Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/28/m-and-s-high-street-retailer-flagship-store-small-shops

Think I agree.

this guy thinks it's worse

The Guardian used to have balance (moderately left) and integrity, but now it is a far left wing propaganda machine. I hope they get back to where they were one day.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022

always the sign of a thoughtful, serious person when you accuse milquetoast liberals of being the far left

I think part of the confusion is that the Guardian does have an interest in what is sometimes called, rightly or wrongly, identity politics. It had that interest before but seems to have it at least as much as ever now.

Some people would say the Guardian's particular angles on these issues are wrong, which is fair enough. But I think this interest may be what leads someone like Musk to think this.

But what Musk cannot see is that the G has zero interest in what is probably more properly called far left, ie: socialism. It is quite staunchly opposed to socialism and has attacked it when it has arisen as a movement.

You could also more simply say that Musk is an idiot. Though I suppose he's the one laughing all the way to the bitcoin bank.

totally agree with the first two lines.

but I don't think musk is an idiot by any means, unfortunately. he's very successful on a metric he cares about. he just doesn't give a single fuck about the guardian or being in any way nuanced or accurate about it. and why would he. it's a form of UK exceptionalism to think that anyone would really give a fuck about the guardian.

but big-brain tweet about it

oh sure, he loves that. zero effort, maximum pissing people off. that's not giving a fuck about anything other than pissing people off.

I implied that he wasn't exactly an idiot by noting that he was the one who is very rich and we are not.

he inherited wealth tho

british reactionaries love calling the guardian far left too - and tbf it does represent the far left of acceptable common sense in british media - no one left of owen jones will be allowed on TV (and he's basically treated as a pariah anyway)

right wingers always think or pretend to think that this sort of bland corporate/bureaucratic cultural liberalism that makes vague rhetorical gestures towards diversity and inclusion is actually marxism and white genocide in action or whatever their thing is (elon's is more or less that I think, whatever other words he uses)

the guardian has generally been very hostile to most identity politics but that's a whole other thing

white african inherited wealth at that

I'd love to hear his thoughts on rhodesia

Bizarre to me to think Musk "doesn't care" about the Guardian. He cares a lot! He cares that his daughter won't call him because of the far left communist indoctrination of the US school system. He cares that people think he's cringe. He cares about every last person making fun of him online. He is a deeply insecure and unhappy man, and we should all take some solace from that.

none of you are nec wrong, but I think you're overlooking the fact the Guardian has recently published a couple of op-eds pointing out that Musk is a dickhead—I doubt his analysis goes farther than that

(xpost)

I'll stick with "he's an idiot" thank you very much.

i think it's bad politics to confuse intelligence with wealth, they're basically unrelated metrics in every direction

he can inherit a huge apartheid era gold/blood diamond money legacy but still everyone has seen the photos of him rapidly going bald in his early 20's! I was once talking to a posh couple in a pub who were saying he was a genius - you should have seen his ted talk, it was inspirational etc.. they thought I was lying when I mentioned he'd called the divers who rescued the school party "pedo guys".

I kept hearing this advert for the Musk bbc series with some fawning eejit with no self-respect is saying "he's cleverer than Einstein you know" or some shit like that

lol I won't bring up the time an ilx poster was trying to argue that Musk is left-wing

i don't think he's especially intelligent , he seems in many respects like a moron - but he knows how to game the current system, right?

loool he is not left wing

lol I won't bring up the time an ilx poster was trying to argue that Musk is left-wing

Imagine being that rich and caring so much about what people thought of you, though.

i stick with my analysis from another thread, gleeful scofflaw fraudsters often look annoyingly like permanent winners till the edifice topples, i am happy to see EM's set-up as a perpetual motion machine of bullshit, every element propping up the one next to it but more and more frantic stunts being unleashed to shore up and distract from the fact that no part is actually really working at all

i guess my view on that is that the fraud is all in full view. tesla has looked and looks and is extremely dodgy in all sorts of respects, and the bottom is falling out of the EV market. but i don't think that makes him a fraudster in the dan davies sense. i think he's just a dodgy businessman. a huckster basically. it's not hidden fraud. it's in full view. same with twitter, which he seems to have bought inadvertently, and not really have any idea what he wants to do with other than troll people. he's wealthy enought to troll people by buying a platform without it being fraud. it's just silly and unpleasant ofc.

silicon valley trump?

Ok but who said he was left wing, was it Fizzles

xxp
yes calz I heard the same trailer on radio 4 and that line made me exclaim "oh fuck off!!" as I was driving

gyac you're a f'ing chancer you are

the elon musk of ilx

Look you know you are a top 200 ilxor of mine but you are nothing if not meltish

xp wow

Can we move this thread towards intro-ukpol bullying and away from tw***er before caek comes in and starts talking about how he used to work there, you know!

xxxp
fucking state of the bbc, man!

come on Fizzles shame the devil and fess up!

lol i have no idea who said he was left wing. i strongly refute gyac's melt accusation and will have it in 'the town square of ilx' if necessary.

I'm joking lol!

xp thank you for confirming it was fizzles, there’s a bin with his name (and a decrepit looking Chinese) on it

ofc! i took it in kind! (sitting here drinking melt wine listening to melt jazz)

lol i have no idea who said he was left wing. i strongly refute gyac's melt accusation and will have it in 'the town square of ilx' if necessary.

I've had to stop going to that chinese

no it was a US poster - I'm finished with retrospective shit stirring for the night now

Imagine being that rich and caring so much about what people thought of you, though.

― barry sito (gyac), Monday, October 31, 2022 8:59 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

are there any rich people who don't care very much about what other people think of them?

ooh stephen bush - i think he's pretty sane and good, not because i agree with his politics, but because he attempts to think things through looking at the various sides... though interestingly i think his most recent article on... ELON MUSK... is absolute horseshit. genuinely The Worst of Stephen Bush.

I've had to stop going to that chinese

Imagine being that rich and caring so much about what people thought of you, though.

― barry sito (gyac), Monday, October 31, 2022 8:59 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

are there any rich people who don't care very much about what other people think of them?

pump and dump is securities fraud, he's literally already used twitter to do this with tesla stock and he's now gearing up to using twitter to do it with twitter stock lol, in case selling it is the only way out of what he's commited himself to

plus also he's starting to jerk advertisers around abt what kind of platform it's going to be and what it offers (lots of potentially miselading stuff can happen there, some of it illegal)

i agrere it's all right out in the open!

no, they've stopped doing their prawn toasts xpost

there are smart rich successful fraudsters no one knows abt bcz they are entirely canny abt getting on with robbing us and not drawing attention to themselves

Fizzles
Posted: 31 October 2022 at 21:15:51
ooh stephen bush - i think he's pretty sane and good, not because i agree with his politics, but because he attempts to think things through looking at the various sides...

The prosecution rests, your honour

true, i guess what i meant is that it wasn't that fraud that needs continual backing up - like a ponzi scheme.

one interesting thing watching the recent wirecard documentary – they were trying to get away with subsuming their v ponzi-ish fraud into a wider acquisition and they nearly got away with it. it makes you wonder how many time this has never been noticed.