Trevor Noah Calls Out “Clickbait” Coverage Of India Arie Interview: “She Also Said She Doesn’t Hate Joe Rogan”

Greg Evans
·3 min read
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In an episode-long interview with The Daily Show‘s Trevor Noah last night, singer India Arie addressed the recent Joe Rogan-Spotify controversy, mentioning – among other things – that she believes Rogan is “consciously racist.”

But today Noah is calling out “clickbait” news accounts of the interview that he thinks ignore Arie’s full comments.

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“WTF???,” Noah tweeted, linking to a Mediaite article about the Arie interview. “She also said she doesn’t hate Joe Rogan, She also said we need a path to redemption, she also said it’s a complex issue. Stop using clickbait to make people angrier and hate each other. Her comments have nuance and your tweet robs her of that!” (See the tweet below.)

In the interview – watch it above – the Grammy-winning Arie, who last week posted on social media a compilation of Rogan’s on-air use of the N-word, said on The Daily Show that although she believes Rogan was being “consciously racist,” she also noted, “I think he was saying it because it got a rise out of people. That’s why he would say it. He knew that it was inappropriate, and I think the fact that he did it repeatedly and was conscious and knew, I think that is being racist.”

“It makes me wonder what he talks like behind closed doors,” she added at one point during the interview.

Rogan, of course, came under fire a couple weeks ago when rocker Neil Young demanded that Spotify choose between Rogan’s podcast and Young’s catalog of music – Spotify chose Rogan – and Arie sided with Young while pointing out her dismay with Rogan’s “language around race.” (She told Noah that she is “still in a fight” with Universal Music Group over having her music removed from the streaming service). Rogan later apologized for his past use of the N-word.

“I don’t think being a racist makes you a bad person, necessarily,” Arie said on the Comedy Central late-night show. “It makes you a person who was raised in our society.” But, she continued, because of Rogan’s large listenership, the podcaster “emboldens” his fans to follow his lead.

“I don’t believe Joe Rogan didn’t know it was the atomic bomb of racial slurs,” Arie said, adding that she has been targeted on social media by some of Rogan’s fans who use the slur.

Said Arie, “If you want to really lead your listeners down a new path, then lead them to the point where they don’t feel that is the right language to come in my DMs and call me an N-word…”

Watch the full interview above.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYcn8a13Rw4?version=3&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://deadline.com&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=640&h=360]

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