Mike's Minute: Who's worse – Elon Musk or Disney?

The Mike Hosking Breakfast - A podcast by Newstalk ZB - Thursdays

I am trying to work out which I like least – Elon Musk or Disney.  Elon bought Twitter and turned it into 'X'. He paid $44 billion, and they say it's worth about $10 billion now, but he doesn’t care.  It's worth $10 billion because a lot of corporates bailed because of its ugliness.  He argues it's free speech, but it's free speech at the lowest level, so it's ugly. He still defends it, and it makes life for a libertarian like me hard because I like the idea of truly free speech and, as a result of that belief, I have nothing to do with 'X' because I have standards.  But it's also apparent that as good a concept as free speech may be, when left to its own devices it's an ugly place and vulnerable people get hurt.  So that’s Elon.  Disney were one of those who bailed on 'X' because they didn’t like what they saw. But the Financial Times suggests they are heading back to 'X' now that Trump has won, and Trump likes Elon, and Elon might spend a lot of time at the White House, so Disney wants “in” on the action and the influence.  If that’s true, and it's not just Disney but also a bunch of corporates, that makes them hypocrites of the worst sort.  High and mighty – but only when it suits.  Full of principal, as long as they end up on the right side, whatever the current right side is.  They went hopelessly woke in their movies, until Bob Iger came back and said the reason he was back was because Disney was losing money, and they were losing money because they're woke.  Once upon a time having principles was quite the thing. It was expected and it was common, until it wasn’t.  These days corporates too often don’t know who they are so they end up in a moral blancmange. We saw it here during Covid – furious at the Government in private, pussy cats in public.  You would hope there is a lesson there somewhere they might want to learn and do something about.  Elon is at least reasonably consistent. You don’t have to like it, but he is true to his word.  It's cost him $35 billion in 'X'. But then he found Donald and the balance has been more than rectified, so what does he care?  Which I guess ultimately means, it's Disney. I like Disney less than I like Elon.  And that's saying something. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.