I used to listen to this prick - he's always been kind of dumb, but his show was fun and attracted a broad spectrum of guests under the assumed banner of free speech. Most of the show's subjects intersected with my own interests: food, health, tech, psychedelia, politics. Other episodes offered a peek behind the curtain of some of our culture's ugliest, most insane ideological backwaters. This was frankly irresistible to someone like me, like hate-watching trashy TV, but I was engaging with it critically.
There were endless threads debating whether it was right to give some of those guests such a platform, but in general, we were all so sure that Joe was a progressive hero just shining a light on these figures. He said just enough of the right things to keep the audience coming back, and his detached approach was rationalized away. We thought that if he pushed back on these guys in any meaningful way they wouldn't go on the show and show us who they were.
In hindsight, fans who weren't alt-right weirdos were naive and misinterpreted his aloofness. Of course, the arrival of Trump and maga laid everything bare. Still, the resultant chickens of social decay have come home to roost.
I'm looking forward to this asshole's fade into irrelevance, but I'm not sure it will ever come.
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