By Tom Luongo - May 18, 2023

So, Elon Musk sure shook things up the other day with his interview on CNBC where he dared to break the Fourth Wall of media when he took a shot at George Soros comparing him to Magneto from Marvel’s X-Men.

It’s a brutally funny exchange as Musk carefully measures his response, takes his time and then goes into full pop culture legend mode invoking Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride.

Elon Musk is asked about his Tweet saying George Soros reminds him of Magneto 🤣 pic.twitter.com/4gfsURVGIF

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) May 16, 2023

That CNBC flak wasn’t confused by this, he’s doing his job. He’s enforcing narrative control.

The choice of Magneto is an astute one, since it implies Soros’ childhood activities during World War II.

And while I appreciate Musk stepping on that third rail of media conformity, George Soros the philanthropist, I still maintain he’s closer to Sheev Palpatine than Erik Lehnsherr.

But what Musk really did was to question why media companies should always bow to the whims of their advertisers.

Musk has been subjected to advertiser boycotts since the day he walked in with the sink. Twitter’s business model needs to change. Advertising isn’t it. It’s only a part of it. Musk understands it needs to evolve because Twitter isn’t like legacy media companies.

Not one bit.

WEF Bloodletting

Musk did this after taking real flak from the internet for hiring World Economic Forum member and top-tier advertising executive Linda Vaccarino as the new CEO for Twitter.

Now, Vaccarino is a troubling hire but with Musk positioning himself as Mr. Free Speech in the common square, it may not be as bad as, “See Mother WEFfer, expect evil to follow,” as the initial Twitter outrage mob suggested.

I’ve told you for more than a year (November 2021, to be precise) that we are past Peak Davos, meaning Peak WEF. The WEF is now an easy bogeyman to tar someone with the broadest of guilt-by-association brushes.

The reality, however, is that viewed dispassionately, this year’s World Economic Forum was a mess, a bunch of globalist ghouls and their retinue of sycophants whistling past their own graveyards wondering where the next big score was coming from.

Top Ghoul Wrangler Soros himself didn’t even show up, preferring instead to suck the blood of the attendees of this year’s Munich Security Conference to ensure the trains to World War III would run on time.

Clubs like the WEF are only as strong as the talent they can keep. Is Vaccarino evidence of brain drain from the WEF? It’s not ludicrous. In fact, it’s more likely than she’s some wide-eyed ideologue.

I’m not saying it’s true, I’m saying it’s possible. So, distrust, but verify is your guide here.

The incentives line up nicely.

Musk needs to shore up Twitter’s relationships with advertisers to keep Twitter afloat.

Vaccarino brings instant credibility to the company.

If Musk is thinking in terms of a different kind of ad model, Vaccarino’s hire makes sense.

Talk to the Hand

The corporate orthodoxy imposed on media companies comes not just from retards like Reed Hastings at Netflix but also through the corruption of their boards by Davos generals like Blackrock and Vanguard.

Their real profit comes from exercising power. Sacrificing a quarter or two of profitability to put the vein tap in deep across the C-Suites of the S&P 500 and EuroStoxx 50 is hard to quantify on the balance sheet.

But Musk can say what he wants in public because that itself is a form of advertising for Twitter and/or Tesla that can’t be yanked by some ninny like Larry Fink or Alex Soros making a phone call.

He’s on their level and the company is private.

When your business model depends on advertising you’re their bitch. Musk knows this so you make the calculated move to attack Soros, becoming a hero to a vast audience spurned by Twitter when Soros, Fink and the rest of the WEF ran the place

One of the first blogs I wrote here in 2016 was called “The Authenticity Gap.” In handicapping that election correctly, that Trump would win, I made the point that despite his obvious deficits, he was far more authentic than Hillary.

Being comfortable being yourself is what drove Trump’s victory. The country was desperate for it and the swing voters were Millennials.

Well, guess what? Musk is . . .

[SNIP]