#Hope Elon Musk kills it on SNL and other commentary

Conservative: Hope Musk Kills It on SNL

“Elon Musk is too funny for ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ” snarks Damian Reilly at Spectator USA, but “I hope he kills it” with a “brutal” “comedic assault on political correctness.” The left insists “Musk, a billionaire who happens to be popular among people on the right, should not have been asked to host” this weekend. The “clearly nervous” producers told the cast they could skip “work on the episode, in case contact with a successful plutocrat might give the woke darlings anxiety issues.” But only “comedians free of fear of being canceled” are funny — which is why “SNL” hasn’t been in years. If the Tesla founder, “having conquered space travel, cryptocurrency, electric vehicles and capitalism,” decides “to conquer comedy, I wouldn’t bet against him.” Would you rather have as Earth’s richest man “a terminally bland corporate droid, a terrifying Middle Eastern dictator or a man who made the nose cone of his Starship rocket more pointy after watching Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘The Dictator’?”

Libertarian: ‘Equity’ Attack on Advanced Math

Since its “overriding concern is inequity,” the California Department of Education has gone to war on accelerated math classes; it will “prohibit any sorting until high school, keeping gifted kids in the same classrooms as their less mathematically inclined peers until at least grade nine,” laments Reason’s Robby Soave. The idea is that “math is really about language and culture and social justice, and no one is naturally better at it than anyone else”; in reality, math is “certainly not something that all kids are equally capable of learning and enjoying.” California is “sabotaging its brightest students.”

From the right: Enviros’ Latest Toll on Jobs

US Steel just canceled a $1.5 billion plan to make lightweight steel for vehicles in Braddock, Pa., reports Salena Zito at the Washington Examiner. Lost is the promise of “cleaner air” and more than 1,000 “good-paying jobs.” The company blamed a dragged-out delay from county officials and its own new focus on “sustainability.” The work will now likely go “someplace where bureaucrats are less beholden (or aligned with) environmentalists.” President Biden vows “to protect union jobs and bring back manufacturing,” as he claims a “decarbonizing economy will create millions of jobs. Here, however, it meant zero jobs created and perhaps many destroyed.”

Analyst: Two Bellwether Pennsylvania Votes

“Urban progressivism is on the ballot” in the May 18 primaries in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Charles F. McElwee relates at RealClearPolitics. Two-term Pittsburgh Mayor “Bill Peduto could lose reelection for not going far enough as a self-described progressive — particularly on public-safety issues,” while Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner “may lose a second term for going too far as a progressive prosecutor.” Backed by Democratic Socialists and the local SEIU, lead Peduto challenger Ed Gainey would “redirect” funding from police, while the mayor says most cops are “good people” and opposes (more) defunding. In Philly, “voters — especially in minority neighborhoods — are moving against Krasner, who blames societal forces for rising crime” and has softened prosecutions from shoplifting to gun crimes. Bronx-born challenger Carlos Vega wants “reform that doesn’t come at the expense of our safety.”

Economist: The Moral Case for Capitalism

At Modern Age, economist Alexander William Salter praises Donald Devine’s new book “The Enduring Tension: Capitalism and the Moral Order” as a “broad social-philosophical work that reevaluates the sources of capitalism’s legitimacy.” Devine notes that markets have ethical prerequisites, including “respect for the human individual,” “prohibitions on coercion, theft and fraud” and a “positive attitude toward work.” But, notes Salter, today’s “centralized political arrangements” attack all of that. Devine shows “the fault lines” in “the ongoing dispute between conservatives,” as some have a new “optimism” for “using state power to advance the common good,” particularly as our “cultural capital” declines — but in the end the question of capitalism’s social and political consequences is “an empirical one.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board