why Rogan was a wrong and why Young was right. Notice in my above quote I never said one was right and one was wrong. But they were going to let me have the truth, from their perspective. One even went personal with their criticism of my humor.
So I’ll say this: I love humor and I love joy. I love Jesus more, but rarely does my humor and joy get in the way of my love for Jesus. In my writing and in my reports here and in everything I do here on this site, I want it to focus on laughter and joy. If someone doesn’t think it’s funny, I’m sorry. I truly am. But it is. It is to someone anyways.
Do I want to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t think it’s funny? Absolutely. But don’t make it personal. It’s not. I didn’t bust on you or even Neil Young.
Maybe you don’t like misinformation? That could be. Everyone does, and yet every point of view risks a certain amount of misinformation.
Maybe you lost someone because of covid? That sucks, and I understand the feeling. My dad lay on a ventilator for over a month and almost died because of it.
But none of those reasons mean you have the overall and correct perspective on life and medicine and climate change and everything else. Get over yourself. Not everything is so pressing and divisive. Sometimes things can just be jokes.
So like Dave Chappelle said, “we gotta let some air out of the bag.” And we do. Breathe in. Breathe out. Have some joy. Have a conversation. Laugh together. Love harder. Be good, my friends. And if you can’t be friends, unfriend me. I should probably not take things so personally either, even when insults are hurled at me personally. Because after all, that person probably is going through something I’m unaware of. Let maybe they had a appendectomy recently.
Maybe we’ll see each other someday and decide to have a beer in real life. (Although I hate beer, but maybe I’ll have a chai tea instead). Either way, let’s let love win the day, shall we?
