Pretty much anything Elon Musk does leads to one certain reaction: a flood of internet jokes. Whatever the action—endorsing Donald Trump, consideration as Trump's efficiency czar, changing Twitter's name to X, having another child with yet another woman—it leads to jokes, and Musk is often right there joining in.
In this role as joke-target extraordinaire, Musk fits into a tradition of CEO-related humor that has long permeated American culture. These jokes help us understand a great deal about CEOs and their role in American society. Their fame makes them inviting targets for humor in a disaggregated society in which we no longer read the same books, watch the same shows, or go to the same movies. A comedian trying to connect with an audience knows that Musk is going to be better known than whatever movie is briefly leading at the box office that particular week.
But as CEOs have become more prominent, they have also become less popular. And the increasing sharpness of the humor deployed against them by comedians and presidents alike is indicative of an increasingly anticorporate American mood.
Given the long history of CEO interactions with presidents, and the degree to which presidents can make CEOs' lives difficult, jokes with CEO-and-president links go back over a century. Financier J.P. Morgan had been a target of the trustbusting Theodore Roosevelt; when he learned in 1909 that Roosevelt was going on safari in Africa, he joked that he hoped the lions would do their duty.
A few years later, Henry Ford tried to charm Woodrow Wilson by telling him Henry Ford jokes in a 1915 White House meeting. Ford and a press aide, Louis Lochner, went to see Wilson in the White House. World War I was raging in Europe, and Ford, a committed pacifist, wanted to persuade Wilson to keep the U.S. out of the war.
Wilson told the visitors that he enjoyed a good joke. Given this opening, Ford told Wilson a Henry Ford joke: Henry Ford drove by a cemetery where a gravedigger was in the process of digging a large grave. Curious, Ford asked how many people were to be buried there. The gravedigger replied that it was only for one man, but that the man stipulated in his will that his Ford should be buried with him. When Ford asked why, he was told that the man's Ford had gotten him out of every hole thus far, so he believed it would get him out of this last one.
Wilson laughed at the joke, which was the high point of the meeting. Wilson didn't commit to staying out of World War I. Ford pressed too hard and was unceremoniously escorted from the White House. The U.S. entered the war in April 1917.
Even though the visit was a failure for Ford, the incident indicates the degree to which Ford jokes had become well known in the country at the time. Postcards were sold with Ford jokes on them, such as this one: "A little spark, a little coil, a little gas, a little oil, a piece of tin, two inch of board, put 'em together, and you have a Ford." There were even Ford joke books.
Jokes work on the principle of universal recognition, and Ford was a universally known figure. In the period from 1915 to 1920, Ford was the fifth-most-mentioned celebrity, behind Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, Charles Evans Hughes, and William Jennings Bryan—all of whom had been, or at least run for, president. And Ford's famous car was far better grist for humor than the serious former Secretary of State Hughes.
In our era, Bill Gates attracted barbs by creating the operating system for personal computers and trying to prevent any other operating system from threatening Microsoft's dominance. Microsoft's approach to its competitors led to jokes such as, "How many Microsoft employees does it take to change a lightbulb?" The answer: "None. Bill Gates just redefines Darkness as the new industry standard."
Another high-tech CEO who generated multiple jokes is Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg's vulnerabilities include his youth, his casual dress, and his company's somewhat suspect approach to protecting people's privacy. A joke along these lines is one in which a boy says to Zuckerberg: "My daddy said you were stealing our information." Zuckerberg replies, "He isn't your dad."
In recent years, presidents have been increasingly willing to tell their own jokes about CEOs. When JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon speculated about running for president against then-incumbent Donald Trump, Trump pounced, posting on Twitter, "The problem with banker Jamie Dimon running for President is that he doesn't have the aptitude or 'smarts' & is a poor public speaker & nervous mess. Otherwise he is wonderful."
President Joe Biden has joined the pile-on about Musk's disastrous purchase of Twitter. Biden is a fan of NPR, he said, but he knows that not everybody loves it. "Elon Musk tweeted that it should be defunded. Well, the best way to make NPR go away is for Elon Musk to buy it."
Trump and Biden don't agree on much, but both recognize the political appeal of CEO humor. In these hyperpartisan times, dunking on CEOs is a bipartisan impulse indicative of an increasingly anticorporate era.