Every person is a bit of a dick in one way or another. And people who have done high impact things in their lives will have greater opportunity to have made mistakes, no matter how good, ethical, or smart they are.

Most elite celebrities, politicians, and businesspeople simply put a lot of effort into pretending to be perfect, mostly out of vanity. They lie, hide, avoid all controversy, and employ teams of PR people to craft their public image using publicity stunts, bribery, philanthropy and all kinds of tricks that have been proven to work for thousands of years.

If Elon Musk followed the elite PR playbook, a lot more people would like him, probably a lot of the haters in this thread. Which says more about them than him.

Elon Musk offers a glimpse of what very powerful/successful, and basically good, people are often really like.

I'd argue that:

1. Anyone who completely denigrates and dismisses Elon Musk is a blind hater.

2. Anyone who claims he's without flaws is a fanboy with rose colored glasses on.

3. And only people who agree with his own assessment of himself, that he's a "mixed bag", are assessing him clearly and with intellectual honesty.