Calla Merritt ’23

Staff Writer

As someone who holds no love in my heart for Elon Musk, and, similarly, a teeny-tiny bit of reluctant love for Grimes in my heart, I was not shocked when I heard word of their semi-separation. Between the two’s own personal brands of eccentricity, something told me that even though a child named “X Æ A-Xii” might need some extra attention from their parents, that attention wasn’t necessarily going to be held in one Bel Air home, rather than two. Elon Musk’s billionaire-ism seemed to clash with Grimes’ pseudo-leftist persona like a neon orange skirt with a zebra print tank top. This is why when I saw Grimes’ paparazzi photos this week, I was hysterically laughing.

Grimes, seeming to have hit the crescendo of irony of being a self-declared “anti-capitalist” living with a man who actively tries to manipulate the stock market, was seen on the streets of L.A. in what seems to be a “Dune”-inspired cloak, thumbing her way through a presumably never-before-opened copy of Karl Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto.” This is the singer’s first public appearance since Musk announced Grimes’ separation from the richest person in the world.

This, to me, was a brilliant gag. What could be a funnier way for a celebrity in the public eye to get on the front page of both “The Inquirer” and a Public Relations packet for what the company needs to address within the week at Tesla? Twitter, however, did not seem to agree with me. A great number of people responded to this stunt with visceral hatred toward Grimes’ lack of political tact. And while I do believe that these criticisms of her gimmicky politics have great merit, I also believe that people should not be looking to an indie singer for informed politics. People on principle should not be looking to any celebrities for political ideological beliefs. A celebrity’s job is to entertain and sway their fanbase emotionally, and many do so with their politics. Even without the layer of ignorance that many of these public figures hold, the people-pleasing nature of their jobs makes their politics often disingenuous to begin with. Even though I believe that Grimes does not have a great grasp on the inner workings of communism or leftist politics and her place within them, I do not believe that it is in a public figure’s nature to give convincing political arguments to the general public. Grimes’ job is to entertain, and entertain is surely what she did.