Elon Musk Thinks Monty Python Are His Anti-Wokestradamus
John Cleese would be proud.
After a disastrous Twitter poll saw users overwhelmingly vote for Elon Musk to step down as the company’s CEO, the South African American magnate has been in need of some uplifting laughter courtesy of his favorite prescient, politically conservative, anti-woke comedy troupe – Monty Python?
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A late night tweet from a Musk stan showed a famous clip from Monty Python’s religious comedy Monty Python’s Life of Brian in which a group of Judean revolutionaries debate whether or not one of their male compatriots could ever become a woman and conceive a child. The stan posted the link with the caption, “For anyone wondering why @elonmusk loves Monty Python. Just 40 years ahead of their time!”
The Twitter CEO replied with the glib proclamation, “They saw this coming in the 70’s!” which prompted a series of self-congratulatory commenters claiming that the famous counter-culture comedy troupe was actually an ahead-of-their-time mouthpiece for a socially conservative movement that wouldn’t pop up until almost four decades after the release of Life of Brian.
It’s not surprising to see Monty Python’s work co-opted by the anti-woke hand wringers of Twitter – founding member John Cleese, who fittingly plays the skeptic in the Life of Brian clip, has joined the droning chorus of older comedians who complain about censorship and being silenced on their new TV shows and during various paid speaking engagements.
However, Eric Idle, the man in the clip who wants to give birth, has swung in the exact opposite direction, levying heavy criticism towards comedians like Cleese who wield massive platforms like petulant children who throw fits whenever a single one of their jokes isn’t met with universal praise. Idle has criticized the likes of Dave Chappelle and Bill Maher for crying “censorship” because of negative reactions to jokes they told on huge stages for truckloads of money – he’s even made jabs at Musk himself, saying that Musk’s failed “Twitter Blue” campaign was comparable to "buying a petting zoo and then charging the animals."
To give any of Monty Python’s work a modern label of either “woke” or “based” is ridiculous enough considering that the majority of their comedy came well before discussions about gender identity or political correctness were remotely mainstream – it’s highly unlikely that Cleese and Idle planned the Life of Brian scene as an attack on the transgender community and wokeness, regardless of what Musk's followers think of Python’s clearly divided politics. Maybe – just maybe – Cleese and Idle were making a silly joke?
Since it’s only fair to share the other side of Monty Python’s obviously predictive and explicitly political jokes about a social issue that wouldn’t become a dominant topical discussion until every member of the group was geriatric, let’s not forget the time when Graham Chapman (rest in peace) made a grand statement about socially constructed gender roles in Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” a new mother asks of the doctors who just delivered her baby.
Chapman replies, “Now, I think it’s a little early to start imposing roles on it, don’t you?”
