John Oliver discusses Elon Musk, the influence he has over more than just his businesses, and the perfect place for him and Mark Zuckerberg to finally have t...

I’ll watch this later when I have enough time. But its important to note that Elon Musk’s aura of invincibility / charity has been pierced, and now big-name talk shows like John Oliver feel safe to actually talk about Musk’s issues now.

I certainly don’t always agree with John Oliver, but this is a huge step forward for the mainstream media to finally start recognizing the Musk problem.

  • dragontamer@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
    51·
    11 months ago

    The left still has a bit of a “blindspot” problem. Much like how the right ignores Elon Musk’s antics today, the left was willing to ignore Elon Musk’s antics as long as he represented solar-energy and electric cars.

    I don’t know if John Oliver was “afraid” of covering this issue per se. But Musk’s antics were just as bad in the 2018 or earlier periods when he was calling African Americans to work on his Tesla “Planation lines”, anti-union busting back then, etc. etc. Honestly, Elon Musk has been reasonably consistent in my eyes.

    All this Twitter thing just made people realize the kind of person Elon Musk is (and always has been). Its brought media attention to Musk because the media used (and still uses) Twitter so much. But I doubt anything in this video is actually new in 2023.

    Still, the right has plenty of black-marks to discuss with regards to Elon Musk. The dude is a SV druggie on Weed, Special K, Alcohol, Ambien (and that’s only the publicly known drugs). Twitter was bought out at $54.20, you right-wingers really wanna be representing sky-high MJ smoker here?

    (Not “you” in particular, but you in the general sense. The right-wing out there who might read this message, lol). The main problem with Elon Musk is that he holds no loyalties. He’s just doing whatever seems popular right now. His past, and future, will be toxic and inconsistent. He will change his politics on a dime to get what he wants. So yeah, plenty of political hacks trying to take advantage of this in one way or the other.

    Still though, John Oliver’s reach cannot be denied. And for the most part, I think most of the causes John Oliver talks about (though left-wing biased) are serious issues in our society worth learning about. But the left/right flip-flop from Elon Musk is well recognized by now, and I’m rather pessimistic about the reasons why the left are suddenly willing to talk about Musk now that he’s undergone the flip/flop. If the left is willing to praise Musk, he’ll go smoke Weed in public or say other left-leaning things just for their praise/support. But if the right starts praising Musk more, he flip-flops to the right instead. A lot of this goes beyond just John Oliver per se (and is likely instead the issues that John Oliver’s writing team researches in the background), but I’m still convinced that this left/right perspective into people is real.