CELEBRITY
Elon taught him a good lesson – Satire
Just in: Alec Baldwin Calls Elon Musk ‘A Scumbag’ On ‘The View’, Musk reacts
It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a Hollywood celebrity and a tech billionaire feud, the most likely place for this would be, without a doubt, daytime talk show, “The View”. Last Tuesday, audiences were served a heaping portion of this unexpected yet somehow mundane drama when Alec Baldwin, renowned for his fiery temperament, resorted to name-calling Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, with a term that shall henceforth be referred to as “the S-word.
Alec Baldwin, in a stirring episode of ‘The View’ made an elaborate spectacle of himself, a performance worthy of his Emmy-winning SNL skits. In a riveting display of hot-blooded rhetoric, he called Elon Musk, among other things, ‘a scumbag’. The name-calling appeared unprovoked, merely adding a spicy topping to the stew of Baldwin’s ire towards tech giants.
Now, calling Elon Musk a scumbag is like calling a platypus a guinea pig; there’s just not enough shared characteristics. One’s a quirky, unique mammal that lays eggs, and the other… well, it’s a platypus.
Musk, known for his cavalier attitude and almost supernatural capability to shrug off criticism, reacted in a way no one could’ve anticipated. He did not return fire with an equally unkind tweet or launch a new Tesla Roadster into Baldwin’s backyard. No, Musk decided to redefine ‘scumbag’ in a way that makes Oxford English Dictionary editors want to bury their heads in paper-mache versions of Mars.
In a tweet that has since gone viral, Musk replied: “Scumbag? Well, I suppose if that refers to someone who’s cleaning up the planet, launching rockets to Mars and building electric cars, then guilty as charged!”
Within moments, Musk’s clever retort was being shared and laughed over worldwide, his unique brand of humor shining through the absurdity of the situation. In response to this tweet, even the Merriam-Webster Dictionary chimed in, suggesting that their next edition might include a picture of Musk under ‘scumbag’, redefined as a tech-tycoon-cum-space-explorer with a side of planet-saving thrown in.