Elon Musk (Image: DPA/Britta Pedersen, Private Media)

Synecdoche watch We’re fairly sure you could write a comprehensive history of the 21st century so far simply by explaining how we got to the point where the information contained in the following picture became not only possible, but commonplace.

That is former special forces soldier Heston Russell. He is outside the Supreme Court, which is hearing his defamation case against the ABC. Russell is claiming that Australia’s public broadcaster defamed him as part of its reporting on alleged war crimes by Australian forces in Afghanistan.

He is taking a break from proceedings to promote Savvy Beverages, which bills itself as a “natural nootropics health drink for improved performance energy and focus”, to his more than 100,000 Instagram followers. He thanks the product for getting him through a tough week in court, holds the can to the phone and tells his followers to use the code “Heston” to get a discount.

All that’s missing is the gig economy worker bringing him his drink.

That was then, this is now August 2023:

Elon Musk has said his X social media platform will pay the legal bills and sue on the behalf of people who have been treated ‘unfairly’ by employers because of posting or liking something on the site formerly known as Twitter.

‘If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill,’ Musk said in a post on X late on Saturday, adding that there will be no limits to funding the bills.

‘And we won’t just sue, it will be extremely loud and we will go after the boards of directors of the companies too’ …

The Guardian

November 2022:

After purging half of Twitter’s staff with a snap of his fingers and firing as many as 5500 additional contract employees without so much as a goodbye, ‘free speech’ maximalist Elon Musk is now additionally getting rid of anyone who dares criticize him, both on Twitter and even in the company’s private Slack.

Yesterday, Musk admitted to firing an engineer who attempted to correct him publicly on Twitter, and Eric Frohnhoefer wasn’t the last to go that way — Twitter software engineer Sasha Solomon also tweeted that she got ‘fired for shitposting’ after a series of now-deleted tweets criticizing Musk, adding ‘kiss my ass elon.’

The Verse

Keeping track During the robodebt royal commission, we noticed that in the flurry of exhibits that covered the Department of Human Services’ apparent top-down obsession with media, former department secretary Kathryn Campbell’s office shared around our articles — or at least politics editor Bernard Keane’s piece from May 30 2018, concerning the aftermath of the department’s leak about Andie Fox to The Canberra Times.

We’re not sure if she’d like what Keane had to say:

It’s important to name the public servants involved in this, along with [then-minister Alan] Tudge and his then-chief of staff Andrew Asten. They shouldn’t be able to hide their smug faces in anonymity: secretary Kathryn Campbell; deputy secretary Jonathan Hutson; chief legal counsel Annette Musolino; prolific departmental tweeter Hank Jongen. All deserve to be permanently linked to this. Their contribution to public service in Australia will be that they used personal information about someone who dared criticise the government. One wonders how much they’d enjoy having their private information splashed across The Canberra Times.

The piece elicited a curt “Thank you. Good heads up for tomorrow” from Campbell.

Still in Canberra, we note that we’re being used by The Australian as an example of the kind of thing a leftie-loony like ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr would read: “In his left-wing bubble paradise — where decriminalising hard drugs is OK — few publications outside The Saturday Paper and Crikey would pass muster.”

Clearly the Oz never quite got over the time in 2018 that Barr was caught slamming mainstream journalists in general and The Canberra Times in particular, saying he preferred “news from left-leaning Melbourne-based outlets, The Saturday Paper and Crikey“.