I refuse to blame Alanis Morissette. At this point, it’s too much of a cliché: Everyone blames her for our confusion. But look, she tried her best. And she’s Canadian, so we gotta grade on a curve anyway. But I say she gets a pass, cuz “Jagged Little Pill” is an all-time album.
Okay, I concede: She certainly contributed a wee bit to the problem.
It’s not irony when it rains on your wedding day. It’s just a bummer. (Don’t tell me it’s good luck!) It’s not irony to have 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife. It just means you’ll be eating your porkchops and green beans with a fork and spoon.
More often than not, we use “ironic” when we really mean “coincidence” (often an annoying coincidence).
When you bump into your neighbor at the local grocery store and she exclaims, “Oh, isn't this ironic!” it really isn’t. You just means you need to start shopping at a different grocery store.
Irony refers to the diametric opposite of the anticipated result.
I’ll give you an example: If a Jewish guy goes to a German restaurant and gets gas, that would be a horrible historical coincidence. But if a German guy went to a Jewish restaurant and gets gas, well, that would be about the most perfect example of historical irony imaginable.
The late, great George Carlin, in his debut (and best) book, “Brain Droppings,” defined irony thusly:
Darryl Stingley, the pro football player, was paralyzed after a brutal hit by Jack Tatum. Now Darryl Stingley’s son plays football, and if the son should become paralyzed while playing, it will not be ironic. It will be coincidental. If Darryl Stingley’s son paralyzes someone else, that will be closer to ironic. If he paralyzes Jack Tatum’s son, that will be precisely ironic.
And now that we’ve moved beyond the semantics (hey, I don’t have an anti-semantic bone in my body!), let’s move on to the star of our show, Mr. Elon Musk.
He’s one of those guys who’s not gonna receive his due until after he’s gone. He’s moving too fast and breaking too much stuff. Guys like him make insecure people feel even more insecure. That’s his curse — and why he’ll never win over all his critics: They literally don’t have it in them.
But Elon Musk was the answer to every liberal’s fever dream: “Please, my spirit-animal-nondenominational-woowoo, send me a great Green Entrepreneur! Someone who will invent a wicked-cool electric car. One that’s fast, cool, and girls won’t laugh at.”
And Musk pulled it off. He actually pulled it off! It’s kind of crazy how we totally take it for granted now, but until just a few decades ago, the electric car market didn’t exist. All the liberal tears, prayers, and burnt offerings failed.
They needed an Elon Musk.
Then, lo and behold, he arrives! He’s here! And he wants to do every crazy liberal dream you’ve ever had: Electric cars everywhere! Solar panels everywhere! Reusable, energy-efficient rockets! Uniting the world by providing Internet to the whole planet!
It’s everything they could’ve ever hoped for.
Plus, he’s rich! Imagine what he could do if he wanted to donate to their political causes! Surely this Green Angel would use his green-gold to usher in a Golden Age.
Before we get to all that, cry the liberals, how ‘bout more taxes, regulations, censoring speech, more illegal immigration, defunding the police, partial-birth abortion, arguing over pronouns, repealing the Second Amendment, pro-Hamas, packing the Supreme Court… hey, why aren’t you walking lockstep with me, you no good bastard son of a South African white supremacist who owned an emerald mine?!
Related: The Art of the Smear: Head of NASA and Top Dems Demand Investigation of Elon Musk
Ladies and gentlemen, this is truly the new Webster Definition of irony: The liberals inexplicably antagonized the greatest green entrepreneur who ever lived, and he got so annoyed, he took all that money the liberals gave him and used it to fund the candidate, the movement, and the social media app of the Republican Party.
That’s irony with a big, sloppy chef’s kiss.
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