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Comment by nkkollaw | Hacker News Reader

“Pedo guy was a common insult used in South Africa when I was growing up,” Mr Musk said in a court filing as part of a failed request to have the case thrown out of court. "It is synonymous with ‘creepy old man’ and is used to insult a person’s appearance and demeanour, not accuse a person of paedophilia.”

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"You don't call retarded people retards. It's bad taste. You call your friends retards when they're acting retarded." - Michael Scott

Really? That's the defense he's going with? Just admit your mistakes, apologize, settle out of court and move on. Don't double down on the stupid.

Isn't a problem with this defence that it leaves him totally open to being referred to in the same way? After all, if it's just a casual insult..

That actually seems like a good defense if true.

If he just said 'pedo guy' once, maybe plausible. Except then he started tweeting more, saying that he'd bet on it being true. Then even used the fact that he hadn't been sued yet as implicit proof that it was true. I mean, if Elon thinks that(and tbh it's not 100% ridiculous to suspect), fine, go your own path. But trying to backpedal it into something it's not later seems somehow more despicable.

You know what was used “as a common insult when I was growing up” for black people? And then to hear “oh, she doesn’t mean anything by it, it’s just how she was raised.”

Nope, doesn’t let old racists off the hook, nor does it for Musk. Both examples need to quit with excuses and clean up their act.

The N word is a great example of an insult for insult sake. If anything comparing ”pedo guy“ to the N word helps Elon’s case by implying it was just a generic insult.

You can't even write the insult you're talking about, how can you compare with "pedo guy", who no one has a problem writing anywhere?

Obviously they're a bad comparison.

Speaking for myself, the reason I’m not even writing the N word when discussing it isn’t because it’s more severe. The other term is so loaded that, in the early 2000s close to where I lived in the UK, a gang set about the house of a paediatrician because the mob didn’t know the difference — if the N word is more severe than that, then please let me know so that I can apologise for underestimating its effect.

Rather, the reason I’m avoiding the N word is that it targets an innocent group who are essentially my equals and who are only poor because Western Europe happened to go through the industrial revolution first (someone has to be first) and thus conquered around a third of the planet between them.

What's the insult you're referring to? Can you write it here..?

Cool, then you can see that they're not comparable.

I would have thought kaffir would be far more common to hear in Musk's childhood S Africa than nigger.

All three strike me as lowest possible level insult for which there is no justification. Thankfully most of the world's moved on a bit in the last 30 years...

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