First, I must publicly thank David Leonhardt of The New York Times for indirectly giving me some terrific new plot ideas and storylines for my TV series Xtra Terresla now in development thanks to a couple of brave new world investors with herculean guts and vision.  They’ll also get co-executive producer status.

One of the episodes will be saddled in Texas where the main character modeled on chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk is determined to build his Terresla electric cars deep in the heart of oil and gas country, but the energy barons there would like nothing more than to string him up for manufacturing his impudent gasless autos right in their face.

Another episode will have the Musk character buying the largest social media platform and making it his private playground into which he may or may not allow a former president to play. The masterful Musketeer says he wants more “free speech” and less moderation on his platform, but critics are worried it will result in more bullying and layers of lewdness and misinformation.

My new hero, David, recently wrote about “The billionaires’ world” and how one of the richest among them was unhappy with the policies of a major social media platform so his highness, Sir Musk, is buying it for himself.   Some ask whether he’s going to run it or just play it on his fruitful fiddle.

Brave David hurled a stone at our modern-day amiable Goliath in the form of what economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman had shown a couple years ago--that the share of wealth owned by the richest 0.00001 percent of Americans had risen by a factor of nearly 10 since 1982.

While it represented only 18 households, they estimated that in 2020 each had an average net worth of $66 billion.  So, what’s wrong with that?

Well, according to David, the wealth of these 18 genteel Goliaths places vast power into the smooth hands of a small group of people.  And with that power they could try to shape politics, as the Koch family has done, or create a global charity, as Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates have done, or like Jeff Bezos, take over a national media organization.

Or they can buy a social media network when its policies annoy them, as Musk is  doing.  And now Twitter’s board has accepted his $44 billion bid for the company as Musk reportedly is using $21 billion of his own cash to pull off the deal.

Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” has suggested that he will be less aggressive than Twitter’s current management about blocking some content and will take the company private, giving him even tighter control.

The deal is the latest example of how extreme inequality is shaping American society, which is what my TV series is about.  It will show how a small number of very wealthy people end up making decisions that affect millions of others. That has always been true, of course, but wealth inequality in the U.S. economy has exceeded even the peaks of the 1920s.

The TV series also will flashback to those peaks, to the Gilded Age in the 19th-century when newspaper barons like William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer and the fictional Charles Foster Kane, who used their papers to pursue their personal agendas.

I expect episodes will reignite big questions about the influence of the billionaire class and the power of technology over our national discourse and how one individual today soon will wield enormous influence over politicians, celebrities, and the media, with the ability to platform and de-platform them at will.

This TV series concept is the property of TransMedia Group founder and CEO Tom Madden, an author whose latest book “WORDSHINE MAN” is now available on Amazon.  He’s also veteran TV producer, a former NBC Vice President and was Director of PR at ABC in New York. His blogs and YouTube videos can be seen at MaddenMischief. For information, contact Adrienne Mazzone, 561-908-1683; amazzone@transmediagroup.com.