From "Jeff Bezos, Javanka Have Yet to Score Invites to ‘Billionaire Bunker’ Club" (NY Magazine).
Well, this is an old old story, the story of old money socially shunning the newly rich. Those upstarts.
August 20, 2026
"Unfortunately for [Jeff] Bezos and [Lauren] Sánchez, the very fact of their obscene wealth and fame may be keeping the gates of membership closed to them thus far."
"As the [Wall Street] Journal reported, 'As with many private country clubs, admission often comes down to hitting it off with existing members.... In fact, too much wealth or notoriety has become a deterrent, as wealthy new applicants arriving in Florida are learning.' In fact, 'old guard' members are apparently so turned off by what they see as 'billionaire interlopers' that they are said to be 'mounting a last stand' and refusing to 'offer membership to just anyone who has struck it rich.'... Bezos and Sánchez are not the only deep-pocketed duo living on the Miami island — known as the 'Billionaire Bunker' — who have yet to score an invite for membership. There’s also Mark Zuckerberg, who dropped $170 million on a waterfront estate last year; the Qatari royal family; and one Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump...."
From "Jeff Bezos, Javanka Have Yet to Score Invites to ‘Billionaire Bunker’ Club" (NY Magazine).
From "Jeff Bezos, Javanka Have Yet to Score Invites to ‘Billionaire Bunker’ Club" (NY Magazine).
Posts
43 comments:
Diversity (i.e. color judgment, class bigotry). #HateLovesAbortion
As has been said many times:
Oh no!
Anyway...
They could just build their own country club. Think how much they would save on membership fees.
A puzzling question of history: Why do billionaires get married?
They should just buy up a tract of ‘old guard’ mansions, tear them down, and put in a new and better course. What do they care what the peasants think?
Excluding Jews is an old story. But Arabs? Semites?
Awww, I suppose this worries them.
Not too concerned about rising sea levels...
Shelby Foote, who grew up in the Missippi Delta, said he didn't know anti-Semitism existed until he visited the big city (Memphis). In Greeneville his Jewish grandpa was not a mere member of the country club, he was a founder.
That said, I adhere to the Groucho philosophy of shunning any club that would have me as a member.
I've never liked Zuckerberg. Nothing to do with his Jewish name.
My guess is he is not a practicing Jew. Don't care one way or the other - the guy gives me the creeps. I look at him as uncharitable. and he has a Chinese wife. Trust issues.
Trust issues bigly - added to his massive aid to get Crook Joe elected and he complied willingly to the democrat party crime syndicate demands for censorship.
I know local leftists who refuse to shop at Whole Foods JUST because Bezos-owns the Washington Post - and the WaPoo didn't dutifully endorse Kamala-Walz. The WaPoo didn't endorse anyone - but that's not good enough for the cult base.
Why would anyone with an IQ above 130 endorse Kamala Walz? Get real.
Well I’m pretty sure Bezos, Zuckerberg, et al have done bit of shunning themselves…. I’m sure they understand lol.
Agree with bagoh -they can build their own clubs.
I'd also add - is this even real? The media is almost completely worthless.
I would guess though that the same clubs that rejected The Kushners would probably reject Mrs Kushner’s father too. But at least they have other courses that they can play at - including MAL close by. Plus some of the best courses around the world.
When the TV goes on here in Vegas, if you don’t change channels quickly, you will see advertisements for their courses, and a video starring her middle brother about the new one that they are building on the coast in, I believe, Scotland. Don’t play golf, but the scenery is spectacular. And they believe that it could be one of the best in the world. Maybe a little far from Miami, but she, at least, has a piece of it.
I know it's old news and we shouldn't be dredging it up ( note the typical Democrat ploy to be used when one doesn't wish to discuss somehting) but didn't Zuckerberg's company allow FBI agents (Elvis Chan) to embed in his headquarters in San Francisco? Didn't he allow his company to ban a former president of the United States from using his social media platform? That seems rather exclusionary doncha think?
Good for the goose etc.
Hillcrest Country Club was founded in 1920 by a bunch of Hollywood big shots who were excluded from the elite clubs for being Jews.
Our current timeline keeps looking more and more like the Guilded Age.
It's amusing to see old money look down on new money. Invariably, old money was passed down and required no special achievement beyond being born, while new money is the result and intelligence and hard work. I find new money to be more impressive, albeit, vulgar, un-cultured and "not our kind, dear."
Can't they just build their own golf course?
Poach every single employee from the snooty course so it can't continue to operate.
I believe Rush Limbaugh had a rough time being 'accepted' in Palm Beach. Was probably not invited to The Social Events, but I also suspect he didn't care a whit about any of that. He was his own man, with his own tastes, and his own friends. He was the 'upstart' long before there was a new billionaire class.
And yes, others have had to create their own clubs. I know where I grew up in Detroit, the old guard, the WASPY blue bloods of that area, did not allow Jews into their country clubs. Hell...in the early 60s we couldn't even join our local swim club because of their 'no Jews allowed' policy. But well before then, Jews had already established their own country clubs around metro Detroit and those are now long-standing, highly regarded clubs. And yes- they are open to anyone (who is willing to pay the fees of a nice country club).
Lesson: If the entrenched society will not invite you to their party, host your own party. And keep hosting them until the people start to come around. And they will.
*"Well, this is an old old story, the story of old money socially shunning the newly rich. Those upstarts."
Al Czervik vs. Judge Smales in Caddyshack is a classic portrayal.
The Standard Club in Chicago was formed by Jewish businessmen after WWI because the existing clubs would not admit them. I suspect this was a trend in many cities.
Burning Tree Country Club in Greenwich, CT was founded by new-money ethnic types who were excluded from the old-money clubs.
I'm old enough to remember that we still have Democratic Senators from Connecticut that belong to all-white country clubs.
The Javanka story is funny. Kushner turning his attention to a leaky sewage treatment problem is a great illustration of how class tiers work.
The hoity-toity will see it as making Kushner deal with a literally sh*tty problem as the price of acceptance for membership, something they can twitter about forever, as a way of putting him in his place. The working class would admire it as an eminently practical solution to a problem that the hoity-toity would like to pretend doesn't exist, as they cast their noses in the air for reasons that are immediately understood and roasted by the working class. They value competency.
It's almost exactly the same theme as Donald Trump solving the ice skating rink problem in NYC.
The problem with the super rich is that they throw off the vibe the rich likes to give... that they are just like regular people.
Aggie--Sheldon Whitehouse is a US Senator from Rhode Island.
Connecticut's senators are major douches, but are not old money. And Blumenthal is Jewish.
I stand corrected, thank you. A Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, in a country club that doesn't allow blacks, which he won't disavow or renounce.
This one really surprised me Althouse.
When I saw the Groucho Marx image, I was sure that you were going for the, "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member". line.
Pretty good thought, that is:
Reminds me of the problem celebrities had had buying expensive coop apartments in Manhattan.
They can always eat some worms. It makes for a gay song and dance around ye olde campfire.
Nice juxtaposition. Are Bezos and Sanchez our royal family, or is Javanka?
Whitehouse is 19th century railroad money. Union Pacific and Central Pacific. It's surprising the money didn't run out by now. They must have married into more.
Country clubs are there so insurance salesmen can dunn the local gentry.
Being married lets you escape one level of estate taxes. Also increases the gift tax exclusion.
One of the things Trump is hated for in Palm Beach is making the clubs to integrate back in the 80s.
I would think you wouldn't offer the membership because you don't want tabloid photographers sneaking around in the bushes. Nothing against the people not being invited, but that would be annoying and invasive.
Miles Vorkosigan also expert in plumbing among others as Pym can attest
It is possible that it has nothing to do with wealth, and a lot to do with the personalities and attitudes of those involved....on both sides.
Simple solution: build your own club.
"Their obscene wealth and fame." Is there a defined threshold to ensure that one's wealth and fame have not become obscene? Might it be "no greater than the wealth and fame possessed by Bess Levin plus five percent"?
Twenty-five or thirty years ago, when Bill Gates was still the richest man in the world with a mere $100 billion to his name, I recall he had long nursed an unrequited desire to join the Augusta National golf club, home of the Masters.
This secretive club has no application process; membership is by invitation only. Asking to join, or even letting it be indirectly known one is interested, is a serious breach of etiquette and normally torpedoes an applicant's chances.
Gates let it slip in a magazine interview that it he wished to join, which was a grave mistake. He was already in bad odor with them due to a shitty golf game and a suspicion of Yankee robber barons among the good ol' Georgia boys who comprise the bulk of the membership. It wasn't even a matter of money; obviously Gates could have bought the place outright a thousand times over, and the initiation and membership fees are actually rather modest for the prestige it enjoys.
Something like a decade after he first floated the idea, they finally relented and let him join. He would probably still be pining for the green jacket if not for the influence of his friend and longtime club member Warren Buffett.
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