Electric cars are for rubes. If God had wanted us to fuel our cars with coal, he wouldn’t have killed off all the dinosaurs so we could turn them into oil.* Gasoline is a gas, gas, gas, and if transporting my flabby keister from Point A to Point B means a few trees and fish have to die, so be it. Unless your feelings about the environment can improve my day, I don’t give a spotted owl dropping.
That said, if you want to try to make a profit by building electric cars, go right ahead. It’s a free country. If you can fool enough suckers into thinking they’re saving the planet by making the coal plants do all the polluting, then you deserve the money they give you for the glorified golf carts you’re selling.
And that’s pretty much where I stood on Elon Musk, up until this week. I think he’s just another silly billionaire chasing another silly pipe dream, but that’s literally his business. America was built by crackpots. There’s no way to tell if you’re an Apple or an Edsel until you try. I salute his entrepreneurial spirit, even if I think this particular product he’s pushing is worse than useless.
Until now, this opinion would’ve been just more evidence that I’m a filthy “climate denier” in the eyes of our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters in the media. They held up Elon Musk as a savior of humanity. His crappy little slot cars were going to change the world.
But then he did something to turn them all against him: He talked back to them.
Tesla (TSLA) could rally as media negativity is ‘increasingly immaterial’, says Baird https://t.co/ppGSaPoxE4 by @fredericlambert pic.twitter.com/ydQ76TT1lF
— Electrek.Co (@ElectrekCo) May 23, 2018
The holier-than-thou hypocrisy of big media companies who lay claim to the truth, but publish only enough to sugarcoat the lie, is why the public no longer respects them https://t.co/Ay2DwCOMkr
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 23, 2018
Going to create a site where the public can rate the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor & publication. Thinking of calling it Pravda …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 23, 2018
“Pravda”? Seriously? That seems like an even worse idea than electric cars, but whatever.
Like the old saying goes, you don’t pick a fight with a man who buys pixels by the barrel. Now the gloves are off. Musk is an enemy of the media and will be treated as such.
They love you until you point out their errors. They’re glad to inflate your ego until you deflate theirs.
And now, Musk has committed the greatest sin of all. He’s criticized a journalist from a protected class: 50 percent of the population of the planet.
.@erinbiba has done something incredibly brave. She’s documented what happens when female journalists dare to question Elon Musk. https://t.co/B9H6KKFJxU
— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) May 29, 2018
“Incredibly brave,” eh? Now this I gotta see. Erin Biba, Daily Beast:
Female journalists who cover Elon Musk have the same personal rule: Mention his name on Twitter at your peril.
That’s because there is an army—mostly young, mostly white, almost entirely men—that marches behind him. These MuskBros, as we call them, make it their mission to descend on women who criticize Musk, and tear them to pieces…
With every criticism lobbed at a journalist, (or a scientist), Musk reinforces the growing public mistrust of essential institutions seeded by the Donald Trump wing of the GOP.
Oh no. MuskBros! And, and… Donald Trump! The GOP! All the bad people!!!
Biba whines for a couple thousand words about the creeps who were mean to her online because she criticized Elon Musk and he responded. As she puts it, he “pointed his fan army” at her.
Note to Ms. Biba: The only other person who has ever had to put up with mean trolls is EVERY PERSON WHO HAS EVER GONE ON THE INTERNET. You are not special. You are not precious. Hell, I’ve had worse invective thrown at me just in the past week. You’ll probably see some when you scroll down, if you’re the sort of person who still reads comment sections in 2018. Getting crapped on by ignorant jerks is just how it goes. It comes with the territory. It has nothing to do with your genitalia.
If you call out a powerful person, there’s a chance that he, she, or xe will respond in kind. If you can’t take it, that’s your problem. Elon Musk isn’t going to save the planet, and you can hardly expect him to spare your feelings.
I’m not going to buy one of Musk’s dumb cars, but I’m happy to enjoy the show as he keeps tripping up the media like this. They can’t help themselves. And they’re really going to be kicking themselves when he finally gets fed up and decides to run for president as a Republican…
P.S.:
She’s a science writer for Scientific American, BBC, Wired. But her reporting methods don’t seem all that scientific. pic.twitter.com/yg9GJgi5MW
— Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) May 28, 2018
*Shut up. That’s what happened. The science is settled.
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