Althouse: Joe Rogan talks about how Rotten Tomatoes treated Dave Chapelle.

September 8, 2019

Joe Rogan talks about how Rotten Tomatoes treated Dave Chapelle.

First, look at this:

Now, here's Joe:

53 comments:

Bill, Republic of Texas said...: Too bad I cancelled my Netflix account. It wasn't political I just decided I didn't get enough value for the $8.00 per month.

Now I feel like I should resubscribe, watch Chappelle and cancel.if his ratings are high enough, maybe they'll learn a lesson.

I guess I can just go to rotten tomatoes and vote there.; 9/8/19, 4:58 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: Rogan is a good guy, and has an enormously popular podcast. His interview a few weeks back with Dan Crenshaw was outstanding.

Rogan has a bit of Althouse in him - a commitment to the free exchange of ideas. However, he's a bit shy about naming the censorious fuckheads out there who almost always are Leftist activists.; 9/8/19, 5:01 PM
Gk1 said...: I like Chappelle and watched his latest show on Netflix and was later astounded Rotten tomatoes and the other progs were foolish enough to think their boycott of Dave would actually work. What were they thinking? He's not even pro-trump, he's just anti-horseshit like Jussie Smollett's phony hate crime. The real question is why they think Chappelle is an existential threat worthy of censure? Because he's not P.C and won't easily be cowed so they need to break him in two as an example? Boy, they sure picked the wrong guy.; 9/8/19, 5:03 PM
Anonymous said...: Why is it that media organizations, and I include Rotten Tomatoes in that list along with the networks, NYT, WAPO, and others don't recognize that credibility of their brand is their long term value. Every one of these bias examples hurts their long term revenue stream.

It's hard to make money if you start out telling half your potential customers to F'off

Think Dick's Sporting Goods.

advice: short them, long term...gun owners will never forget; 9/8/19, 5:06 PM
Fernandinande said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/8/19, 5:07 PM
Earnest Prole said...: Look, I think the disparity between the critics and the public is especially hilarious for this great piece of art, but Joe Rogan has utterly no idea how Rotten Tomatoes actually works. There was no “shutting off” of opinions; the site displays audience scores immediately upon receipt and then posts critical scores as they come in. Because this was a Netflix special, it did not receive anything close to the critical response a cinema release would receive, and that was compounded by the fact that many critics attempted to ignore the thing because it’s politically incorrect. In other words, Rotten Tomatoes is the messenger, not the message, that Rogan is foolishly attempting to shoot.; 9/8/19, 5:07 PM
Tyrone Slothrop said...: I wouldn't normally have watched Chapelle's show. I like him, but I don't much get off on taped standup. When I started hearing the reactions from both sides, I realized I had to watch it, and it was great. By no means does he go easy on issues I hold dear, but his delivery is absolutely sincere. There is not one word of bullshit in Sticks and Stones. Incidentally it's pretty funny, too.; 9/8/19, 5:10 PM
readering said...: The only review of this special I read was by Kyle Smith in National Review. A rotten tomatoe by a conservative whose taste I find reliably like mine.; 9/8/19, 5:11 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me." -- a common saying adhered to by almost everybody except Blacks.; 9/8/19, 5:16 PM
Earnest Prole said...: 79% and 90%. I don't get it.

Exactly. Rotten Tomatoes initially posted the earliest media review, a pan by Slate, and the Tomatometer read 0% Critics, 99% Audience. After four critical reviews with one positive, the Tomatometer read 20% Critics, 99% Audience. Now that more critics have weighed in, the numbers show something close to a true measure.

Remember the most important lesson in life: Always extrapolate wildly from your single data point.; 9/8/19, 5:17 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: The Chappelle show was funny. Good, but not great. It is refreshing to fight PC nonsense imposed by the Hollywood Left.; 9/8/19, 5:22 PM
Mark said...: Rogan goes off the rails quite a bit when he says that he pays to read Washington Post and NYT and he implies that they are media outlets to get credible news, unlike the free outlets.; 9/8/19, 5:23 PM
Mark said...: The Chappelle show was funny. Good, but not great.

I don't know that many people here watched it because the Clayton Bigsby reference the other day seemed to go over most of their heads.; 9/8/19, 5:28 PM
rehajm said...: I cancelled my paid Netflix account and it was political. Too much of their original programming embeds leftie politics. Their four episode Attenborough nature series makes climate change claims in direct conflict with IPCC consensus. Another Life’s scifi facade is just a fake for a LGBTQ sexpose with every sex combination thereof. I didn’t want to fund the Obama’s either. I’ll get a free month for The Ranch and The Crown when they become available.; 9/8/19, 5:29 PM
themightypuck said...: What's funny about the Chappelle brou ha ha is easily discovered by looking at his other Netflix specials. They are pretty much the same. He did one a couple of years ago where he was his usual non PC self but put in 10 minutes of anti Trump stuff. Maybe his mistake this time was he forgot to do said obligatory 10 minutes.; 9/8/19, 5:30 PM
rehajm said...: I became suspicious when Netflix stopped user reviews. One of their big original shows was panned and that was the end of that.; 9/8/19, 5:35 PM
rcocean said...: Its interesting how Rogan describes what's going on in these big media conglomerates. He talks about "activism" and "trying to get people to behave in a certain way". No Joe, they are CENSORING and GATEKEEPING. They aren't "activists" they are LEFTISTS.

"activist" is a left-wing code word. It means "Left-wing activism" there is no "Right wing activist". If you oppose Antifa, no one is going to call you an "activist". Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter are never called "Activists".; 9/8/19, 5:40 PM
whitney said...: I don't know who the black guy was in that but I do the exact same thing. When the media uniformly hate something it makes me put it on the list of things that I might watch in the future; 9/8/19, 5:44 PM
readering said...: I'm one of the last 2 million with a Netflix DVD account. Great backlog library. (For new releases I tend to use my library.) Should last me the 5 or 6 years until Netflix shuts it down.; 9/8/19, 5:44 PM
rcocean said...: Left-wing media are constantly trying to be Gatekeepers. Anything that doesn't meet their left-wing politics gets trashed. Its been that way forever. All that's happened in the last 10 years, is the Left has become more and more SJW/Leftist and people are noticing the overton window closing. You cant' say this, and you can't say that.

Before they hated Mel Gibson for making the Christ movie, now they hate Chapelle for not toeing the line on gays or whatever. Tomorrow, they will set a new "party line". Be ready to change your beliefs if you want to get published or get a good review.; 9/8/19, 5:45 PM
rcocean said...: As Trump said: "First they're going after Robert E. Lee, So who's next Jefferson, Washington?"

And the answer is: Yes. Soon. Very, very soon.; 9/8/19, 5:47 PM
vanderleun said...: "However, he's a bit shy about naming the censorious fuckheads out there who almost always are Leftist activists."

Well, he doesn't want youtube to demonetize his videos.; 9/8/19, 5:53 PM
rehajm said...: Last quarter net subscriber base at Netflix declined. For the first time. It’s definitely not because of politics though. Certainly not.; 9/8/19, 5:53 PM
Shouting Thomas said...: Maybe his mistake this time was he forgot to do said obligatory 10 minutes.

His current movie is followed by a 15 minute epilogue in which he sets forth his standard politics, slavish Obama worship and goofy Trump hatred.

He's a garden variety far leftist.

But the movie was good and funny.; 9/8/19, 5:57 PM
Ray - SoCal said...: I was surprised when I first found out about the Chappelle special, via this blog I believe, that when I went to Rotten Tomatoes it had a zero percent, and no end user ratings. That hit the credibility of Rotten Tomatoes a lot.

Same thing happened to Netflix Credibility with me, after Netflix took away reviews after Amy Schumer's so called comedy special got low reviews.; 9/8/19, 6:53 PM
bagoh20 said...: I enjoy Rogan's show, and Chappelle makes me laugh enough, but they both have that blindspot I just don't get. Even when they see the one-sided nature of the craziness and dishonesty, they can't admit it that it is one-sided. They stay stuck with that mindset that no matter how much evidence they get to the contrary, the Right will always be bad by default. If the left is savagely unfair, it's still somehow a tie. They can point out the evidence that proves the point, but they can't admit the obvious conclusion. Hard-core libertarians have the same kind of thing, but slightly different. They cannot judge the left without bending over backwards to find something about the right that makes the left just equally bad, but they are not. They Left has far outstripped the Right in crazy, evil, corruption, and dishonesty.; 9/8/19, 7:01 PM
Lindsey said...: I wish they'd file a lawsuit. Is there any legal recourse for behavior like this?; 9/8/19, 7:10 PM
rhhardin said...: You don't blow off half your audience.; 9/8/19, 7:18 PM
WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...: I was just sitting and watching. Dave is new to me and I think he's great.; 9/8/19, 7:23 PM
Birkel said...: Reader Inga types that a National Review writer mostly shares the same opinions on entertainment.
I finally found a statement of Reader Inga that I believe.; 9/8/19, 7:27 PM
Aussie Pundit said...: Earnest Prole:

"There was no “shutting off” of opinions; the site displays audience scores immediately upon receipt and then posts critical scores as they come in"

That's not true. Plenty of times, for a movie or show without many reviews, the rotten tomato score will say "no consensus yet."; 9/8/19, 7:27 PM
WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...: Progressives are creepy nanny mind-crime/thought-crime/speech-crime totalitarians.

Dave cuts thru a whole shit pile of PC taboos and that is what makes it funny. If a pack of gay proggies are offended. GOOD!; 9/8/19, 7:30 PM
WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...: The rich white gay male PROGRESSIVE leftwing homosexual mafia can go f itself, collectively.

and Maddow. These people inspire antfia fascism.; 9/8/19, 7:34 PM
WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...: Debra Messing's blacklisting is something that comes naturally from the mafia left.; 9/8/19, 7:45 PM
William said...: I saw the Chappelle show. I thought it was comfortably on the side of political correctness, but I was mistaken. He made fun of Jussie Smollett. That doesn't seem all that daring. He said that black people were quiet about Smollett because they didn't believe his story. Maybe, but Smollett had some black supporters who came out publicly for him. It would be on the wrong side of political correctness to make fun of them and Chappelle didn't. The dogs that don't bark. Not a single one of his fellow cast members complained about Smollett's idiotic stunt that cost them the best payday of their careers. Do black people have to fuck up on the monumental scale of Jussie Smollett in order to be made fun of? Will no one ever make fun of Maxine Waters and her rich banker husband..... Chappelle defended Louis CK and Kevin Hart. CK committed an offense that was worse than that of hart, but what is sufficient punishment? Should his career be terminated? Who gets to decide? Should the career of someone who thinks CK's punishment is too severe also be terminated.; 9/8/19, 8:04 PM
Ray - SoCal said...: Not true. I was VERY SURPRISED to see no audience reviews / score for Chappelles Show on Rotten Tomatoes. I have NEVER seen that before. And the show had been on Netflix for over a week.

The issue was noted on Reddit, 6 days ago, IMDB had 4.5K reviews, and RT had ZERO.
https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/cyjnjk/david_chappelles_sticks_and_stones_demonstrates/

>Earnest Prole:
>
>"There was no “shutting off” of opinions; the site displays audience scores >immediately upon receipt and then posts critical scores as they come in"; 9/8/19, 8:36 PM
Ken B said...: Prole is wrong. There were a couple cases earlier, with RT allowing bad audience scores before the movie opened, and not taking them down when asked. RT is owned by one of the conglomerates, it is not an independent.; 9/8/19, 8:38 PM
Ken B said...: “You don’t blow off half your audience.” Not if you are the principal, or a faithful agent. But America is afflicted with a particular kind of principal-agent problem, and agents who act on their own self aggrandizement. So, yes,some actually do blow off half their audience — proudly.; 9/8/19, 8:41 PM
Known Unknown said...: "Last quarter net subscriber base at Netflix declined. For the first time. It’s definitely not because of politics though. Certainly not."

Once they lose Friends and The Office, they're going to be hurting.; 9/8/19, 9:14 PM
traditionalguy said...: The wife and I were bored with losing games this PM so I renewed Netflix to see Chappell's show. The wife kept threatening to leave the room, but after 10 minutes she agreed Chappell had a magnificent wit and perfect comic timing that managed to tell more truth than we had seen in a long time.But Netflix now charges $12 a month with a $3 add on for 2 extra high def TVs.; 9/8/19, 9:37 PM
Szoszolo said...: "I don't know who the black guy was in that"

That's Zuby. Born in England of Nigerian parents, raised in Saudi Arabia, graduate of Oxford. His Twitter feed is full of sensible opinions that leftists think he shouldn't have because those opinions differ from what leftists consider acceptable for black people.; 9/8/19, 9:44 PM
eddie willers said...: That's Zuby. Born in England of Nigerian

I'm sure that a common refrain. I had a buddy at work who was from Barbados and he thought African-Americans were nuts.

I was so proud that he asked me to help him with his citizenship test. He passed with flying Red, White and Blue colors.; 9/8/19, 10:30 PM
Doug said...: I shut off"Sticks and Stones" during the Michael Jackson pedophilia but. Sell that shut to somebody else.; 9/9/19, 5:29 AM
daskol said...: Glad that Althouse is now so hip to the wily ways of cancel culture. The insidious thing is not what these outlets publish but what they in effect suppress.

Rogan's pining for a nonpartisan expert to five deeply into important matters out me in mind of prolix and wonderful slatestarcodex.; 9/9/19, 7:10 AM
daskol said...: Doug, you missed the good parts.; 9/9/19, 7:10 AM
daskol said...: It's nice to wish for higher quality news. It's crucial, though, to recognize the issues with our current media. I'm always encouraged after listening to Joe Rogan.; 9/9/19, 7:15 AM
bbkingfish said...: It's funny that folks are talking about "cancel culture" as if it were some new thing. Like people weren't 2003-2006 for being insufficiently pro-war (Dixie Chicks?). Or that Sinaed O'Connor wasn't canceled for (accurately) warning people about rampant child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Or that Ike didn't deem homosexuals to be security risks at the height of the Red Scare (see, "The Lavender Scare").

Nothing new about this at all. Just matters whose ox is being gored.; 9/9/19, 9:23 AM
stewati said...: Joe Rogan thinks that the NYT and Washington Post aren't biased? Really?; 9/9/19, 10:48 AM
purplepenquin said...: Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter are never called "Activists".

Those two are "talkers" and "columnists" rather than "activists"...'cause they don't actively do much 'cept talk & write.

Cliven Bundy is the perfect example of a right-wing activist. He didn't just talk the talk - he actually walked the walk.; 9/9/19, 11:50 AM
Krumhorn said...: i first learned about the program from reviews in Hollywood Reporter and Variety. They trashed it. Not funny. Stale. Defends Michael Jackson. etc.

That assured that I would see it as soon as possible, and I liked it a lot. I got many good laughs. He's a very intelligent comic, and his timing is perfection.

For whatever it's worth, I didn't get the impression that he was really defending Jackson. In fact, I think he was pretty adroit about a number of topics, that when quoted, would look good for him among the leftie haters, but somehow, I felt he was communicating the very opposite view.

I thought the use of the N-word was way over the top. As one who...in my deep South past decades ago...used the actual word on occasion and then spent a half year in Mississippi in the 60's working in a tutoring center with kids who had just integrated the white schools, it seemed forced and out of place.

The lefties are nasty little shits.

- Krumhorn; 9/9/19, 1:05 PM
Bill Peschel said...: I understand that Rotten Tomatoes responded to the terrible anticipated ratings for the Captain Marvel movie by deleting the feature.

In the past year I've learned not to trust their reviewers. It's a horrible idea to aggregate opinions like that. I've found good, sometimes very funny movies, that have gotten horrible ratings.

Like "Holmes and Watson." I'm a Holmsian, and I thought the preview was awful. My wife and I settled down to watch it expecting a middling experience at best.

It was one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. I appreciated how each segment was like a comedy routine, building off the initial premise and exploiting it into weird behavior that kept getting funnier and funnier.

The key to understanding this is to realize that some movies are vulgar. They descend into farce, or public embarrassment (or the potential of it), or presenting "deplorables" characters or behavior as sympathetic or even heroic characters.

The latest run of Melissa McCarthy movies like -- "The Boss," and "Tammy" -- have been savaged by RT critics, but as someone who came from that environment, I knew her characters. I can accept that sometimes they behavior childish or grasping. They're not intellectuals. But they have a core of decency that can appear under the right circumstances.

As someone observed above, we've always had cancel culture. Were the Smothers Brothers cancelled by CBS under White House pressure? I believe they were.

The problem now is that it's become democratized. Almost anybody can do it, especially if they're backed by companies, or social media, or Google / Facebook / Twitter / YouTube. It's far more prevelent and far more destructive on a case-by-case basis.; 9/9/19, 1:41 PM
Saint Croix said...: Dave Chappelle is sneaky.; 9/9/19, 7:32 PM
Fen said...: Robyn Wright doesn't even know his name: Sgt. 1st Class Elis Barreto Ortiz, 34, from Morovis, Puerto Rico.

Althouse: :"You're wrong. The name is in the article. Why make assertions without checking?"

I did check. My mistake was when I got to the bottom of the page where it says:

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I thought that was the end. Although now I see the article continues beyond that. Thank you so much for taking the time to point out my mistake.

Althouse: Really, Fen, your commenting needs improvement.

No, it really doesn't. It's been very sharp lately, more than usual. You are just saying that because I challenged you yesterday on another topic and you are holding a grudge. You sure you want to play that game? Because I am more stubborn than you.

Althouse: I'm going to start deleting you a lot more, beginning with this comment in half an hour. You may copy what you've written and attempt to rewrite it. If you don't want to go to the link and read or you need and don't want to get a subscription, you need to be circumspect about what you say is in the article.

OH. GO. FUCK. YOURSELF.

I will now happily copy everything I post here to repost 10 times over every time you delete it. And if you manage to ban this profile I will make several more and do it all over again.

OR

You can front page a public apology to me for being a vindictive bitch and singling me out because I had the audacity to challenge you on something stupid. What was it again? Oh right, I said I was "skeptical" that you were aware of the NPC meme. LOL.

(lets see now... New desktop folder: Althouse, new txt doc: Althouse1, copy and paste and save. Ready to launch upon deletion. Your turn....); 9/10/19, 9:41 AM