Why Elon Leaving the West Wing Will Make Driving My Tesla Great Again
My Tesla Model 3 is a mobile Black Lives Matter sign once again (I hope.)
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
Elon Musk has physically exited the White House to return to his many private jobs, and I’m suddenly hopeful. Not that the country won’t implode, but that my commute will be safe again.
Although there were always safety issues with my Tesla, they have become far worse in the last four months. This is not due to the fact that Musk has stopped focusing on updating the vehicle’s software. It’s because people want to burn me alive inside it. In Elon’s goodbye meeting, Trump said, “I guess he wants to get back home to his cars.” This, I can tell Musk from personal experience, is a very bad idea. People want to get back to their Teslas the way that people want to get back to their husband in the movie A Marriage Story.
Joel Stein can get back behind his 2021 Model 3 again—safer than he was when people wanted to set his car on fire, with him in it.
Joel Stein
Ever since Elon went full Nazi, I drive in fear, knowing that if my blinker stops working, I’ll have to drive around the world to the left, because there’s no way I’m using the hand signal for a right turn. Yes, I considered getting one of those bumper stickers that says, “I got this before Elon went crazy,” which I believe is the same sticker that I’m sure (at least) four women are affixing on (at least) fourteen children. But those bumper stickers only serve as a reminder to attack you in your car.
I specifically bought my Tesla Model 3 in 2021 for the same reason all liberals did, so that my friends would think I am A Very Good person. It was like a Black Lives Matter sign you could drive. But not since JFK’s appointment of Supreme Court Justice Byron White has a liberal plan backfired this badly. And in both cases, we should have been suspicious as soon as we found out that they only came in white. Honestly, I’d feel safer with a car with a combustion engine that actually backfired.
The shift in semiotics of my car is as dramatic as if your favorite concert T-shirt suddenly became a symbol of hatred. Imagine, in other words, a Kanye West shirt. Sure, half the people in my neighborhood have Teslas, but that only makes owning one more awkward. When we park at the same time, we have to spend ten minutes talking about how much we hate Elon Musk. Even worse, while we’re talking someone will drive up in a Lucid or Rivian and make a speech about how they traded in their Tesla. And we Tesla owners have to nod bitterly, silently hoping Trump hires whatever dork runs Rivian.
Tesla’s profits have dropped 71 percent amid a backlash over his work at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But more importantly, drivers like Joel Stein have to spend time explaining their choices.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Until Musk entered the White House in January, I was able to deflect my fellow liberals’ Tesla anger. I explained to people waiting with me at the valet that Tesla had done so much to combat climate change. “I bet the CEOs of lots of products we love have imperfect political views,” I’d say. “I wouldn’t be surprised, for instance, if there were some objectionable people who produce hard-core pornography.”
This guy has ruined things for the people who bought his cars thinking they were giant mobile Black Lives Matters signs. Maybe things can get back to normal now.
Odd Andersen/Getty Images
Now that Musk is gone, there’s a chance I can stop taking my green 2007 Prius to the Warner Bros lot every day, though before I do, I’m going to park it in either the spot that says “Tom Cruise” or “George Clooney” as a prank.
When Musk’s DOGE job is officially over at the end of the month, I might even be able to take my son to the cool-looking Tesla Diner that is being built near my house and is modeled after the Restaurant at the End of the Universe from the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novels. If he lays low for a year, perhaps I can use my flamethrower and sexually fantasize about Mars again.
Though I expect that in less time than it takes me to reach my Tesla’s range limit, Musk will do some new horrifying thing to destroy democracy, and I’ll be back in the 2007 Prius. I just hope it survives enough to get me over the border when it comes to that.
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