Elon Musk And The Mainstream Media Are Screwing You, Again

Tale As Old As Time

Elon Musk is a Nazi-saluting weirdo with a breeding fetish who spent the last six months as the lead actor in an effort to usurp basic functions of the federal government, cutting off aid and research to millions of people across this country and the world, leading to major human suffering and death, along with the elevation of fascist ideals and a nihilistic world view that centers cutting taxes for the uber-wealthy while establishing racist and gendered hierarchies favoring straight white men like himself. He would like you to forget all that, and the mainstream media is helping him do it.

For the last two weeks Musk has been at the center of a very obvious public relations campaign. The man who champions X, formerly Twitter, as the leading media engine of the world has instead either directly spoken or had his P.R. handlers speak to CBS News, The New York Times, the Associated Press, and many other outlets – because when you actually want to talk to a mass audience this is still how you do things instead of shit posting on Twitter at two in the morning.

Communications-wise, Musk has made the right choice. In their “reporting” on Musk’s supposed departure from his little DOGE project and “return” to life running Tesla and SpaceX, the mainstream press has let the richest man in the world write almost the entire script. Musk is not challenged on his assertions that he purportedly is not on board with Trump’s disastrous second term, or that he wants to focus on his businesses after months spent rooting around in the most private data that Americans have trusted their government to keep secure. No, the mainstream press is so in love with the idea that their reporters get to drop to their knees for alpha Elon, they once again are doing a disservice to their audience and the world.

The pattern is so old and tired that it is hard to believe that we’re going through it again. But what we have to keep in mind is that the press isn’t being played, per se. If they were naïve little boys and girls that premise might have some kind of salience here, but the mainstream media is going into this farce as a clear-minded disinformation partner. These are the same people who saw everything we just saw, and most likely saw it up close and personal – and are hiding some of the more toe-curling details for the next round of books by Maggie Haberman and Jake Tapper, the Queen and King of Journalism High.

No, the mainstream media is playing along because – as Musk’s public relations people understand – they would rather a good story with a narrative arc rather than the truth, especially if the narrative gives pleasure to a billionaire that has the power to dispense traffic and revenue to the outlets in question.

The Musk clean up campaign is a violation of the public trust, yet another in a long and filth-ridden moments of the mainstream press fucking over the people who continue to put too much faith in them. Whether its pushing mythology about Al Gore being a liar, George W. Bush’s supposed certainty about weapons of mass destruction, elevating the right’s racist disinformation about the Obamas and Kamala Harris, both-sidesing Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s age, or obsessing over Hillary Clinton’s emails – the mainstream press is on the other side of what is right in this world, again and again.

It is up to those of us who aren’t in the corrupt cycle of influence and access to point out the truth, again and again. And it’s no longer useful (not that it ever was) to beg the mainstream press to tell the truth. They simply do not care. They are nihilists who don’t give a damn about public trust or collective good. They care about their piddling little careers and their advances in their tiny, out of touch social circles. They have zero interest in providing the public with the truth, information, or facts necessary to keep a society running.

The mainstream press, as seen in this episode of Musk fluffing, is the enemy of the truth and the amplifiers of lies and hate. Treat them all accordingly.

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— Oliver

Follow me, Oliver Willis, on BlueSky @owillis.bsky.social

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