Some subjects are hard to resist even if you’re trying not to get caught up in the news cycle. Say, for example, two billionaires spending ridiculous amounts of money to travel to the edge of space, stay there for a minute or two, and then come back to earth.
It’s been a good example of how hard the mainstream press and the various commenters and pundits on the payroll will try to push a story to somewhere other than where the public consensus seems to settle.
Time (which somehow still exists, believe it or not) got out ahead early with the declaration that Branson and Bezos and Musk had “kept the promise” of the “democratization of space flight”. (This followed other barf-ready passages like “We built boats that could sail across oceans, and then airplanes that could fly across them. We laid railway tracks and paved roadways that spanned continents. We applauded ourselves when we accomplished those things, and we deserved to applaud ourselves”.)
Time has had plenty of company since, however—if nothing else, the amount of attention that is anything but derisive is already ridiculous sycophancy to begin with. Do we get front-page coverage when billionaires get to the top of Mount Everest very nearly carried by sherpas on a palanquin? What is remotely amazing or democratic or transformative or meaningful about the revelation that people who have more money than most of the rest of the world can buy just about anything they want, and it turns out that what they want is to light a hundred million dollars on fire and ride it up into the sky while demanding adulation for it?
You can almost—almost but not quite—forgive the Washington Post for ass-kissing the boss, but the spectacle kind of went overboard today with Robin Givhan’s commentary (titled “Jeff Bezos’ Cowboy Hat Couldn’t Overshadow Wally Funk’s Dream” on the print edition, “Wally Funk and the Power of Dreams” on the digital app). It reads to me as a pretty knowing attempt to keep the story going despite widespread mockery of the Bezos launch by transferring attention to Wally Funk. Essentially it uses a prophylaxis of admitting that Bezos looked silly in a cowboy hat (so that Givhan doesn’t have to mention what really looked silly in the launch) and acknowledging that some people (whomever they are!) think “lavishing money on his space dreams is pure folly” while counterposing them to people who are “lining up for the chance to defy gravity”. This is like walking across a tightrope with a pole that has a 10,000 lb weight on one side and a feather on another and pretending everything’s in balance. Sure, sure, the handful of gazillionaires with money to blow on riding a penis rocket high in the sky for a minute of weightlessness versus everybody else on the planet. What’s really kind of gross, though, is brandishing Funk as evidence that Bezos’ phallic egomissile makes the whole thing “speak to the boundary-breaking soul”.
It reminds me a bit of visiting Hearst Castle some years ago, the architectural equivalent of launching yourself into the sky so that people can see you’re a very important billionaire. The tour guide was being especially obsequious about how wonderful Mr. Hearst was, how generous and creative and just brimming with leadership and genius, and I was feeling grumpy about it. So I made a crack about how creative he in fact had been in introducing new scales of distortion and lying to journalism. The guide spun around and said, “Do you want more evidence of how kind and good Mr. Hearst was? It’s right there!”, pointing to a fountain. The tour group all looked on, puzzled. “Do you see that little ramp? Mr. Hearst built it for his dogs, so that they could take a bath in the fountain whenever they wanted to. That’s how kind he was!”
Just like Jeff Bezos was kind to Wally Funk’s thwarted dreams, I guess. What a guy.
This isn’t the beginning of anything. The only billionaire’s space dream that has any meaning at all is really Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Even that raises questions, but it’s a real company with a real business model. If the press was doing anything besides flattering plutocrats this week, they’d just focus on that. Establishing the most elaborate carnival ride in history for the three or four hundred people who are sucking out the lifeblood of the entire planet isn’t the big tent. It barely qualifies as the freak show.
I couldn't agree more with the sentiments expressed in this piece.