Elon Musk was characteristically blunt in a recent interview, extrapolating on the reasons why he believes the political left is generally unfunny.
In a discussion with The Babylon Bee Editor in Chief Kyle Mann on Wednesday, Musk waxed philosophical about the nature of comedy, suggesting that sound principles and firm beliefs about truth are paramount to a humorous sensibility. It is this aspect that Musk believes the modern progressive left lacks.
“What do you like to watch in terms of comedy and entertainment?” Mann asked Musk. “I know you share a lot of memes and, you know, obviously comment on some Babylon Bee articles and stuff like that. You commented, you tweeted one time about how wokeness is destroying comedy … it was, you can’t write come comedy from a leftist place of wokeness because there’s no truth claim. I’m butchering it.
“The essence of a lot of comedy is a revealed truth, like a hidden truth that people understand, intuitively or explicitly,” Musk said. “And there’s that sort of moment of reveal, you know, kernel of truth, of often unacknowledged truth. And in that unacknowledged truth is the humor.
“So if you’re premised on a lie, you can no longer be funny, because there’s no revealed truth,” he added. “And this is, you know, why a lot of people on the left have no sense of humor. They’re not funny. And if they are, if there’s so many no fly zones, you know, that you have to, you have to avoid all the time then … there’s nothing left to make fun about.”
Twitter’s ban of The Babylon Bee over allegations of “transphobia” and “hate speech” was one of the early factors motivating Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, after which he promptly unbanned the satirical news site.
While Musk has promoted The Babylon Bee as a paragon of principled, witty satire, his characterization of the site may be disputed by those to the right of the Bee. Writers from the site have recently received criticism for endorsing some views not altogether dissimilar to those of the progressives who Musk maligns as nihilists, according to critics.
Last week, Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon fired staffer Gavin Mario Wax after the latter lashed out at Ron DeSantis aide Christina Pushaw with a profane rhetorical question. Observers including former Daily Wire and Taki’s Magazine contributor Scott Greer remarked on the apparent hypocrisy of The Babylon Bee, noting that writer Joel Berry had not received censure from the satirical news publication for statements disparaging gentile European culture and claiming that “interracial marriage should be mandatory for the next 100 years or until we’re all the same shade of brown.”
“[T]he Babylon Bee have been pretty basic libs all along no?” tweeted writer and cultural critic Aimee Terese. “They have that one guy who is constantly trolling the right with open borders, Jewish ethnonarcissism & their whole vibe is snarky nihilist detachment, just like Chapo [Trap House] ironycels.”
Regardless of the relative merits of these criticisms, the Bee’s supporters may find satisfaction knowing that they can count the world’s wealthiest man among those who find amusement in the publication.
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