I want to understand how Musk calling someone a pedo (on record) is any better on an ethical scale than RMS stating his controversial opinion about a case? You can’t give an absolute clean chit to one guy and just cancel out the other.

To be specific here, RMS was more of a victim of cancel culture than political correctness, so you’re right. Any attempts to absolve or defend Musk while trying to trash RMS can only come from the corporate IT world which directly benefits from RMS getting trashed.