Yahoo News “He Seems Wounded”: John Oliver Responds After Elon Musk Said His Comedy Is Woke “Weak Sauce”
John Oliver has issued a typically playful response to Elon Musk after the billionaire X owner appeared to take umbrage with being roasted by the British comedian.
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, which clinched another Emmy on Monday night, flamed Musk in a section last month, with Oliver joking that he “could pull off any bad guy in a movie.”
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A couple of weeks later, Musk argued that the “otherwise capable” Oliver had become “weak sauce” in a post on the social media site formerly known as Twitter.
“The reason he is not very funny these days is because he is too keen to pander to wokeness, which is fundamentally a lie, whereas great humor requires revealed truth,” Musk said.
In a short interview with TMZ on Monday, Oliver was asked why Musk had singled him out. “You’re going to have to track him down and ask him. I don’t know, that’s a thin skin,” Oliver said.
“I cannot possibly pretend to guess what’s in that man’s mind at any time. He seems wounded … He’s definitely sensitive, that is a biological fact.”
On the woke jibe, Oliver added: “I don’t know what that means. I don’t think he could explain what that means, and I think it means nothing. I don’t know literally what he’s talking about.”
On his show in December, Oliver joked about Musk’s villainous looks.
“There’s Lex Luthor posing for the cover of Metropolis Maniacs monthly. There’s ‘Why No Mr. Bond. I and my child bride expect you to die,’” he said. “There’s, ‘I just bought your media company, I’m about to strip you for parts.’ There’s, ‘First racist sheriff.’”
Oliver went on to explain that Musk had changed the way people perceive him in the past year. The comedian cited that at one point, Musk was described as “the real-life Iron Man” and remembered the billionaire made a cameo in Marvel’s Iron Man 2 alongside Robert Downey Jr.
As Oliver recalled Musk’s ascension, he played a clip of the Tesla owner being compared to Henry Ford, the business magnate and founder of the Ford Motor Company.
“Like Henry Ford, Elon Musk managed to build on the technology that others had invented,” Oliver said before following up with the zing: “That’s not actually the only way he’s like Henry Ford, which you’d know if you ever Google either of their names and the word antisemitism.”
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