Posted in: HBO, Max, Opinion, TV, TV, YouTube | Tagged: elon musk, HBO, John Oliver, Last Week Tonight, max, opinion
Elon Musk Gets Brutal Year-End Reality Check from John Oliver (VIDEO)
John Oliver devoted a 30-minute segment during the final Last Week Tonight episode of 2023 to Elon Musk - and it was brutal.
If you're following along with Bleeding Cool's television/streaming coverage, then you should have a pretty good idea by now that we're not exactly big fans of what Elon Musk has been up to – especially with what he's done to Twitter/X on a whole number of levels. But we would never pretend for a second to be at the level of John Oliver – so when HBO's Sunday late-night host decides to devote a 30-minute segment to the dumpster fire that was Musk's 2023 to wrap up the show's run before the holiday break, we're just going to sit back and share the comedic brilliance that came across our screens, courtesy of Last Week Tonight.
Here's a look at the full segment – and as much as we would've loved to just copy/paste the entire transcript, you have to watch it to truly appreciate it. But with that said, we pulled some highlights that give you a sense of just how on fire Oliver was:
On Musk's Various "Bad Guy" Looks: "There's Lex Luthor posing for the cover of Metropolis Maniacs Monthly. There's 'Why no, Mr. Bond, I and my child's bride expect you to die.' There's 'I just bought your media company, and I'm about to strip you for parts.' There's space's first racist sheriff and, finally, the less fuck-able reimagining of Billy Zane's character in 'Titanic.' Truly, the man has range."
On Musk's Handling of Twitter/X: "And then, of course, there is Twitter. He now calls it X, but the rest of us still call it Twitter. He officially acquired it 12 months ago. And since then, it has been one fiasco after another, with the most recent coming when he tweeted his agreement with [an] anti-Semitic post calling the great replacement theory the actual truth. That caused many big advertisers to flee. And then, in the midst of denying any anti-Semitic intent, Ian decided to taunt the sponsors who had left."
On Musk's "F**k You" to Disney's Bob Iger, Advertisers: "Wow, it is hard to say what's most embarrassing there. The fact that the world's richest man is playing the 'you're not breaking up with me, I'm breaking up with you' card, or that he's doing it to confused silence while wearing a jacket from Ralph Lauren's 'Midlife Crisis' collection. He's clearly going for a bad boy there but ended up looking more like…Chip from 'Rescue Rangers.'"
On Musk Making His Case That Advertisers Killed Twitter/X – to The Earth? "I hope he tries telling every living creature on the planet, including those weird deep sea fish, all about how advertiser boycotts are gonna kill Twitter. Just so one of them can open its objectively horrifying jaws and say, 'Yeah, man, 'cause he said that weird shit about Jews. We live in a black void and even we understand the order of operations here.'"
On Musk's "Pretty Strong Messianic Streak": "In fact, Sam Altman, the CEO of openAI who's both worked with and clashed with Musk, has said Elon desperately wants the world to be saved, but only if he can be the one to save it, which is a pretty big asterisk. It's like Jesus says in the book of Matthew, 'Love thy neighbor, but more importantly, me, and if you don't, fuck you. Find your own heaven. J-Crizzle, out.'"
On Musk's Similarities to Henry Ford: "Like Henry Ford, Elon Musk managed to build on the technology that others had invented. That's not actually the only way he's like Henry Ford, which you'd know if you ever Google either of their names and the word 'antisemitism.'"