"Not so long ago, members of high society were fixated on trying to low-key their way out of the perils of income inequality."

"Minimalism and quiet luxury were in vogue. But in the wake of President Trump’s second election, it’s the luxe life at full volume. He gilded the White House, turning it into a rococo Liberace lair. Swaggy and braggy have replaced stealth wealth. Flaunting it is in. For women, that means sequins, diamonds, tight silhouettes and big hair....  And now there are the Bezos-Sánchez nuptials.... Ms. Sánchez brings to mind another unlikely Vogue subject: Ivana Trump. Ms. Wintour gave her a cover in 1990, shortly before her divorce from Mr. Trump, after worrying, as I reported in a biography of Ms. Wintour, that she was 'too tacky.'... As much as those with more understated taste might turn up their noses at the crassness of the Bezos-Sánchez wedding’s display, tacky is very clearly carrying the day. Maybe hating on tacky oligarchs is itself just elitist...."

Writes Amy Odell, in "The Bezos-Sánchez Wedding and the Triumph of Tacky" (NYT).

I'm seeing a lot about the Jeff Bezos wedding, but how do we know he's really getting married?

There are motivations to put on this big show that are separate from any reasons to enter a marriage in the legal sense.

Consider this: "The embarrassing truth Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez haven't revealed about their $20m 'wedding'" (Daily Mail)(reporting that a Venetian official supposedly said no registrar had been appointed for the ceremony).

And here's the NYT: "What to Know About the Wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez/The second marriage for both is taking place in Venice, Italy, under a shroud of secrecy and amid a swarm of speculation": "Italy has a variety of rules surrounding marriage rites, which can involve religious ceremonies, often performed in Roman Catholic churches. The Sánchez-Bezos wedding, however, will be nondenominational, likely of a ceremonial nature."

What I want to know about that couple is why, with all their money, they have, both of them, engineered their face into that post-human fright mask?

Why would the wedding be any less fake than the faces?

And here's Tina Brown: 

The Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sánchez (circa $56 million) Venice-sinking nuptials, tying up every tender on the Grand Canal (and 90 private jets expected), is the big beautiful buster bomb of high-net-worth exhibitionism. Now that the 55- year-old bride Sánchez has proved that landing the fourth richest man in the world requires the permanent display of breasts like genetically modified grapefruit and behemoth buttocks bursting from a leopard-print thong bikini, she’s exuberantly and unapologetically shown that the route to power and glory for women hasn't changed since the first Venetian Republic.

*** 

Sailin’ round the world in a dirty gondola/Oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!

Let's read a WaPo columnist who hasn't quit in disgust after Jeff Bezos announced he was taking the opinion pages in a right-wing direction..

Here's Bezos's ballsy statement (on X).

Who has quit? You can read "Jeff Bezos' revamp of 'Washington Post' opinions leads editor to quit" (NPR).

I'm most interested in who is staying, and how they might be changing. In that light, I'm reading this, from Philip Bump, published this morning: "The shift in the politics of young voters isn’t quite what it seems/The idea that MAGA-enthused bros swung the young male vote doesn’t really capture what happened."

That's a free-access link and it's very heavy on poll data. I won't attempt to summarize that other than to quote Bump's bottom line: "The problem for Democrats, then, was probably fewer White dudes listening to Joe Rogan than it was Black and Hispanic voters not voting like their parents."

Bezos should hire some good word editors, because that sentence is miswritten, probably by someone bamboozled by the "less"/"fewer" distinction. I think it needs to be something more like: "The problem for Democrats, then, was probably less about White dudes listening to Joe Rogan and more about Black and Hispanic voters not voting like their parents." 

I'm not saying I've turned that into a well-written sentence, only that I've made it comprehensible (and I hope it means what Bump meant to say).

"I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom..."

"... in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical; it drives creativity, invention and prosperity." 

Said Jeff Bezos, quoted in "Washington Post Opinion Editor Exits as Bezos Steers Pages in New Direction/Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Post, said that the newspaper’s opinion section would focus on 'personal liberties and free markets'" (NYT).

"I suggested to him [David Shipley, the opinion editor] if the answer wasn’t 'hell yes,' then it had to be 'no.'"

Famous faces at the inauguration church service: Joe Rogan, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos...

 

Joe's expression:

I look forward to hearing him talk about how he felt.

"Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon..."

"... and had already scheduled another column — this one a satire — for publication. The only bias was against repetition."

Said David Shipley, The Washington Post opinions editor, quoted in "Washington Post Cartoonist Quits After Jeff Bezos Cartoon Is Killed/The cartoon, by Ann Telnaes, depicted the owner of The Post, Jeff Bezos, and other billionaires genuflecting toward a statue of President-elect Donald Trump" (NYT).

Here's the cartoon:

Vote:

What do you think — was it too edgy for them or simply too boring?

WaPo censored the anti-Bezos message

I believe Shipley — it was rejected as redundant of 2 recent columns

Not every cartoon is selected for publication and this one is just obvious and not good enough

Who can know the mind of WaPo?

 

pollcode.com free polls

Let's read WaPo's "note from our owner": "The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media."

I need to force myself to read this — by Jeff Bezos. He kept WaPo from publishing an explicit endorsement of Kamala Harris, who is all too obviously implicitly endorsed by WaPo every day. So I'll live-blog my reading of it. Let's go....

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.

He's calling it a "profession," so it should have a system of ethical principles that must be followed, even if the polls don't go your way. 

"The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election."

 "We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates. As our Editorial Board wrote in 1960: 'The Washington Post has not "endorsed" either candidate in the presidential campaign. That is in our tradition and accords with our action in five of the last six elections. The unusual circumstances of the 1952 election led us to make an exception when we endorsed General Eisenhower prior to the nominating conventions and reiterated our endorsement during the campaign. In the light of hindsight we retain the view that the arguments for his nomination and election were compelling. But hindsight also has convinced us that it might have been wiser for an independent newspaper in the Nation's Capital to have avoided formal endorsement.'" 

That's "A note from the publisher," William Lewis, of The Washington Post, "On political endorsement."

Great! I prefer this policy, especially if it is based on a real commitment to professional, high-level journalism. There's a crazy amount of bias, which drives me away from whatever they are hoping to push. My sympathy for Donald Trump, the target of so much unfairness, is a bit absurd. I'm supposed to hate him? You idiots have made me love him. But somehow now you are drawing the line. What game is this?

I'm going to have to give my "things not believed" tag to this WaPo story about why Alexa said "I cannot provide content that promotes a specific political party or a specific candidate"...

...  when it was asked "Why should I vote for Donald Trump," but, when asked "Why should I vote for Kamala Harris," said...

"While there are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris, the most significant may be that she is a strong candidate with a proven track record of accomplishments. As the first female vice president, Harris has already broken down major gender barriers and her career in politics has been characterized by a commitment to progressive ideals and a focus on helping disenchanted communities."

I'm reading "Amazon’s Alexa favored Harris over Trump after AI upgrade/Leaked documents show that a viral incident in which the voice assistant appeared to favor Kamala Harris over Donald Trump was related to artificial intelligence software added to improve accuracy" (WaPo).

I made that a gift link so you can double check my skepticism. Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence software added late last year to improve Alexa’s accuracy instead helped land Amazon at the center of an embarrassing political dust-up, with Trump spokesman Steven Cheung accusing the company in a post on X of “BIG TECH ELECTION INTERFERENCE!”

It's just an "embarrassing" "dust-up." Nothing big, deep, and nefarious.

Amazon said Alexa’s behavior was “an error that was quickly fixed.”

Oh, well then. Just "an error." And "quickly fixed." Yes, I believe it was a mistake to make it so obvious and easily demonstrated and shared and that, on notice, Amazon quickly fixed it. But I remain suspicious that Alexa contains bias in favor of the Democratic Party. 

Jeff Bezo's parents recently moved to Miami, and he wants to be near them, so he's leaving Seattle and moving to Miami.

That's what it says here:

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jeff Bezos (@jeffbezos)

"I think Bezos came in thinking he understood technology in a way that old-fashioned newspaper people don’t."

"He discovered that technology doesn’t really work to overcome the structural problems of the print industry. Or if it does, it works for everybody else, too.... This generation of tech billionaires has probably reduced its appetite for print publications, and there’s a growing scepticism of their ability to turn the business around in the face of fundamental trends."

Said Eli Noam, tele-information professor (and author of "Who Owns the World’s Media?"), quoted in "Bezos and Washington Post show honeymoon is over for tech mogul media owners" (The Guardian).

"The Dutch like to say, 'Acting normal is crazy enough.' And we think that rich people are not acting normal."

"Here in Holland, we don’t believe that everybody can be rich the way people do in America, where the sky is the limit. We think 'Be average.' That’s good enough...”

Said Ellen Verkoelen, "a City Council member and Rotterdam leader of the 50Plus Party, which works on behalf of pensioners," quoted in "The Country That Wants to ‘Be Average’ vs. Jeff Bezos and His $500 Million Yacht/Why did Rotterdam stand between one of the world’s richest men and his boat? The furious response is rooted in Dutch values" (NYT).

“When I was about 11 years old, we had an American boy stay with us for a week, an exchange student,” she recalled. “And my mother told him, just make your own sandwich like you do in America. Instead of putting one sausage on his bread, he put on five. My mother was too polite to say anything to him, but to me she said in Dutch, ‘We will never eat like that in this house.’” 

At school, Ms. Verkoelen learned from friends that the American children in their homes all ate the same way. They were stunned and a little jealous. At the time, it was said in the Netherlands that putting both butter and cheese on your bread was “the devil’s sandwich.”...

"Much has already been said, tweeted and complained about The Washington Post’s tagline, 'Democracy Dies in Darkness'.... It’s harsh, foreboding and alarming."

"But it’s also true. When people don’t know the facts, a government of the people is impossible. So then why do the Post and many other legacy news publishers leave so many Americans in the dark? See, if you want to read a Post article, including this one about how they came up with the tagline back in 2017, you might be blocked by a paywall.... I often refer to people who don’t pay for news as 'passive' news consumers.... [T]hey’re... consuming the news that comes to them through their daily scrolling of social media feeds, email inboxes and conversations with people they trust.... Passive consumers may have faith that good, accurate news about the world and their own communities will somehow find them. But with few exceptions, they’re wrong about that. Increasingly, the fact-based news that’s necessary for a pro-democracy citizenry is behind a paywall. On social media, passive consumers are more likely to see propaganda that capitalizes on the ways information is distributed there. Biased algorithms reward salacious and emotionally charged content — often favoring right-leaning messaging that is outright false....With a major political party upholding the Big Lie and sowing mistrust in our incredibly secure elections, we have no more time to waste on out-of-touch debates. News organizations must instead seize the opportunity before us to once again serve as the bulwark of our democracy and get factual information to the people...."

Writes Tara McGowan in "Democracy dies behind a paywall/Paywalls bolster news organizations’ bottom lines, but leave Americans in the dark. As a public service, let everyone read election stories for free" (Poynter).

There are more kinds of passivity — and propaganda — than McGowan acknowledges, and she's — ironically — doing propaganda of her own. But, yeah, paywalls are gumming up the works.

In case you're wondering what was in that 2017 WaPo article about its ominous slogan, I crossed the paywall for you:

"Eighty looters ransacked a Nordstrom store in California's Bay Area on Saturday night, injuring at least three employees in a raid that lasted less than a minute."

"The large group,wearing ski masks and carrying crowbars, rushed the Walnut Creek store, stole an undetermined amount of merchandise and fled in their vehicles. During the theft, two Nordstrom workers were punched and kicked, while another was sprayed with pepper spray. All three individuals were treated for their injuries on scene.... The brazen robbery comes as Bay Area businesses reduce their hours due to a spate of brazen shoplifting incidents. Locals are also slamming woke San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin over his failure to prosecute thefts. San Francisco has also seen an uptick in property theft since a local law downgraded the theft of property less than $950 in value from a felony charge to a misdemeanor in 2014. Store staff and security now tend not to pursue or stop thieves who have taken anything worth less than $1,000.... Although most of the raiders managed to flee, police managed to arrest at least two of the suspected looters...." 

The Daily Mail reports. 

ADDED: Jeff Bezos looks on warily....

Separated at birth?

I lived through the "space race" of the 1960s, and I would never have thought that I'd ever see a headline like this.

"Elon Musk is dominating the space race. Jeff Bezos is trying to fight back."

What kind of a world would I have imagined if I'd gotten the news from the future in the form of just that one headline? Answer: A much worse world than the one we've got.

"If you thought they were gazing at the earth, and feeling small, and reflecting on the trouble the planet and its inhabitants are in, they weren't. They were trying to catch skittles in their mouths."

A comment at a Facebook post by the NYT: "Watch Jeff Bezos and his fellow passengers on the Blue Origin flight play with Skittles and experiment with gravity on their trip to space on Tuesday."

What if you had to argue: The Skittles-catching foolery in space was the best form that philosophical inquiry could take under those circumstances.

 

If the "what if you had to argue" game seems alien, read my 2012 post "What if you had to argue that it's good for children to play 'What if you had argue?'"

Here's a similar game — I just thought it up — "What if you had to write a book about...?" To play the game, you don't have to write the book. You just sketch out ideas about how this subject could fill an entire book. Now: What if you had to write a book about candy and philosophy?

The Skittles company — the aptly named Mars — must be pleased to get this relatively jaunty moment in the limelight — lime, not green-apple — after the unpleasant associations that have come its way in recent years. See "Skittles can’t seem to escape political controversies" (WaPo 2016). 

First, there was the incidental presence of Skittles in the possession of Trayvon Martin (whose killing riveted the country in 2012). Then there was an absurd Donald Trump Jr. tweet "'If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you. Would you take a handful?'/This image says it all. Let's end the politically correct agenda that doesn't put America first."  

Much better product placement this time, Skittles.

The primary word of wisdom uttered in the Bezos-in-space extravaganza: "Woohoo."

The land-based announcers: "Wow!"

ADDED: Oh, what am I saying? Do I think that going into space ought to produce intellectual insight? I'd be like Prince Philip — as depicted in "The Crown" — meeting the astronauts:

 

Why would they say anything but "woohoo"? "Woohoo" is the insight to be acquired, and you know that before you go and whether you go or not, just as you know "wow" is the word for those watching from a stationary position.

"We were like, 'what if he bought it and ate it?'"

Said Kane Powell, author of the petition described in "Why Do People Want Jeff Bezos to Buy and Eat the Mona Lisa?/An online petition that started as a joke has gone viral, becoming a kind of digital performance art piece all of its own" (NYT). 

This article is illustrated with a photo of Jeff Bezos standing next to a portrait of Jeff Bezos. I would rather see closeups of Jeff Bezos and the Mona Lisa side by side, with Bezos looking as much like Lisa as possible. My slapdash effort:

 

Must I go back to the article? Powell's joke is explained pedantically. He's calling attention to "the absurdity of massive amounts of accumulated wealth." Oh, really? We're told the Mona Lisa isn't even up for sale, but if it were, what would it cost, and what would stop the buyer from destroying it? And what is it even made of? Tuna fish?

I swear I wrote that last question — a joke, based on the previous post — before I read this paragraph in the Mona Bezos article:

More recently, in 2019 at Art Basel Miami Beach, the New York artist David Datuna ate the banana in Maurizio Cattelan’s buzzy and high-priced “Comedian.” (He said that “it tasted like $120,000.”) Mr. Datuna also claimed that it wasn’t an act of vandalism, but a performance. “This is the first time where an artist eats the concept of another artist,” he said.

The tuna! 

"You see the Earth from space and it changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity. It’s one Earth."

Said Jeff Bezos before taking a trip into space, quoted in "Jeff Bezos will fly to space with his brother on Blue Origin rocket" (London Times).

Why go to get the insight if you've already got it? Have we forgotten how to live?

I want to do X so I can think a thought I am already saying. 

But you're already saying it. So it must be... I want to do X so that when I say the conventional thing that people who do X say, I will somehow really mean it, in a way that I don't mean yet.

But Jeff Bezos isn't going to have a changed relationship with Planet Earth and humanity! And I think he knows that. He's planning not to change, as shown by his recitation of the stock trip-to-space insight, spoken by endless astronauts through the ages. If he really believed in going to space to acquire insight, he'd wait until he'd gone to space and then tell us what wisdom seeped into his skull while he was up there floating in the tin can.

I suspect all those astronauts talking about their relationship to the planet have been bullshitting. I'm buying into the verisimilitude of the scene in "The Crown" where Prince Philip believed he would learn something profound from the astronauts, and the astronauts, it turned out...

... had nothing.