Castle Magus

I don't have a "joe rogan" tag... hmm... not sure if even this 1:18:01 episode of Some More News that is explicitly about Joe Rogan is enough for me to bother creating a "joe rogan" tag. I mean, sure I could just plop "joe rogan" down there in the tags list and then have a "joe rogan" tag for the future, in the unlikely off-chance that I ever mention him again, but he's absolutely not worth the effort of finding and back-tagging the very rare few posts from the past in which I may have mentioned the asshat. Eh... okay, I guess I'll throw a new "joe rogan" tag on this post, for what tiny bit that is worth (even just to me, let alone anyone else).

Also, disclaimer: I have never seen anything of Joe Rogan's show myself, other than a few short clips here and there over the years of him saying stupid shit.

Anyway, on with watching the video at 2x playback speed...

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...all right, not even five minutes in, and there's some transphobia. Off to a good start.

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Side bar: "Walmart fires 6'4" cisgender woman threatened by man who thought she was trans"

Wow. So, basically, a man came into a women's bathroom at a Walmart to harass and threaten a cisgender woman, who worked at that Walmart, because he wrongly, stupidly thought she was transgender merely because she happened to be tall, and then the woman was fired from her job at that Walmart after she reported the incident. (Ostensibly because she rEpOrTeD iT tO tHe WrOnG tYpE oF mAnAgEr... what the actual fuck ...so, then, why was the manager she did report it to not also fired for not reporting it up the chain to the, supposedly, "correct" type of manager? Probably because said manager wasn't a tall woman who "looked trans.")

And, of course, this fucking happened in goddamned Florida. That tracks.

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And now, onto the COVID disinformation part of the show...

Ah, and there's the racism... hmm, turns out Joe Rogan apparently had very different views back in 2019 or whenever, compared to now...? Gee, I wonder why? Oh, right, it's because of the Trump stuff.

And here comes the Trump-specific stuff (though that's really been an undercurrent of the entire video all along)... Joe Rogan before: "The morons had a king." Joe Rogan now: "He's real." Also, it does indeed seem really weird that Joe Rogan, who apparently hates everything to do with Jeffrey Epstein, had Donald Trump, someone who really appears to have been a close, personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein, as a guest on his show, and apparently never once mentioned Jeffrey Epstein. Go figure.

Joe Rogan didn't like Tim Walz, because Tim Walz was, supposedly, "a liar." Therefore, all in for Trump I guess????? The guy who has spouted literally multiple tens of thousands of documented lies over the past decade????? Okay, Joe Rogan. Okay.

Elon Musk? A genius? The smartest person alive? Okay, Joe Rogan. Okay.

Trump is "an outsider" and "anti-establishment" in the same way that GamerGate was "actually about ethics in video game journalism." Joe Rogan, by supporting Trump, is also no longer "anti-establishment," because Trump, like it or not, is the fucking, goddamned "establishment" now. Thanks, in part, to Joe Rogan, specifically.

Ah, and there comes the anti-abortion sentiment and the homophobia, too. Keep 'em comin', Joe. They're all just beach ball issues with no actual substance or value, amirite? *eye roll*

I'm on the tail end of Gen X, having been born in 1979 (Google/Wikipedia says Gen X was from "1965 to 1980"), and believe you me, I have absolutely not undergone a "right-wing turn." Maybe I'm just an aberration, though. *shrug*

Oh, and we're even getting just a smidge of antisemitism up in here (along with some Nazi propaganda/Hitler apologia), too. The hits just keep on comin', Joe.

So, in conclusion, while Joe Rogan isn't the absolutely worst grifter/con-man/right wing dumbshit that Some More News has done a video about, he's also obviously not the greatest dude in the world, either. I don't know... maybe Joe Rogan could be one of the rare few Trumpanzees that potentially could be shamed into changing his ways by being called a hypocrite, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that. In any case, this video has not convinced me to suddenly start watching the 6000+ hours of The Joe Rogan Experience or whatever the fuck.

(They didn't manage to get through this video without at least some dumb skits involving Katy and Warmbo. Short as they were, they were still present. *sigh*)

"Hi. Today we're looking at AI-generated images, why they look like that, why fascists love them, and how corporations want to use them to cheapen the valuable work of creatives."

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Very small aside, I loathe everything about that "based" modern slang bullshit, so Cody mildly mocking it once and loosely associating it with alt-right incel MAGAt dildos in this video brought a vague quarter-smile to my face.

"Hi. Let's take a look back at the 2024 Democratic National Convention – what the speakers said, the media reaction, the right-wing grifters who tried to infiltrate it, and what we would have really liked to see."

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(Just to get it out of the way, while I'm mostly fine with the [morbid, gallows] humor and all that, I really wish that Some More News would do away with the full on fucking skits. Like, getting rid of anything at all to do with fucking Warmbo would be great, along with all the "evil Katy" stuff. Anyway, this episode doesn't truly start until around 3:30 into the video. Basically, in the video timeline, you can very safely skip the entire section labeled as "Intro," and another five to ten minutes could easily be trimmed out, too, thanks to all the other asinine Warmbo-related and "evil Katy"-related skit shit. [That one little red finger puppet dude with the top hat who had appeared in previous videos and later on in this one is okay, though, I guess. Except that, spoiler alert, Cody apparently killed and ate him in this video. Oh well.])

Annnnnnyway...

Lesson one: Just "vibes" don't make Cody happy. Fair enough.

Lesson two: Take fact checkers with a grain of salt. Who fact checks the fact checkers, after all? Themselves? Not so much.

Lesson three: Yeah, the first third of this video was criticizing the DNC (and, briefly, fact checkers). But the second third of this video was criticizing the rancid, delusional RWNJ response to the DNC. Oh boy! Right wing grifters are stupid assholes! And other tautologies/redundancies! To hell with Charlie Kirk. To hell with... uh... that MyPillow guy, whoever the fuck he is? ("Mike Lindell" apparently? That name seems vaguely familiar, probably from previous SMN videos.) To hell with "Libs of Tiktok." To hell with Matt Walsh. To hell with Jack Posobiec. To hell with Laura Loomer. To hell with Catturd. (Wait, what? Seriously? There is a RWNJ "personality" who goes by the name "Catturd"? What the actual, literal, unvarnished fuck.) To hell with JD Vance. (Remember that douchenozzle?) To hell with Ben Shapiro. To hell with Dinesh D'Souza. To hell with Ann Coulter. Seriously, just an entire smorgasbord of RWNJ dumbshits showcased in this video. To hell with the entire lot of them.

Lesson four: Third third of the video: More bashing on the Democrats, because there are other, real, valid reasons that the DNC still sucks, actually. Not that Trump/Trumpublicans wouldn't still be far, far worse, even on the same issues, of course, as the video fully grants. But even so. "Democrats: At Least We Won't Make Things Worse." US politics, as a whole, is fucking ridiculous, stanky clownshoes.

"Hi. Ben Shapiro and The Daily Wire are producing a whole lot of original films and TV shows lately. What's with that?"

A post on Whatever dot Scalzi dot com.

"Hi. There's been a lot of talk about Hollywood going woke and thus going broke. But is this really true? Is Hollywood, perhaps, pretty un-woke?"

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No puppets, no skits, no other characters; just Cody Johnston talking to a camera for almost an hour, with occasional clips and quotes from RWNJ "news" "media" talking airheads and their ilk for him to clown on, just as God intended.

Yeah, Hollywood has never been particularly "woke" and still isn't, to this day, despite paying marginal lip service to it. RWNJs whinging about the "wokeness" of Hollywood accomplishes very little besides demonstrating how daffy RWNJs are.

(Also, I had no idea Kelsey Grammer was apparently a Trumpanzee until now [or if I did hear about it before, I don't recall]. But then, it's not like I was ever a huge fan of him or followed his every move or whatever before this. What little I've seen him in was all right, I guess? *shrug* I mean, what have I seen that he was in? X-Men movies with him as Beast? The Simpsons with him as Sideshow Bob? I've probably seen an episode or three of Cheers or Frasier at some point or another? His brief role in 1999 as the original voice of the Geico Gecko? Oh, wait! I know! He was that captain who showed up at the very end of that Star Trek TNG episode where the Enterprise was caught in a Groundhog Day loop. [And between this here and Cody himself mentioning Star Trek in the above video, I can now safely put the "star trek" tag on this post. Woohoo.])

"Hi. On our final episode of 2022, we look back at some stories we didn't cover, including soup getting thrown at art, a queen dying in some sort of kingdom, quiet quitting, and brief instances of some good news."

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A bit too skit-heavy for my tastes (and, honestly, these days, any skits at all are too many, as far as I'm concerned), but otherwise an okay episode.

Without getting into all that other banal, tiresome, nauseating, bullshit "news" crap that Cody talks about all the time...

...pretty much everything I've personally seen and heard about the new Avatar movie has been good. I thought the first one was plenty good enough, too, for that matter (based on the one [1] time I've seen it, back when it first came out, 13 years ago), and I never really understood all the "oh god, not another Avatar movie, lord it's going to be terrible just like the first one was" opinions that washed/wafted across the Internet all effluvia-like in the wake of the announcement of its mere existence. Granted, I haven't seen the new one yet, so I don't know, maybe I'll hate it, but I doubt I'll hate it.

"Hi. Fascism has been on our minds lately and it looks like it's been on Ben Shapiro's as well. But, in looking through Shapiro's writing, he seems pretty confused about what fascism is, who is promoting it, when he doesn't like it, and when he totally does."

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"Antifa is fascist." -- Ben Shapiro, apparently while trying to flex his huge brain muscle so hard that it cramped right up.

For reference: "Life in the Fash Lane"

Also, for reference: "Perhaps Ben Shapiro Shouldn't Be Taken Seriously By Anyone About Anything - SOME MORE NEWS"

"Hi. In today's episode, we look at the escalating attacks from conservatives on school boards, and examine what the right actually wants to do with public education. (Note: it's not good!)"

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Aside from the weird shrimp jokes, this episode was more like what I want from Some More News all the time, i.e. Cody Johnston simply sitting in front of a camera and being incredibly sardonic toward evil GQP numbskulls and their evil numbskull antics for an hour or so. No skits, no puppets, none of that bullshit. Except for the weird shrimp stuff. I could have done without the weird shrimp stuff.

Anyway, yeah, this is merely the four hundred hojillionth installment in the ever-ongoing "the GQP is obviously, cartoonishly evil and needs to cease existing as soon as possible" series.

"Hi. In this week's video, we discuss the Supreme Court overturning Roe Vs Wade, and man, it's a real bummer."

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Obligatory gripe about shitty teaser videos and premieres and whatnot.

With that out of the way...

They don't mention it in this video, but I think one of the most hypocritical things about the whole anti-abortion brouhaha is this: the states which ostensibly care so very much about the "sanctity of life" or whatever that they're climbing over each other to be the first to enact draconian laws against women getting abortions and against anyone who dares to lift a finger to help women get abortions... are the same fucking states that are potentially most likely to punish anyone and everyone who violates said draconian laws... ...with the fucking death penalty.

Also, mild shout out, again, to how utterly (and intentionally) broken the Supreme Court is, now, which they also touch upon in this video.