Vivian Wilson, cover girl

Vivian Wilson is interviewed in Teen Vogue. She is not a nepo baby — she’s been cut off from the sperm donor, Elon Musk, who contributed in a minimal way to her birth.

Wilson entered the public consciousness because of her father, but not for typical nepo baby reasons. (Before you ask, Wilson says she’s been financially independent from her father since she came out as trans in 2020, so you can stop sending her Venmo requests for thousands of dollars, something she says has happened before.) At the time, she was trying to disconnect herself from Musk, eventually writing in a 2022 petition to legally change her name that she doesn’t “wish to be related to [her] biological father in any way, shape or form.” Though she’d never publicly spoken about Musk before then, her attempt to distance herself from him is what ultimately drew her into the public eye.

“I have a sharp tongue,” Wilson tells Teen Vogue in her second-ever published interview. “When you spend all of COVID [lockdown] in online communities of queer people who are constantly getting into drama and trying to read each other, [you] learn how to make a response very quickly, and you learn how to be funny and snap at someone else in a comedic way…. Getting into fights with other queer teenagers — that’s how you learn how to be quick and witty.” Much like her father, Wilson is extremely online; unlike her father, she’s really good at it.

In my personal experience, this holds up: the gay and trans people I’ve known are all great conversationalists with a wicked sense of humor. She definitely did not inherit that from her terrible father.

I’m sympatico with her politics, and not Musk’s.

TV: Isaacson described your politics as “radical Marxism” in the book. Do you consider yourself a Marxist? VW: I’m a leftist, not a Marxist. I describe myself by the things that I personally believe in and the things that I feel are pretty common sense, if you think about it for more than two seconds. I believe in [universal basic income]. I believe in free health care. I believe food, shelter, and water are human rights. I believe that wealth inequality is one of the biggest problems of the United States right now, especially of our generation. I feel like workers should be fairly compensated for the work that they do, and I don’t feel like wealth should be hoarded by these mega-billionaires who are the top 1%, who only have their own interests at heart. I’ve met some of these billionaires — they’re not very good people. I don’t think any of them are.

I don’t think that’s an unusual perspective, and I think most Americans would agree with that, if they weren’t poisoned by the lie that those goals are being stolen from them by immigrants and gay/trans people. It’s the position that all Democrats should take, except for the unfortunate fact that that party is led by people seduced by money and power.