• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 2, 2023

Say what you want about Elon Musk -- he's got balls. They just happen to be canine balls and nearly a year since he took the helm of Twitter, he's wagging them in the face of the media.

His "dogs rock" and "what's your fav tea?" posts this morning are not the most sophomoric ones he's made on the platform, but as we approach his one-year anniversary, it's pretty clear that he doesn't want anyone to take him -- or his management team at X Corp. -- all that seriously.

And the media is fulfilling his wish. It was evident in the coverage X Corp. CEO Linda Yaccarino got when she spoke at the Code conference last week.

"Linda Yaccarino was set up to fail," reads the headline of an article on The Verge, which goes on to describe her "disastrous performance" as almost preordained.

It "was the weirdest session I've ever seen," wrote Vox's Peter Kafka, who went on to note: "The reason any of this matters is that Yaccarino, a veteran TV advertising executive, long accustomed to making persuasive pitches on behalf of her clients, is now trying to do the same for Musk. But convincing the world that Elon Musk — or at least the version of Elon Musk who owns Twitter — is someone they should invest in, financially, emotionally, and otherwise, is a much different task than getting them to buy NBC’s fall TV lineup. And Wednesday’s appearance suggests just how different that task will be. In Yaccarino’s previous life, for starters, she’s never had to represent someone who is feuding with a Jewish anti-hate group."

When I queried Google News about coverage of Yaccarino's keynote interview at Code, it generated 2,310 results. I don't have the analytics to tell you exactly what all the sentiment was, but query it yourself and look at the headlines and blurbs Google returns for you.

"Dumpster Fire," "car-crash," "tense interview," and "wild interview" were among the headlines, and that was just on the first results page.

But this morning's edition of The Wrap may have summed it up best with its column headlined: "Linda Yaccarino's Train Wreck Code Conference Interview Proves She Isn't Running X, Experts Say."

I don't know what Yaccarino's deal is with Musk, but I hope it's a good one, because the impact on her reputation so far seems more like one of Musk's meme jokes, not something to be taken seriously.

I mean, Musk can survive that kind of ridicule, although I don't know if X Corp. can -- much less its CEO -- can.