Woody Harrelson; Elon MuskPhoto: Joe Maher; Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)
Depending on who you ask, having Elon Musk in your corner is either a huge boon or a huge red flag. When it comes to anti-vaccination conspiracy theories, Musk’s endorsement likely says more about him than about the person promoting it. (Though how many more childish, contradictory opinions Tesla’s CEO will have to voice before dropping the “genius” label is anyone’s guess.) In the case of Woody Harrelson’s “Saturday Night Live” monologue and Musk’s subsequent cachet, let’s just say it , there are no winners here.
Harrelson’s controversial joke had to do with “the craziest script” he’d ever read (which he did while stoned, of course). “Well, the movie goes like this. The biggest drug cartels in the world come together and buy out all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes and the only way people can get out is if they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them again and again “, he said. “I threw away the script. I mean who would believe this crazy idea? Being forced to take drugs? I do that voluntarily all day.”
Woody Harrelson monologue – SNL
It’s a stoner joke for sure, but one dangerously woven into a popular COVID-19 anti-vaccination conspiracy. And Harrelson is no stranger: At the beginning of the pandemic, he posted and deleted from his Instagram a conspiracy theory linking COVID-19 to 5G. As late as May 2022, he told Vanity Fair that he thinks on-set masking protocols are “absurd” because he “doesn’t believe in the germ theory” and hasn’t contracted coronavirus (or any other illness) for the past seven years. because he is “pure within.”
Suffice it to say that his monologue faced a great deal of online criticism when it circulated on Twitter on Sunday, but he received support from Twitter’s overlord. “Good”, Musk commented on a video of the monologue before co-retweeting it on his own page the praise, “So based. Nice job @nbcsnl!” He also encouraged other conspiracy theorists who pointed fingers at The Media over headlines about Harrelson’s comments. “Maybe they don’t realize their propaganda is wrong?” Musk tweeted through the points of sale.
Neither the media nor the drug companies (or “drug cartels,” according to Harrleson’s dig) are above criticism, but there’s a world of difference between valid criticism and mere fantasy, like “For a *very* long time, the US media has been racist against it Non-whites, now they are racist towards whites and Asians,” which is another of Musk’s tweets from Sunday. Scarlett Johansson may have been the one who brought Harrelson into the Five Timers Club, but Musk was the one waiting with open arms to welcome him into the controversial host category.