Musk of the Year, Fox on the 6th | Winners & Losers in Today’s Green Room

TIME magazine has named the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, as their “Person of the Year” for 2021.

The selection met with groans and lamentations across the web, something that happens every year for every person who is selected. Person of the Year, as TIME explains every year, is about who “most shaped the previous 12 months, for better or for worse.”

“Person of the Year is a marker of influence,” they write, “and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too.”

Musk’s vast wealth is considered and treated by many on the left side of the spectrum as a self-evident ill. And although Person of the Year has included truly despicable individuals like Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, some took to Twitter on Monday to call Musk the “worst choice ever.”

There were wounded luddites, too, of course.

One could argue that out there in the great global economy amid the great 21st century pandemic there are other options for person of the year. Doctors, front line workers, virologists. Even public faces like Dr. Anthony Fauci were suggested yesterday as better honorees. Musk has been a sometimes notable figure himself in that pandemic, almost always for dubious reasons.

But his argument for the “unequivocal” efficacy of vaccination (and yes, he is vaccinated), paired with his overtures about a freer society is perfectly in keeping with the dual obsessions of improving the world through technology, and “steering away” from the bad stewardship of government, to borrow from TIME‘s write-up. Shoehorning in a different selection based on ideology would defeat the stated purpose of the magazine’s esoteric and subjective honorific.

“We don’t yet know how fully Tesla, SpaceX and the ventures Musk has yet to think up will change our lives,” writes TIME. That is true, but forward-thinking is something prized in the American tradition, and it is inevitable that ambitious moon-shot projects eventually change and better the lives of all people.

So yes, sure, it’s a subjective choice. As is always the case every single year, there are no shortage of critics for TIME‘s selection.

But this designation, this naming and profile by TIME, is a rare honor. Maybe it’s no “Sexiest Man Alive” but it is definitely a media win for the billionaire with questionable values and a blunt, often offensive persona. Especially for someone with more than a little P.T. Barnum in his make-up.

During a meeting of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) read aloud text messages Fox News hosts and Donald Trump, Jr. sent to Trump White House chief-of-staff Mark Meadows as the violence unfolded.

Cheney read the correspondence just before the committee voted unanimously to recommend that the DoJ charge Meadows with contempt. Fox News did not air the hearing, but CNN and MSNBC did.

“Multiple Fox News hosts knew the president needed to act immediately,” said Cheney before reading aloud.

“Mark, the President needs to tell people in the Capitol to go Home. This is hurting all of us,” texted Laura Ingraham. “He is destroying his legacy.”

“Please get him on TV,” said Brian Kilmeade. “Destroying everything you have accomplished.”

“Can he make a statement, ask people to leave the Capitol,” asked Sean Hannity.

However, on the air, the Fox News hosts sang a different tune.

On air, Ingraham repeatedly suggested the worst rioters might not have been MAGA at all, saying Antifa was “sprinkled” through the crowd and that she’d never seen Trump supporters “wearing helmets” at rallies.

On his radio program that day, Hannity said he was “not surprised” there was a march on the Capitol, but was surprised the police weren’t more prepared. On Fox that night, he condemned the rioters, but like Ingraham, suggested the worst actors were “infiltrators.”

The really breathtaking part, though, is that Hannity had Meadows on air last night and didn’t even mention the whole “I texted you on January 6th” thing. That takes chutzpah. Even Newsmax brought it up with him.

All three Fox hosts have since drifted from condemnation of the violence to arguing that January 6th is being overblown by the media, that Antifa was a major part, and have continued to push the very stolen election theme that was the driving force that day.

On CNN, Alyssa Farah summed up the “speaking out of both sides of their mouth” succinctly.

“They knew how bad this was the day of and even a few days afterwards. Most of the party did, but then they’ve completely changed their tone now,” she said. “That, I think, is really revealing.”

The texts are revealing of two faces, a private one that will tick off Trump supporters, and the public one that ticks off everyone else.