Elbows Up, Musk Down
Ridicule is a powerful weapon.
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"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage." -Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals.
“Fascism doesn’t like to be ridiculed; it likes to be feared. Satire is an important tool in the toolbox to say that this is not normal...” -Mike Myers, New York Times interview.
Mike Myers isn’t known for being a political comedian, but he’s currently impacting the politics of two countries. His native Canada, and America, where he lives, and is a naturalized citizen. In March, he appeared on Saturday Night Live, brutally portraying Elon Musk in the opening sketch. At the end of the night, Myers came out wearing a t-shirt declaring that “Canada is not for sale” and mouthing “elbows up” - a hockey phrase - to the camera.
In Canada Elbows up became a meme, and Myers followed it up by endorsing and filming a campaign ad for Canadian Minister Mark Carney and the Liberal party. I have no idea if Myers’ endorsement or the ad impacted this week’s election, where the Liberal party won enough seats to hold onto a minority government, (Donald Trump’s constant threats towards Canada were clearly a huge factor), but I personally liked the ad and how it built on the meme.
Celebrities getting political can be a mixed bag for campaigns. I’ve been on campaigns where an endorsement or content worked out beautifully and ones where the opposite was true. In this ad, PM Carney grills Myers, who has lived in the US most of his adult life, about how Canadian he really is. Once Carney is satisfied, he assures Myers that there will always be a Canada. It’s funny, cute, and reads more like a cultural moment than a political one.
In an interview with the NY Times, Myers describes writing the ad and what he wanted to convey. He consulted with his brothers rather than campaign consultants or fellow comedy writers, and credits his childhood best friend for suggesting the video’s strongest joke. There’s something wholesome about the ad and the process of making it that I genuinely appreciate. Especially since here in the U.S., wholesome is about the last word you’d associate with politics right now.
For America’s sake, I hope we continue to see Myers playing Musk. SNL’s political sketches don’t always do it for me, but Myers nails Musk’s casual cruelty towards others, as well as Musk’s idiocy that he’s convinced himself is actually brilliance. In the NYT interview, Myers says that “fascism doesn’t like to be ridiculed,” evoking one of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: ridicule is our “most potent weapon.” Few people are more deserving of ridicule than Elon Musk.
Again, while I can’t say how much impact any of this has on the Canadian election, Myers has clearly done some damage to Musk, or at least his ego. We know Musk hates the impression because he can’t help but whine about it on X. The Trump Regime has been working to keep Musk out of the spotlight for a while now, and he clearly no longer enjoys the strong relationship with Trump that he once did. I’d be curious to know if Myers’ impression soured Trump, a known TV addict, on Musk in the way that we know Melissa McCarthy’s Sean Spicer impression soured Trump’s view of Spicer.
Part of me wonders if elbows up is one of the last monoculture memes we’ll see in politics as culture becomes more fragmented and segmented online. I’m always interested in the places where pop culture and politics intersect, and for this Sunday’s newsletter, we’re taking a deeper dive into changes in how Americans consume culture and how that impacts politics. But even with that, I’m confident that ridicule will always remain a potent tool for fighting the good fight. As Alinsky says, “There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule.”
Plus it’s fun to piss the bad guys off.