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The Invented Controversy of Elon Musk
This past week, scientific pioneer Elon Musk hosted SNL and the headlines everywhere were that this was a “divisive” choice and that he is a “controversial” figure. The first thing to note is this isn’t a real controversy.
As Bill Maher says in his must-see video “New Rule: That’s Not News”, when you click about the outrage, “the “internet” is just three losers with a combined twitter following of their mom.”
Three out of twenty cast members made relatively mild tweets about the choice of host and two of them even deleted their tweets. Aidy Bryant quoted Bernie Sanders about how amassing wealth is bad, Bowen Yang responded with exasperation to a relatively innocent tweet that sounded like something Don King would say (“let’s find out if SNL is really live”) and Andrew Dismukes made some clever word play regarding SNL Alum “Cher-E Oteri” as the only word play he’d be comfortable making. Lorne Michaels gave the cast permission to skip the show, and none of them took it up on the offer because odds are it was a non-story. Pete Davidson even confirmed that no one the cast seemed perturbed in person or on a cast member group text.
There are few more noble things I can do when I put pen to paper then defend the integrity of “the media” against the misconceptions that we prioritize an agenda over objectivity in reporting. But come on…
