739
Trump reportedly complaining about Elon in private — and hates ‘President Musk’ joke
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
739 points (96.7% liked)
News
23880 readers
2299 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I just replied to your other comment here with some public notes that calling Elon "First Lady" or in that screenshot, "Elonia", is something that trans people were critiquing for months now. That's what I mean by this very specific comparison isn't a new joke.
And similarly on intentions, I didn't post that to blame and shame the original poster, just to let them know what they were propagating. I know it's likely not intentional. It was great that they responded with compassion and understanding for someone else's perspective!
Jokes are not immune from being bad takes, or from critique. I tried to explain in my initial comment why it is that certain people might not vibe with that joke, and you can take that information for what it is. If you want to keep repeating it anyway, you're certainly free to, but with the knowledge that you may be alienating certain people. That's a choice of values for you: is the joke funnier than trans people's comfort and trust?
Yeah I get that you weren't super judgy about it but still.
I think what I'm taking issue with is more the tone. It is not a fact that many people will take the joke as something hateful. It is only a fact that some will and that's their right. Which is fine.
You're going off the rails here. I didn't make the joke... but I smirked at it. Why? Because I knew that it would bother Elon, full stop. I think a lot of people would also intuitively know that also. The point of the joke is to throw shade at Elon by using his insecurities. It is imo a stretch and an assumption to say "it's because this 'joker' thinks women are lesser than!" In fact everything we know about society right now tells us if you publicly mock Elon Musk, there's probably several political assumptions you could accurately make about you. And being anti-women isn't among them.
At the risk of getting dog piled if this thread gets any more views... There is some point where we get too sensitive as a society if we don't moderate our impulses. For me, something like this thread is getting close to that, if not already it.
For the world to be bearable in the slightest, we need comedy. You say "oh this one stupid joke is worth it?" and I say "jokes are worth defending because they make life worth living". This joke didn't even elicit an out loud laugh from me but that's not the point. The point is that there is a chilling effect on comedy when it's so heavily scrutinized like this. Is it good for people to think before they joke? Yes, always. But at a certain point the conservative dipshits actually become right for once and people will avoid jokes altogether.
Never thought or said that, as it would be braindead to do so. Before you go making further assumptions about my attitude, know that I loved Dave Chappelle more than any other comedian I've ever known for many years. But he's dead to me after his trans "joke" double down. The first time or two I could have forgiven as a uncharacteristically clumsy way to try to include trans material in his act, but after whatever that last one I watched a couple of years ago was called, it became clear: he is a fucking bigot. First couple times, I gave him a charitable reading because he'd earned it with years of seemingly well intentioned comedy. Then he blew all of that because he's a bigoted old man who couldn't keep it quiet. I didn't really hesitate to see or react to that. So no, jokes aren't immune to shit nor should they be.
My apologies on a few things that I think got misinterpreted there. I meant to type "can" not "can't" for "you can take that information" and I think that came off worse for the typo (which I've edited above). As well, I was referring to the general "you" in regards to repeating the joke, as in "one could keep repeating it if one liked", not you specifically (which I continue to use below).
For finding the joke funny because Elon wouldn't like it, the reason Elon wouldn't like it is because he's transphobic. It's not generally considered good allyship to misgender people for laughs, even if that person is bigoted. For a trans example, people misgender Caitlin Jenner because she has a bad political alignment, and trans people are obviously against that (her gender should still be respected even if she isn't, because misgendering her normalizes misgendering as punishment for trans people others disagree with, liberal or conservative). Similarly, misgendering cis people might do less harm than misgendering trans people, but it doesn't do zero harm either for the same normalization reasons.
And, like I've been saying, I'm just here to inform. No one has to engage with this if they don't want to. If you interpret it as chilling, then I think that's a relationship with the joke and the context that you would need to work through individually. It's okay to have a joke fall flat! Or have certain groups not find it very funny. If you stop telling any jokes because you're worried about polite criticism, I don't think you really are interested in making people laugh, you know?
I have heard the logic behind these kinds of jokes being bad but I just don't agree. Sometimes a joke is throwaway and well intended. If it hurts 1% of people's feelings, depending on what it is, that is usually not a concern for me.
You seem to think I'm worried about my own jokes, which I'm not. This quote seems like bad faith since I went to great lengths to clarify that I'm talking about the larger effects on society of shaming people for every potentially offensive joke.
I don't really like the term virtue signalling because of how it's typically used but this comment reeks of it
I think you're continuing to misinterpret me here, I clarified above that I'm not speaking about you directly, but the general "you". Here it is again edited for clarity:
Yeah that edit made it slightly better, but your replies still neglect to address my point. Jokes will offend people inevitably, but they still are important to human mental health. Quite important. You're presenting this case as "oh it's just information and you're free to ignore it" but not only do others veer far away from that tone (you gave an example of two people ready to string up a stranger when they probably are wrong about what he even meant by his word choice), but you can even see in OPs response to you. Deference, shame, done. They did not want to upset anyone and it showed in that comment. They felt some amount of shame for something that was 99.9% harmless and certainly not badly intended. I don't agree either with the increasingly popular sentiment "intentions don't matter if someone gets hurt". They aren't a blank check but they absolutely have to matter. Otherwise the conversation is unidirectional: "I am right and good, you are wrong and bad".
This kind of shaming is not rare these days, and it matters. Basically every comedian would agree to some extent. Only the shitty ones have the take away of "you can't say anything anymore" because that's not true. But it's slowly getting more true though. I don't expect comedy to die soon, but it's getting deader.
I think more folks need to understand that "hey I didn't like that joke" or "hey I know you didn't mean it that way but that hurt me" as inherently being shamed by someone, or even shameful at all. People are messy! We're going to step on each other's toes even when we're doing our best. I think OP did an absolutely perfect job of saying, oh, you're correct, that wasn't my intention, let me make sure that's clear to everyone right away. And then no one has to make any fuss about it from there. At the end of the day, your feelings about being gently corrected are yours to deal with, not the responsibility of the person or people correcting you.
And to be clear, I know this is difficult! It's emotional labor you have to do. If you want to reframe your feeling of shame as something else (I like gratitude personally, like my friend has told me I have something in my teeth and I should fix that before I talk more), that can be useful.
Ultimately, trans people and other minorities don't owe you gentleness when they're hurt. It helps to be nice and low expectations like I have tried to be here, but that is a privileged position. It isn't easy to hear someone lash out at you in pain and say "thank you for sharing this with me, I will reflect on it" but I'm telling you, it is worth it. Listening to other people is so important to protect minorities in any majority-ruled democracy.
And like I said, no one has to do this. But this is the process by which you can take casual allies of circumstance and make them trusted friends. And I think we all need more trusted friends nowadays.
To be clear, they kinda withdrew from the situation because you scared them. They may make less jokes in the future due to overthinking minutia, which is literally my only concern. We cannot know, but we definitely know society overall gets impacted by shame.
And no one owes anyone else kindness when they're being treated unfairly. I also don't owe any strangers proof that I self reflect if they insist on hinting that I don't.
You still didn't touch my actual point and you're just lecturing me on "reflecting".
ETA: found some others pushing back on you from slightly different angles. You seem to reject all their notions too. Maybe you yourself would stand to benefit from some self reflection.