the times | Friday March 18 2022 3
times2
DOWN
Kim
Kardashian
2
UP
Elon Musk
1
And so, this week’s Celebrity
Watch comes neatly full circle —
beginning and ending, as it does,
with much bogglement at the
fundamental differences
between men and women that
are on display in times of war.
Obviously, there are billions
of individual men and
women in the world, and
we can’t simply lump
people in together on the
basis of their sex, yada yada
yada — but, looking at this
week’s headlines, there’s definitely
a theme, and it seems very much
defined by whether or not you have
a willy.
For while the world struggled to
work out what was going on in the
mind of Vladimir Putin, and why
he is doing what he’s doing re
Ukraine, so the world has also
had to take time to work out
what’s also going on in the mind
of Elon Musk — the world’s on/off
richest man — and why he’s doing
what he’s doing re Ukraine too.
On Monday Twitter lit up with a
string of early-morning messages from
Musk, who — with the same kind of
can-do spirit that invented the Tesla
and has seen his SpaceX project rival
Nasa — seemed to have decided to
“sort out” the nascent Third World
War. Tweeting the Kremlin directly,
Musk sent the following message:
“I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin
to single combat. Stakes are: Ukraine.
Do you agree to this fight?”
In geopolitical terms, it’s a difficult
offer to assess. Indeed I note, so far,
both the UN and Newsnight have
failed to do so. I guess the nearest
historical equivalence is if, in early
1939, Henry Ford or Alan Helicopter
— who, I presume, is the inventor of
the helicopter — had volunteered to
“scrap” Hitler; the stakes: Poland.
How seriously should we assess
Musk’s proposition? On the one hand,
Musk has an underrated sense of
humour and has also just become a
father for the seventh time — so he’s
probably quite sleep-deprived and
therefore apt to tweet mad balls in
Kim Kardashian — very much
rear-admiral in the Kardashian Big
Bum Fleet — has been giving advice
to women who would like, as she
has done, to acquire a fortune of
$1.8 billion. Unfortunately, the
advice she doled out last week met
with much resistance — because it
was deemed, by most people who
heard it, to be self-aggrandisingly
specious twaddle.
“Get your f***ing ass up and
work!” she told Variety, while
plugging her new reality TV
show. “It seems like nobody
wants to work these days.”
“So true,” tutted her sister
Kourtney. Now, obviously, “working
hard” can be a useful aspect of
earning money. No doubt about that.
But most people are loath to take
career advice and/or “effort
chiding” from someone who was
born into an already wealthy
family, and whose big career
break, fame-wise, really put
the internal into interning —
given that it was the 2007
leaked sex tape, Kim
Kardashian, Superstar.
Although I’m always willing
to give props to anyone who
manages to convert a
potentially embarrassing
situation into a positive one
— when the world gave
Kim Kardashian leaked sex
tapes, she went ahead and
made leaked-sex-tape-ade
— if the first rung on the
career ladder is “a penis”, it’s
not really a viable route for
most of us.between bottle-feeds just to “keep
things interesting”.
On the other hand, at the same time
Musk was offering to meet Putin
after school for a bundle — no
face-scratching or spitting allowed —
he was also activating his Starlink
satellite system, which put Ukraine’s
battered internet system back online.
He’s clearly powerful and
committed. Quite where offering to
punch Putin in the nuts fits into his
plan is unclear. And one could argue
quite strongly that “unfathomably
wealthy men threatening violent acts
that will undoubtedly destabilise the
whole world” was, in fact, the original
problem and not the solution at all.
But then I would be the first
to admit that this is, by and
large, a world built by really
f***ing weird men. And, in
particular, really f***ing
weird men being competitive
with other really weird men.
In a non-shady way, I would
state that Musk probably has
a better idea of what it’s like
to be Putin than most other
people on Earth —
only a handful of
people have their
level of wealth,
power, influence, and
knowledge of how they
have already shaped, are
still shaping, and will go on to
shape the future.
Maybe, right now, he’s
Rosebud/madeleine-ing some
long-buried schoolboy in
Putin, who will now spiral out,
unable to bear being taunted
by some round-faced nerd
saying he’s too “chicken” for
a scuffle. Or maybe Musk is
just, to use the technical term,
“titting about”.
Either way, it’s another one
of those moments where you
realise that The History of
Womankind and The History of
Mankind are two very different
books. Can you imagine the richest
woman in the world — the L’Oréal
heiress Françoise Bettencourt
Meyers — tweeting, while making
her breakfast, an offer to nut Kim
Jong-un? No. Whether that makes
women the stronger or the
weaker sex, I guess we’ll need
another 10,000 years of
civilisation to discover.
If we make it that long.Film
Olga
The grim reality of
geopolitics has
conferred a horrible
sense of urgency on
this sporting drama.
An award-winner at
Cannes last year, the
tale of an ambitious
Ukrainian gymnastforced to flee Kyiv has
been yanked forward
for special previews,
starting today, in more
than 200 cinemas
nationwide, with profits
donated to Ukraine
via the Disasters
Emergency Committee.
See review, page 8The hot list
Your guide to the weekend
Opera
Jenufa
Elizabeth Llewellyn,
right, finds rich tone in
this Welsh National
Opera production of
Janacek’s searing opera,
but the true wonder isthe orchestra,
conducted by the
company’s Czech music
director, Tomas Hanus.
Wales Millennium
Centre, Cardiff
(wno.org.uk), tonightPop
Hockney’s Eye: The
Art and Technology
of Depiction
David Hockney’s works
are embedded in the
Fitzwilliam Museum’s
historic collection
in a display that
has him expounding
his stubbornly
longstanding obsessionwith the way hand,
eye and optical
technology have been
brought together to
make pictures.
Fitzwilliam Museum/
Downing College,
Cambridge
(fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk),
today, tomorrow
and SundayTheatre
Straight Line Crazy
Ralph Fiennes plays
Robert Moses in David
Hare’s new play, a
portrait of a powerful
New York urban
planner who was a
people’s tribune early inhis career but trampled
all over neighbourhoods
in later years to make
the city safe for cars.
Bridge Theatre,
London SE1
(bridgetheatre.co.uk),
tonight, tomorrowVisual art
Sam Fender
Initially seeming like
the latest in a long line
of record industry-
approved inoffensive
singer-songwriters,
North Shields’s Fender
has since proved to be
an artist of rather more
depth. His tales of
masculinity in crisis
have captured therealities of northern
working-class life, while
his muscular yet
intimate rock sound
recalls Bruce
Springsteen and Tom
Petty. This is his first
arena tour.
Motorpoint Arena,
Nottingham
(samfender.com),
SundayHannah Gadsby
The Australian comic
returns with a looser
but highly enjoyable
“feelgood” show.
She revels in her
storytelling skills as shetalks about marriage,
rural life and coping
badly with the first
flush of success.
London Palladium
(hannahgadsby.com.au),
tonight, tomorrowComedy