Elon Musk was a hero to tree-hugging, oil-hating leftists when he largely was just a guy with a massive ego garnering huge government subsidies to turn out a few electric vehicles a quarter and presiding over a company whose market cap valued those EV sales at about $50,000,000 a unit.
Musk did what any other right-thinking billionaire would do with his burgeoning riches, he looked around for diversification opportunities. Along that line of thought, as long as he stuck to launching rockets, providing satellite internet service, or drilling tunnels via the humorously named The Boring Company, Musk didn’t raise the hackles of his leftist legions.
It was only after Musk made a ridiculously high offer for social media underperformer Twitter, said he wanted to restore free speech there, and ended up buying the company despite his best efforts to back out, that Musk became public enemy No. 2, right behind Donald Trump.
Because the guy welcomes attention, even of the hatred variety, Musk couldn’t help but keep hitting the Twitter fanatics where they lived. Imagine, he required that the Twitter drones work or leave.
These same self-absorbed twits, many of whom had threatened to quit if Musk took over, suddenly were clinging to their cubicles and begging to stay. They just wanted to keep censoring conservatives. Was that too much to ask?
So, Musk upped the ante, requiring those who would stay to commit to working very, very hard for their money and, by the way, no more free lunches or working from home.
As if all that was not enough. Musk took a public Twitter vote on whether or not to re-instate Donald Trump to the site’s accepted poster community.
Imagine that, a public vote, without mail-in ballots, deadline extensions, late night vote dumps, or any of the similar chicanery that has become part and parcel of our national elections. Not surprisingly, Trump was voted back onto the digital island, not that he’s in any hurry to return.
Advertisers have bought into the Woke whining about Twitter now being a free-for-all (as opposed to a predictably monolithic voice of all things leftist) and so is not fit for an advertising dollar spend.
CBS News, in a grand gesture, that lasted what one source put at 40 hours, stopped posting on Twitter due to concerns, then relented.
The investment community wonders if Musk is going to lose a lot of his, and fellow investors’ money on this Twitter adventure. The stock price of Musk’s Tesla Company has been tanking as he sells shares to fund Twitter.
But Musk always seems to be able to grab a headline and, more often than not, pull investment chestnuts out of the fire in time to turn profits.
I wouldn’t bet on him regarding Twitter. I also would not bet against him.
Either way, Musk has shaken up the landscape of social media, the megaphone for morons, and that is worth every cent he has lost so far.
Sam Ross Jr's site 