Tech, Tock, Tech, Tock

Earlier this year I asked a classroom of writing students what their current go-to profession would be for a movie or TV villain.

Their immediate, near unanimous responses were tech bro, tech billionaire and Silicon Valley asshole.

Wearing some version of this horrible uniform

And this was months before we got a whiff of Jeremy Strong’s dry-ice version of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Reckoning or Andrew Garfield’s smiley, seductive take on OpenAI’s Sam Altman in Artificial, which some weeks ago did its test run at the N.Y. Film Festival.

It was also before Alex Gibney’s four-hour documentary, Musk, became part of the film zeitgeist at Cannes, which has now guaranteed (Note: In my mind, anyway) that the guy’s surname recognition has finally vaulted past my favorite 1960s scent for just about everyone.

And certainly prior to the current IT film moment of 2026, You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s bizarro “representation” of crazy-eyed Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, which I’m seeing later in the week against all of my better instincts.

You Can See Everything - Plugged In Movie Review — It’s the eyes for me. #icant

Of course, the vote for the tech villain trope didn’t surprise me. In fact, I was expecting it.

And not because I necessarily wanted to point fingers, though two right between the eyes of any one of the above, and more, might be/would be satisfying right about now.

In the 1970s it was politicians, in great part thanks to Richard Nixon and his band of merry Watergate pranksters.

There were the Wall Street guys in the 1980s, when “greed” was considered “good.”

Wall Street Style - Featuring The Iconic Gordon Gekko - DeoVeritas — Ugh that hair

Smarmy lawyers had a good run at the top of the immoral compass in the nineties for any number of indiscretions.

Ubiquitous terrorists and/or the international arms dealers that funded them became the thing pre and post 9/11.

Until we get to the digital disasters of the era we’re in now.

bezos villain arc : r/dankmemes — Superman knew all along

It’s amazing that such innovation can lead to such a fury of pop culture animus. But like their predecessors, this group only have themselves to blame.

And no – it’s not about the obscene amounts of money they’re making.

Primarily.

Scrooge Money GIFs | Tenor — It doesn’t help

It’s about the insatiable appetite this current group at the top of the food chain has to rule everything/everyone and how tone deaf and resistant they are to the suffering of others.

As well as their uncanny ability to interpret any type of inconvenience to them, like commensurate taxes, as the real height of personal suffering.

People that have been given so much should pay that little vs. that old chestnut of:

With great power comes great responsibility.

Spiderman Funny Tom Holland GIF (771×500) - Spiderman | GIFDB.com — Hey don’t drag me into this!

Here in California we have the first billionaire’s tax on the ballot this November. It is a ONE-TIME 5% tax on all the holdings of billionaires who live in California, conceived to make up for the billions in federal cuts to Medicaid and other health and education funds in the state thanks to the passage of the laughingly titled Big Beautiful Bill.

Meta CEO Zuckerberg is so incensed over this (Note: It’s ahead in most polling) that he threatened put his $110 million Silicon Valley home compound up for sale and create a public PR nightmare for the company. The reasoning being once word got out that their wonder boy founder planned to leave the state and take his majority share of the company with him, well, it wouldn’t be a good Meta-sign.

Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Stay in California Despite Billionaires' Tax Ballot Measure : r/California — A new state will not make these glasses less ugly, Mark

Of course, this is all according to NY Times reporting but it sounds so right that even if it were in the NY Post I might just be convinced into believing it.

And needless to say, so was the board because it came up with a late minute tax-shielding course of action that would enable Zuck to sell enough “special shares” of Meta stock to not only offset the B tax but still retain the exact same 60.6% of his company.

In other words, all those stocks he sold to cover the tax would not reduce his ownership even a smidge of a percentage point. Everything would be as it always was for him because, well, that is his divine right, because, well, why wouldn’t it be???

It is worth noting Mr. Zuckerberg’s billionaire tax could be as high as $12.5 billion.

Boo Hoo Cry GIF - Boo Hoo Cry Sob - Discover & Share GIFs — Boo freaking hoo

But it is also worth noting his personal fortune is estimated to be around $250 billion and that more of that is in liquid assets.

Meaning, yeah, he could write a check for the whole damn thing and still be the sixth richest person in the world.

Over It Eye Roll GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY — You gotta be zuckin kidding me

There are a lot more examples from a lot more of these uber entitled rich folk but after a while it gets a little tedious and begins to raise your blood pressure sky high. Though when the mood hits, you might want to consider what Elon Musk’s Space X does to the environment in his adopted home corporate state of Texas. And how a new $760 million flood control project of his there could turn into an ecological disaster.

Look, nobody’s perfect and the Silicon Valley techies are certainly not the only self-centered billion/trillionaires in the bunch.

By now you’ve heard about the lengths biotech entrepreneur and Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy, has gone to in what now looks like a losing campaign to defeat Democratic candidate, Dr. Amy Acton.

I think a lot of my coworkers follow me — There is no bottom

His estimated personal worth is $2.2 billion but he spent $4 million in campaign funds to cut one of the most heinous commercials in the history of American politics.

No, we’re not posting it here. You can google it. But the background is Dr. Acton’s stepfather was indicted 50 years ago for raping and abusing her between the ages of 10 and 12 years old as her mother, who neglected her kids and left them homeless in a tent, stood by him, fled the state with him and remained married to him until his death a few years ago.

As for the commercial, it’s now half a century later and Mom is way worse for the wear. But Vivek digs her up anyway and puts what remains of her on camera, having her grumble to voters that her daughter is a “liar” and they shouldn’t vote for her with nary a detail of what life with Mom was really like.

Which then caused Dr. Acton’s younger brother to cut his own commercial in Dr. Acton’s defense, lauding his sister for sacrificing herself and for protecting him all those years ago from even more abuse than he had already endured.

Is it worth it to sink that low in order to become the governor of Ohio? I guess so in this case.

Because clearly two billion dollars plus does not buy enough power to satisfy the most power hungry among us.

YARN | We need more money... | Fargo (1996) | Video gifs by quotes | 374a41ec | 紗 — All day everyday

Nor does $250 billion.

Or over $1 trillion, the estimated worth of buzz-saw wielding, Doge cutting, hard right political angel (devil?) Elon Musk.

In some circles it’s never enough and never satisfying because an infection of selfish malevolence rots the soul from within.

Travie McCoy – “Billionaire” (featuring Bruno Mars)

01.05.25

by notesfromachair

Sanewashing

A friend sent me this story from The Daily Beast. It’s about the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post refusing to publish a cartoon on its editorial page depicting multi-billionaires like Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, as well as others, kneeling at the altar of Trump and offering up bags of money.

But don’t take my word for it.

Here’s the cartoon:

It is well known both men, as well as many others in the M-Billionaire class, have donated $1 million apiece to the president elect’s inaugural fund and jetted down to Mar-A-Lago to spend time with him doing…stuff.

As for the cartoon, it was drawn by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes, who’s been employed at The Post since 2008.

But not anymore.

She quit in protest because in all her time there never once had the paper refused to publish one of her drawings. Tweaks, yes. Out and out refusal? Never. Here’s a link to her Substack with a more specific explanation:

One nixed cartoon is not necessarily concerning. But this is part of a clear trend. Just a few months ago Mr. Bezos overruled his own editorial board and refused to allow The Post to publish its planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. In His own piece on His opinion page, he stated, seemingly out of nowhere, that the centuries old tradition of newspaper editorial endorsements “create a perception of bias” and “non-independence.”

Two editorial board members who resigned, as well as a slew of other reporters who also left or spoke out against his new policy, disagreed. As did, well, about 200,000 readers who cancelled their subscriptions.

But this was not limited to The Post.

L.A. Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, another M-Billionaire who was also pictured in Ms. Telnaes’ cartoon, similarly blocked that paper’s endorsement of Harris weeks before the 2024 election. Predictably, several members of his board, as well as two of its Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writers, resigned.

Not that it any of this ruffled the feathers of the aforementioned M-Bs, or as I now think of them – the new AOCs.

That would be – Aspiring Oligarch Class.

To whit:

Since P S-S’s announcement at the Times, he fired his entire editorial board, noting he plans to replace it with a new team of “more conservative voices ” that will make the publication he’s owned since 2018 a more “fair and balanced newspaper.”

To that end, he announced in December he’d be injecting an AI-powered BIAS METER into its coverage.

Because what could go wrong with that?

On one level, all of this is hilariously unfunny. On another, the Chair (Note: I defer to the third person when my blood begins to boil), who went to grad school in journalism at Northwestern in the post-Watergate era, has to marvel at the chutzpah.

For the one or two of you out there who don’t speak Yiddish or never went to the house of a Jewish friend or met one of their older relatives, chutzpah means extreme self-confidence or audacity.

The coincidental timing of both major newspapers suddenly deciding not to endorse, the large money contributions, and the total lack of concern of what the trained journalists they have working for them and, in many cases have long employed, have to say, IS a THING. It’s what they teach us in journalism school to sniff out (Note: That’s the technical term). In court, it’s called evidence. And when there are enough examples of it in enough places and at enough places, it’s called a trend. And if you google any of this subject matter, or even political contributions among billionaires, you will come upon numerous stories from REPUTABLE news sources (Note: Not “fake.” And not from a random podcast or on TikTok) with much more evidence.

Now of course, there is going to be blow back. Like David Shipley, editor of the WaPo’s opinion page, who stated re: the cartoon nixing that “not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force” and that HIS decision (Note: Bezos’ name was cleverly not mentioned) was made because a previous column had covered the subject and another satirical column was scheduled.

But is a cartoon a column? And what is the limit on covering a subject like a coterie of potential U.S. oligarchs being lined up among the billionaire class all across the country for the first time in history?

Imagine if Watergate had been covered that way? Or the existence of concentration camps during World War II? On second thought….

I often ask friends this rhetorical question re: money and power and the wealthy who wield them as a way to expand both with no real regard for the preservation of democracy, personal freedoms or even the mere existence of a habitable planet –

When is it enough?

The answer is also rhetorical but I’ll state it anyway. There aren’t enough billions in the world to make a scared individual secure, or an insatiable person filled up, or a person who is bottom line obsessed with their own self-interest suddenly become someone who will put you or anyone else in the word before themselves.

Money doesn’t do that. Nor does extreme, outsized power.

It takes a village of relentless truth sayers to hold them accountable.

Loudly and unrelentingly.

Like the people of Bedford Falls vs. Mr. Potter

The biggest note of hope in all of this is that The Daily Beast story linked above was written by an intern named Liam Archaki. He’s a rising senior at Amherst College with a double major in English and philosophy. Not even a journalism major. Also, he interns at The Christian Science Monitor – not one of those fake news, left wing rags the MAGA movement uses to describe credible – meaning vetted – sources of actual news.

See, like other credible online sites, The Daily Beast picks up stories from other reputable bureaus and syndicates. This is even something The Washington Post does. At least at this writing. Who knows what Bezos and some of the other guys have in store for us over the next four years. We could very likely see sources like the One America News morning show hosted by Matt Gaetz in an effort to cover “both sides.”

Sanewashing the most outrageous statements by publishing them in the name of a balanced agenda.

Travie McCoy ft Bruno Mars – “Billionaire”

notes from a chair

Tag Archives: jeff bezos

Sanewashing