Joe Rogan strongly condemned any comedian who dared to protest “racist” jokes from Netflix’s controversial Roast of Kevin Hart.
“If you’re a person and you’re not accustomed to roasts and you don’t get why those jokes are so mean, I get it, but comedians that are getting upset about these roast jokes, f--- all the way off. Just f--- all the way off,” Rogan said in an incendiary rant on his Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Friday.
“You f---ing traitor. You know what this is. You know exactly what this is. You’re a f---ing traitor,” he continued.
For weeks after Hart’s Netflix roast went live, viewers and comedians alike raised issues with some of the show’s “racist” jokes, namely from MAGA comedian Tony Hinchcliffe and Shane Gillis.
“The Black community is so proud of you… right now George Floyd is looking up at us all laughing so hard he can’t breathe,” Hinchcliffe, 41, who Rogan insisted was “a great guy,” said in his set.
Even weeks later, comedians are still condemning the jokes.
“It’s not ‘Am I going too far?’ The main thing, ‘Is it funny?’ That is the only question you should be asking,” comedian Wanda Sykes, 62, said on The View on Friday. “And that George Floyd joke was not funny. It wasn’t even a joke.”
Chelsea Handler, who repeatedly roasted Hinchcliffe during the event, said the comedians’ jokes were “disgusting” and “gross.”
Rogan slammed the dissenting comedians for using the rebukes for personal gain.
“You’re just using this moment to try to boost yourself up, to try to knock down what’s happening in these,” he said. “You could disagree with the content. You could say, ‘I think they went too far with this. I don’t think...’ But this f---ing pretending that these people are actual racists and Nazis just because they’re telling these jokes that are in a roast. Like, f--- all the way off.”
The comedian-turned-podcast host likened comedy roasts to no-holds-barred bloodfights.
“You have to understand the roast world, like that is not the real world, kids. You’re going for blood,” he explained. “If you’re in a cage fight, and you elbow someone in the face, it’s not because you’re a bad person. That is the job. That’s the game we’re playing.”
Rogan’s guest, Harland Williams, whom the podcaster questionably described as “the most universally loved comedian‚” admitted he was not entirely a fan of the roast’s “cruel” jokes.
“I got to say I’m not the hugest fan because I don’t love cruel humor as much,” Williams, 63, who has appeared on Hinchcliffe’s comedy series, Kill Tony, confessed. “But I do love that Tom Brady roast. I feel like it kicked wokeness over the cliff like those Buffalo. We were getting so woke, and we needed that roast to sort of course correct.”
