Elon *does* have friends… in high places

Where are you going, Elon? Where have you been?

The 87-year-old novelist Joyce Carol Oates unleashed her X account to excoriate the app’s owner Elon Musk this weekend. “So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates – scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died… In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the ‘most wealthy person in the world.’”

OK, Joyce. Or maybe Elon (who definitely reads, just not soggy literary fiction), is occupied with his many companies, sending driverless cars to space, and doesn’t have time to enjoy the fall foliage in Connecticut or root root root for the home team. 

Besides, he does have friends. The Wall Street Journal today reports on Musk’s secret conversations with Vladimir Putin. At one point, “Putin asked the billionaire to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.” Very touching. Cockburn is sure if Putin’s dog died, Elon would send him a condolence Signal, too. 

On our radar

VETERANS DAY President Trump participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery this morning to mark Veterans Day.

GRAN STANDING President Gustavo Petro of Colombia has been talking up “Gran Colombia” – a 19th-century state consisting of his country, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama – as the US ratchets up its naval presence in the region.

TEARS OF UNFATHOMABLE SADNESS South Park’s creators justified their show’s recent Trump-bashing streak in a New York Times interview. “It’s not that we got all political,” Trey Parker said. “It’s that politics became pop culture.”

Should Dulles become the Donald J. Trump International Airport?

Whenever Cockburn gets gloomy with the state of the world, he thinks about the arrivals gate at Dulles Airport. No matter how bereft he is, he tells himself, it could be worse – he could be packed like a sardine inside one of those claustrophobic Star Wars-esque people-transporters after touching down from a distant land. The main terminal itself is arguably the high point of architect Eero Saarinen’s career – but the airport’s means of moving arriving passengers toward it is decidedly outdated. Washington was offered a timely reminder of this yesterday, when one of the mobile lounges crashed into the dock it was supposed to be parked at. Eighteen people were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. President Trump is currently fixated on rebuilding things in DC – the football stadium, the East Wing – and naming them after him. There is a strong case for adding a Dulles revamp to the list.

The accident is just the latest of America’s aviation woes, after FAA cuts led to thousands of canceled and delayed flights. Even as the House prepares to end the shutdown, the chaos is expected to continue. “It will take time, and there will be residual effects for days,” said an Airlines for America spokesperson. Who’s ready to take the train for Thanksgiving?

I ain’t no follow-back girl

Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico follows several porn stars, escorts and OnlyFans models on Instagram, including Giselle Palmer, the “Honky Tonk Angel,” according to an Axios story this weekend. Rather than owning up to a calculated attempt to tap into the “gooner” caucus, Talarico’s spokesman J.T. Ennis said the campaign “follows back and engages with supporters who have large followings and does not investigate their backgrounds. James has never subscribed to OnlyFans or an escort service.” 

Ennis also said, “While James was unaware of how these women make money, he does not judge them for it and will not play into an effort to smear them for clickbait articles. That’s exactly what his Christian faith calls him to do.” Love thy porn star as thyself. 

No one would care were Talarico an ordinary man following OnlyFans models on Instagram. Cockburn finds this curious only because of Talarico’s gee-whiz Mr. Smith Goes To Washington political persona. He has cultivated a decent amount of hype in the Lone Star State through his pastor-esque addresses. More pertinently: who tipped off Axios to this follow-back indiscretion? Was it the bland former football player Colin Allred, whom Talarico is rapidly swamping in the Democratic primary? Or are his Republican rivals, such as the perpetually mid Senator John Cornyn and the disreputable Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (whose wife recently filed to divorce him for “Biblical reasons”) starting to feel the heat from his rising star? Regardless, liberal Democrats, who feign moral outrage every time a Republican even thinks about a woman’s breasts, seem willing to go to the rack for their new Texas golden boy. If Talarico’s campaign somehow falters, he can always start an OnlyFans.