I have a two-year-old so watching the 2023 SuperBowl wasn't necessarily in the cards for me. When I popped online the following day to see who won so I could make the obligatory small talk at work, I instead got caught up n the drama regarding Elon Musk sitting next to Rupert Murdoch to watch the game.
Much has been made of the two men sitting in the stands. Musk the eccentric automobile entrepreneur who recently bought Twitter citing concerns over a biased media that runs rampant on the site and Rupurt Murdoch who has singlehandedly turned the brains of countless Americans to right-wing infused mush with his Fox News Network franchise.
The image strikes at the heart of Musk's many contradictions; how can you feel concerned about media bias when you're enjoying the company of a guy who created the most profitable bias machine in the world? There is also something visually repellent about seeing two billionaire hucksters existing so casually together. These people, Murdoch especially, should be relegated to the shadows to do their dealings not brazenly at one of the nation's most viewed sporting events.
The reactions probably seem too visceral, it reminds me of the reaction many had to seeing Michelle Obama warmly hugging George W Bush. I was always confused about what the expectation was exactly, is she supposed to stab him and stand atop his corpse shrieking "Death to American Empire"? Would snubbing him as a war criminal, however pleasing that would be to see, have made anyone feel any semblance of justice?
George Carlin once quipped "it's a big club and you ain't in it", referring to a section of society that exists on a sphere above us all. Like anyone whose interests and lives contain similarities, these people gravitate toward each other and form social cells. This hardly seems extraordinary.
Yet Carlin is right that seeing these social cells in public is alienating and serves as a reminder that there is a group of people whose consumption and influence impact your life. A reminder that the conceptual democracy we live in seems a hollow promise when a seemingly literal cabal exists to pull the levers of American power.
The anger is justifiable, if it seems misplaced at simply the notion of people with a lot in common just hanging out together it's important to consider what that "in common" entails. Billions of dollars, unbridled influence over the government, and a level of consumption that jeopardizes the planet to name a few things.
It's bad enough we have to live under their thumb, let us look upon their club with anger.
