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Comment by kentm | Hacker News Reader

Notwithstanding the other myriad of reasons to not like Elon Musk (of which there are many)…

You’re equivocating a childish insult with insisting that a person is a pedophile and hiring a private investigator to prove so and then writing scathing emails to reporters because they refuse to repeat claims uncritically. This is an appalling failing of morality on your part.

I’m frankly not inclined to dive into why I, previously a big fan of Elon Musk, find him personally repugnant because I expect you to apply the same standards to everything he does. That doesn’t take away from SpaceX, but we shouldn’t overlook his failings just because rockets are cool.

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> hiring a private investigator

Only after being sued. When you sue someone, they're going to try to defend themselves.

Both of them should have just shrugged it off.

> then writing scathing emails

doesn't make someone evil. The whole incident was childish from both sides, but nobody was actually hurt.

He hired the private investigator before he was sued.

You left out the part where he claimed a person was a pedophile and when asked if it was just an insult basically said “no I really think he’s a pedophile”, and started stating made up bullshit about child brides as fact. He only backtracked when he was sued. That is NOT the same as just throwing insults.

More nuance:

"Mr. Musk made these statements based on reports he received from a private investigator he hired to investigate Mr. Unsworth in preparation for the litigation that Mr. Unsworth had already threatened. Unbeknownst to Mr. Musk, the investigator’s reports were fabricated, and the investigator himself turned out to be a convicted felon who had gone to prison for fraud."

"Mr. Musk’s tweet was the culmination of an argument between two people that was punctuated by insults—not a factual accusation of the crime of pedophilia. The firm also demonstrated that Mr. Unsworth had not suffered any injury."

There's more: https://www.quinnemanuel.com/the-firm/our-notable-victories/...

Childish behavior - sure (on both sides). Anybody hurt - no.

This level of defense seems highly inappropriate when you consider that the the unimpressive billionaire doesn't stoop down to this level, has a functional moon lander, ISRU technology that can manufacture solar panels on the moon and a long term plan for getting rid of SLS while the more impressive billionaire is struggling to get to orbit.

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