Pearl River      Most of us don’t recognize any fine line between irony and flat-out hypocrisy, but this attack on the largely strawman issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion or DEI, makes it hard to avoid seeing it.  Readers and listeners may be sick and tired of hearing about this in recent days, but we can’t drop it, because the contradictions are unavoidable.

I think we’ll all agree that some of the kowtowing of tech gazillionaires to President Trump’s “all hands on deck” assault on anything and everything he can pretend is afflicted by diversity, has led the way for companies and universities to bend to his wind on this preposterous issue.  The assistant president, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been a cheerleader for this and the rest of this right-wing program.

For companies and tech-bros, it seems little more than a blatant effort to curry favor with the president and not be targeted by those even farther right in the advancing column of white supremacists.  Stephen Bannon, a once and forever Trump acolyte and apologist, and some columnists believe this is because they are angling for a bailout.  I’m not sure about that, but I am sure they want government and military contracts, and if diversity is blocking the door, they’ll kick it in.  I also have argued that all of them are glad to be rid of DEI, because they were so bad at it, in addition to their heart not having been into it in the first place.

There’s more to it though that indicates it is all just transactional.  There is no more exclusive club of billionaires and the superrich than the National Football League and its owners.  The owners’ always willing and heavily enriched manservant, Roger Goodell, says that the NFL is still all-in on DEI, as are his almost total Trumper bosses.  He says, “they won’t change just because the political climate has shifted, adding that they’re both positive for the league and a ‘reflection of our fan base and our communities and our players.’”  The all-powerful NFL and its billionaires still realize that a huge percentage of their fans and absolutely their players are not white and want more DEI, not less.  Whether they like it or not, they have to keep all the hot dog eaters and beer drinkers happy, not just the narrow slice of haters and ideologues that foam at the mouth wearing MAGA hats.

That seems to be the key to all of this hypocrisy that’s manifesting itself in our political, social, and cultural lives now.  If you can ignore the base, whether your fans or customers, and don’t have to be accountable to them, then to heck with this diversity mess.  When there is money involved, you have to suck it up, and still pretend to care about diversity to keep the cha-ching in the cash register.

Turns out, to no real surprise, there’s no bigger hypocrite than deputy president Musk.  His main company, Tesla, has been sued over its racial policies in California and challenged by shareholders, so now the company is embracing DEI in everything, but name, saying it is reviewing its employment practices as it looks for “excellent” talent.

Once again, as always, for Musk and those like him, it’s about the money.  Sales plummeted for Tesla’s in California, its largest market, as surveys indicate that Musk’s politics are pushing down sales, which fell by 12% in 2024.  The old saying, “love the car, hate the man,” isn’t surviving all of the current Musk machinations.  As the Times adds,

There are also signs that Musk’s political views and his close association with Trump and other right-wing political leaders are hurting sales.  Electric car buyers tend to be more liberal than Musk and his political allies.  Tesla’s sales in Germany plunged 59% in January, compared with the same month last year, after Musk endorsed a nationalist political party.

In typical fashion, Musk will continue to throw the rocks, but maybe he and his companies are trying to hide the hand a bit better.  Being the new 2024 model of the racist and fascist Henry Ford is absolutely not a good look, when you’re selling cars not for $500, but for over $50,000.

The moral of this story is not simply that these guys stand for nothing and bend with the wind.  The real takeaway is that the only guarantee of justice on hiring and general practices is when the base, fans or customers, demand it with either their voices or their dollars.