Historically, the richest and poorest men on the planet tend to father a lot more children than the men in the middle. With the former, its because there’s so much for the spawn to inherit, hence all the aristocratic Fitzes; the latter, because so many offspring die in infancy. The men in the middle tend to look disapprovingly – not without reason, as they pay so much of the taxes the other two dodge – at both. It comes as no surprise then that plenty of people have poured scorn on the announcement by Elon Musk’s partner Shivon Zilis that the pair have welcomed the tech billionaire’s fourteenth child.
A man who has a string of children with different mothers and then moves on often finds that it adds to his manly mystique in the eyes of his fanboys. See the likes of Bob Marley (eleven children with seven women), Rod Stewart (eight by five), Paul Weller (eight by four) and the daddy of (almost) them all, Eddie Murphy (ten by five).
I’ve got the guts to admit that if I was him, I’d probably behave quite like he does
Lone mothers – especially rich and famous ones – on the other hand, aren’t covertly envied in the same way. Instead they are openly derided as ‘4X4s’ by men who fancied them when they were young, still have no chance with them in middle age and are delusionally superior as a result. Successful women may also be criticised for ‘collecting’ children – Mia Farrow, Madonna, Angelina Jolie – when they exhibit altruistic traits by adopting children from poorer nations.
I’m not the parental type (though a friend poignantly described my behaviour towards my dead son Jack as ‘a cross between a geisha and an ATM’), but I don’t diss people – men and women – who enthusiastically are. So I’m sceptical of griping types like Kevin Maher, writing in a piece for the Times titled: ‘Fourteen children? Why is Elon Musk obsessed with having kids?’:
Musk seems to be as serious about impregnating women as he is about thrusting his big rockets into the cosmos for SpaceX, drilling into the virginal earth with his tunnel-making Boring Company, or dazzling consumers with his oversized, over-priced Tesla Cybertruck, a garish electric utility vehicle made for men with huge wallets and tiny, well, you know, levels of self-awareness.
Make your mind up, Free World; do we want to repopulate or don’t we? The panicky messages being issued by governments from Japan to Italy would imply we do. This being the case, if people – men and/or women – can financially support twenty children, why not have them? If they can’t financially support two, then maybe think twice about having them in the first place.
The liberal elite, however, always seem like daft children with their fingers in their ears when Musk is mentioned – despite the fact that no matter how much they toss around the word ‘billionaire’, they have no more in common with the common man than he does. Indeed, on issues such as the rape gangs, Musk is probably far more in touch with the man in the street than the Labour party is. (Their preferred term ‘grooming gangs’ sounds like nothing more malign than fly-by-night poodle-parlours.)
Until the recent barney with his ex-girlfriend Grimes, Musk’s relations with his former partners seemed at least as good as most peoples; it’s just as the man said: mo’ money, mo’ problems. During Musk’s original bid for X, an adorably matey text allegedly from his twice-married ex-wife Talulah Riley (he was also her first boyfriend, to make it cuter) was revealed: ‘Please do something to fight woke-ism – I will do anything to help!’
His on/off relationship with Grimes – mother of three of his children – seems like a Millennial college courtship (‘I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we’re very fluid’). The two met on social media when making the same pun about a ‘thought experiment’. They have had quite a few instances of being ‘on a break’ and an equal number of declarations of soul-mate status (‘He’s my best friend and the love of my life.’) One would have to be a saint not to relish the public entertainment which results from two creative and volatile people navigating their mature relationship as co-parents on a social media platform which resembles the world’s roughest nightclub when the lights go on.
The very real difficulties of raising the children of a gloriously rich man who is impossible to understand should not be underestimated. But it doesn’t behove we hacks to crow, considering the state of many of our ‘romantic histories’ – to use a polite phrase about our tendency, especially before the ban on liquid lunches, to put it about more than Led Zeppelin in their pomp.
Grimes and Musk have been engaged in a custody battle, which was clearly on the bitter side but whose outcome is still a total mystery to the rest of the world – although there is, perhaps, just a chance that monetary exchange may have been a factor. Almost as soon as that was out of the way, Elon had his Hail-Caesar moment, which obliged Grimes to publicly distance herself from him – but in such a very mild way that one wondered again whether gifting had occurred.
The final straw, however, appears to have been Musk parading of their young son X Æ A-Xii (X for short) before the cameras in the Oval Office. This led Grimes to issue her strongest denouncement yet: ‘He [X] should not be in public like this.’ Soz, Grimes, but spawning with Elon Musk and then complaining that said issue has become a public figure in its own right seems somewhat akin to doing it with a Womble and moaning about the resulting offspring being a neat-freak. And, of course, nothing says ‘please, no undue attention for my child’ like calling it ‘X Æ A-Xii’, or indeed ‘Techno Mechanius’ – the name of the couple’s somehow supposedly ‘secret’ third sprog.
So when I read yet another male journalist slagging off Musk – especially money-hungry attention-seekers – I think ‘bring on the lie detector, mate!’ Unlike a large proportion of the media – especially my male colleagues – I don’t spend much time thinking about the tech billionaire, certainly not to the extent that the Guardian does, currently as they are sending out begging emails seeking money with the totally spurious invitation ELON MUSK’S WORLD: YOUR CHANCE TO HOLD HIM RESPONSIBLE. Like he cares, clowns!
But I do believe that, for all his adolescent bombast, he does seem interested in the truth being out there somewhere. And when I do think about Musk, those lovely lines from the great old song ‘You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)’ come to mind:
All I know is that to me
You look like you’re lots of fun
All I know is that to me
You look like you’re having fun.
And unlike a lot of disappointed, dream-dashed, mealy-mouthed, born-again-virgin centrist-dad-of-two hacks, I’ve got the guts to admit that if I was him, I’d probably behave quite like he does. Because in a a world so sadly lacking in it, being Elon Musk looks like fun – despite the presence of so many boring kiddiwinkies. Besides, there’s always nannies.
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