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If only Elon Musk could impregnate humans at the same rate he’s giving them the ick. Alas, polls show the efficiency tsar’s US approval rating dwindling towards levels he has enjoyed for quite some time among the UK public. And as a country that lived through the Boris Johnson era, I think we have to warn the Americans that if a government figure can’t or won’t answer the basic question “how many kids do you have?”, then he’s probably going to turn out to be a disappointment. And it might even have been a warning sign. If the WhatsApp group of his exes is bigger than Mumsnet and 10 times as pissed off, then it’s just possible you could be dealing with a guy you’re going to end up feeling betrayed by.
Is Musk that guy? Who among us can say, certainly considering the sheer number and ferocity of the lawyers Mister Free Speech employs? I do know Elon is something called a “pronatalist”, but I increasingly wonder whether that’s just a fancy new word for a very old form of shittiness. Consider the spectacle of his ex, Grimes, coming on to the social media platform Musk owns and outright begging him to get in touch for his input concerning a “medical crisis” for one of their shared children. “I’m not giving any details but he won’t respond to texts call or emails and has skipped every meeting and our child will suffer lifelong impairment if he doesn’t respond asap, so I need him to fucking respond and if I have to apply public pressure then I guess that’s where we are at.” These posts were either deleted or are now inaccessible, while one user suggested she had been “shadowbanned”. Silly Grimes. If she had put a rape threat or some antisemitism in her APB, it would have stayed up.
Or as Ashley St Clair, mother of Elon’s (maybe) most recent child put it in an (also now deleted) X post last week: “Elon, we have been trying to communicate for the past several days and you have not responded. When are you going to reply to us instead of publicly responding to smears from an individual who just posted photos of me in underwear at 15 years old?”
Aha. Think I’m starting to get a handle on “pronatalism”. Gotta admit, I’d had my suspicions, ever since Elon portentously announced: “Instead of teaching fear of pregnancy, we should teach fear of childlessness.” You’ll notice that either way, the situation involves fear for women. Fear of taking on the responsibility when you aren’t ready. Fear of not populating the Earth. Fear that when you really need him to engage with the boring/terrifying realities of parenthood, he’s going to be dicking around on a conservative conference stage with a chainsaw. Literally shouting: “CHAINSAW!”
Because that, regrettably, was where Elon could be found, wearing sunglasses indoors, at around the time the Grimes message was sent. The power tool had been handed to our power tool by the Argentinian president – the one who looks like some mid-2000s Kasabian manager who can’t even get the girls that the band don’t want, and once soiled himself at 6am in someone else’s room at the Groucho.
Anyway, it’s unclear which of Grimes’s children with Musk has the alleged urgent medical issue. She reportedly has three, including X Æ A-Xii (X). You’ll recognise X (which Grimes is far from thrilled about). He’s the one Musk took to hang out with reporters and Donald Trump in the Oval Office, and I’d assumed he was the one currently being tried out for the successor role. Kind of a Musk Jong-un. Although in many ways, Kim Ju-ae, the North Korean leader’s daughter and current apparent favourite could be little X’s closest thing to a peer group. Their dads both root hard for Russia, and both kids have to watch a lot of rocket launches.
As for the wider impact of these increasingly icky glimpses into Musk’s private world, it is beginning to feel like the Doge boss has flicked the public’s “weirdo” switch. None of us wishes to call this too soon, but it does seem as though the world likes Elon less the more they see of him. Given his lack of conventional charm, he is one of those who should have realised silence would be the most intriguing and awe-inspiring statement of all. Instead … CHAINSAW!
Meanwhile, St Clair is now pushing for sole custody of the baby alleged to be his. Motherhood can be quite crystallising, of course. Before it happens, you’ve got a load of free and easy ideas, you want to have a guy’s “rocket babies”. And then you do, and you send him a photo of you and your shared newborn in the delivery room, and he texts back a clipped, “All well?” Oof. Other messages she alleges are from Musk (and which are included in her court filings) explain he can’t visit her and the child because: “I’m #2 after Trump for assassination … This is not the time for sentiment at the expense of safety … Only the paranoid survive.” Mm. Perhaps I must adopt this as my excuse to get out of any parenting I don’t want to do this year. “Guys, I’m so sorry, someone else is going to have to care about your jabs and your dentist and your, like, entire LIFE, because only the paranoid survive. I pay for it, don’t I? Then what’s the difference?”
There is a difference though, isn’t there? I would love to believe this guy is going to be able to effect some era-defining revolution in governance that makes people have better lives. But a lot of stuff begins at home – and if Musk doesn’t chainsaw the US’s way to playing happy families, we might just have to accept that there were one or two red flags on the home front.
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Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
