He's admired by a lot of people who have gotten into trouble for saying bigoted things, who felt that there was nothing wrong with what they said or did (scroll up to see someone complaining that this is about "getting offended by some words and a picture") or refuse to acknowledge concepts like systemic racism...and think they were wronged. Victims of liberals, wokeness, "PC police" and so on.
They see him saying the same sort of things they did, and mistake the ability of an oligarch to escape consequences for almost anything...for "courage" and "free thinking."
Coverage of Musk has always been mixed and in main stream media often covered negatively.
Maybe in the more techy press it was mostly positive. But even then, go threw history here on HN. The idea that Tesla was scam and just about to go bankrupt was common wisdom and anybody who disagree got down-voted.
So the idea that positive press coverage is responsible is kind or ridiculous.
Its more like its the endless pro-vs-anti Musk wars that lead to this effect. And that happens in the media as it does on HN.
That's why he showed up alongside Tony Stark in Iron Man 2 and was treated like a god on an episode of Big Bang Theory.
The media, for the most part, treated him gently until the Thai cave incident when people started to catch onto the idea that this "quirky genius" might be an asshole.
There was lots of high profile reporting calling Musk dumb for believing in EV and landing rockets. Media constantly using burning Tesla to show how bad EV are. The most important car show in the world, as mainstream as it gets, shit on Tesla hard. Lots of interviews with former CEOs of car companies explaining how dumb Tesla was.
So did fucking Larry Ellison lol. Wasn’t that movie basically an ad for Oracle.