Elon Musk may not have turned out to be the brilliant scientist we all thought he was during the Obama administration, but he did prove one theorem: it turns out money really can’t buy happiness. It also can’t buy you charisma, maturity, empathy – or the love and respect of your own children.
Yes, stop the presses: Elon Musk has once again said something so creepy (and controversial) that it’s caused his own flesh and blood to step forward and say, “look, we’re only technically related”.
This time, it was the Tesla CEO offering to “give [Taylor Swift] a child” after the singer endorsed Kamala Harris for president on Instagram, following the VP’s stellar debate performance earlier this week.
“Fine Taylor … you win…I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life,” said Musk on his horrible website, in what he probably thought was a hilarious put down, but to me reads more like a threat of sexual violence.
Musk’s daughter, Vivian Wilson, later wrote a post of her own (on Twitter/X rival Threads, naturally) in which she referred to Musk’s tweet as “heinous incel nonsense” – which, to be fair to her, it absolutely was.
“I don’t really have anything to add to it, it’s just abhorrent,” she said. “I would just like to say to my audience members, don’t let people talk to you like that. It’s disgusting, it’s belittling and incredibly sexist. You deserve better.”
I swear, every week it’s something new with this guy. If I was a billionaire, you’d never hear from me again. I’d be chilling out in my life-sized replica of Optimus Prime and I’d never touch a device with a Wi-Fi connection ever again (the Transformer would be steam-powered).
Not Mr “Real-life Tony Stark”, though. Musk is so chronically online – so transparently needy – that he’d rather have the approval of his legion of anonymous 13-year-old trolls than his own child. But then, who can blame him? Who among us hasn’t betrayed our own kin so we can spend our lives making unfunny memes on an irrelevant website? It’s Shakespearian, in its way.
But this isn’t anything new for Musk. The SpaceX owner has been very open about how Wilson’s transition was the trigger for his turn to the far right, deliberately misgendering her as his “son”, who he says was “killed by the woke mind virus”. Imagine being so intolerant of your kid’s identity that it makes your name go from being an internationally recognised shorthand for the word “genius” to being a synonym for “gullible loser”.
Luckily for Musk, he’s in good company (if your definition of “good” is “toxic rich people whose terrible behaviour made their kids hate them”). Brad Pitt’s daughter Shiloh recently announced that she would be dropping the actor’s surname and instead be going by “Shiloh Jolie”. Pitt’s son also made headlines in 2020, when he called his father a “world class a***hole” and “a terrible and despicable person” on Father’s Day, so it’s fair to say there’s no love lost there.
Jennette McCurdy’s mother was so pushy that the iCarly actress wrote a book called I’m Glad My Mom Died, and she still spoke about her with more affection than Wilson affords Musk. Maybe she’ll make her peace with him in the far off future, when he’s no longer such a clear and immediate threat to democracy – but I wouldn’t count on it.
Luckily, Wilson got out from under her father’s influence early, like Drew Barrymore, who emancipated herself at the age of 14. Not everybody manages to shake their overbearing parents so easily, such as Britney Spears, who famously had to battle for years to be freed from her father’s restrictive 13-year conservatorship.
Musk has said and done a lot of heinous, disgusting – sometimes even dangerous – things. We know exactly what kind of man he is. But if there was ever any doubt, the fact that his own child is just as mortified by him as the rest of us should be the thing that seals the deal.
How he can live with himself knowing that he has so thoroughly alienated somebody who he should love, protect, and accept no matter what, I truly do not know. It’s no consolation I’m sure, but unlike most children of disappointing parents, Vivian can at least take some solace in the fact that when it comes to her feelings about her father, she’s far from alone.