Moments before tweeting…
Any good student of history knows that there are some time-tested texts that have proven their excellence by their continued relevance. One of those is Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. There’s a little section on the qualities of a good leader. From reading headlines and taking note of Twitter’s basic functions not operating properly, Elon Musk is a great example of what leadership done wrong looks like. For context, here is a section of verse 17:
When the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.
Going down this list, Musk clearly isn’t the first one — just recall the quite public indignity of the $44B dollar company he bought rapidly losing value. It is also hard to be unaware of a guy whose entrepreneurial foibles are so many there’s a whole class analyzing the sheer number of lawsuits he’s been tangled in.
There’s no question Elon is getting loved, but there are a few deleted Twitter threads that suggest the love he’s getting from his fanboys is undesired.
I really doubt people fear the man. It is hard for a visage like that to channel terror after that Wario bit:
The last category is where we can see the man at work. He’s done some very public firings of some very competent people and law firms. Sure, these might not have been perfect decisions, but at least he’s not openly discriminating against someone who’s just trying to figure out if they still work for him, right?
Talk about working on being despised! You’d think a guy who’s trying to connect brains together and travel to Mars would at least be tech savvy enough to know about the speech-to-text function.
And, just for good measure, here are the tweets that led up to King Twit’s callous and likely incriminating reply.
It is impressive, really. I have lost count of how many times Elon Musk, after trying to prove how cool and savvy he is, instead earns bad publicity or another legal problem. The guy’s plans backfire more often than poorly modded race cars. The guy he can’t say he has a lot of respect for?
For the curious, here’s how he got the award:
I wager he’s somehow still in disbelief that he’s not taken for the lovable goof he’s trying to present himself as. Remember that time he tried to do a Dave Chappelle tag line and ended up getting his ego bruised?
That, by the way, was another check in the despised column.
If the UCLA class trailing his lawsuits decides to follow this as it develops, I doubt that the professor will have to do much changing to the syllabus. They can just add this to the earlier suits alleging discriminatory firing.
You’ve gotta admit there is something tragi-comic about the $44B purchase you made being so very good at collecting evidence to be later used against you in court.
This particular suit has not been filed yet — but come on, it is only a matter of time.
By the time the suit is filed, maybe the Supreme Court’s approval rating will be higher than his.
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
