Elon Musk Reveals That He Has Asperger’s in SNL Monologue

Elon Musk revealed that he has Asperger syndrome during his monologue while hosting Saturday Night Live. 

The Tesla CEO took to the stage at 30 Rock on May 8 for his much-anticipated hosting duty. Musk opened the show with the revelation of his condition.   

“I’m actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL — or at least the first person to admit it,” said the billionaire. “So, I won’t make a lot of eye contact with the cast tonight.”

Asperger syndrome is a rare neuro-developmental disorder that impacts a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others. It’s characterized by nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors. 

But Musks claim that he’s the first with Asperger’s to host the sketch show is a bit misleading. Former SNL cast member Dan Ackroyd also has the condition and hosted the show in 2003, according to The Daily Beast. That said, Musk’s revelation is still pretty cool, and shows the long strides we have made in destigmatizing neuro-atypical conditions.  

It also helped that Musk took a light-hearted approach to the subject.

“But don’t worry, I’m pretty good at running ‘human’ in emulation mode,” he joked. 

Overall, his monologue was solid, fairly charming (well, as charming as a problematic billionaire can be), and delivered on the laughs. At one point he brought out his mother to joke about Dogecoin and inadvertently tanked the price of the cryptocurrency. 

But he did get some backlash. Marlow Stern, writing for The Daily Beast, criticized Musk’s monologue as “deceptive and deeply awkward.”

More specifically, the writer took issue with Musk blaming his silly tweets and funny comments for the critiques of him. 

“For what it’s worth, it’s a distortion for Musk to say that people have mostly taken issue with his silly pot-smoking and sex jokes on Twitter,” Stern said, “rather, people have been critical of his anti-union tweets, the time he accused a hero diver of being a ‘pedo guy,’ mocking gender pronouns, and his aforementioned COVID misinformation-spreading.”

Let’s be honest: Stern’s got a solid point. Musk is a complex person. While he undoubtedly does a lot of very cool things and is at the vanguard of the most innovative technologies out there, he’s also incredibly problematic. No amount of joking on SNL can whitewash that.

You can watch the entirety of his SNL monologue below:

READ MORE: Elon Musk Reveals Asperger Syndrome Diagnosis on ‘Saturday Night Live’ [Variety]

More on Elon’s SNL appearance: Elon Musk on SNL: Reactions

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