The terrible cost of the Bezos Met Gala

I like cool fashion and fun outfits just as much as anyone, but this year’s Met Gala hosts, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos, probably would’ve been better suited in tar and feathers.

For weeks, Lauren Sánchez Bezos has been on one of the world’s most tone-deaf press tours, saying rich people need to have more unapologetic fun. When asked about the hundreds of layoffs at The Washington Post in February, a newspaper owned by her husband, Sánchez Bezos said, with all the wit and empathy of a lead balloon, “I was a journalist, and I know how important journalism is. But I don’t make those business decisions, so I really can’t answer them.”

And why can’t we just have a little more fun? When Jeff Bezos, one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, donates millions to the most anti-LGBTQ regime in modern American history and underwrites First Lady Melania Trump’s fluff-piece advertorial, maybe we should all just kick our heels up and eat whatever cake they can spare to give us plebes.

Not for me.

I am sick of tech oligarchs who, for years, were never cool enough to get invited to the party and can now afford to buy the venue, dictate the guest list, frame the narrative, and conduct the most cynical and opaque press tours imaginable, using the party as the vehicle. Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos hosting the Met Gala feels almost as desperate as Elon Musk writing to Jeffrey Epstein on Christmas Day 2012, “I really want to hit the party scene in St. Barts or elsewhere and let loose.” Barf.

Protesters gather blocks away from where the Met Gala is being held in Manhattan on May 04, 2026 in New York City.Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

And while we’re all supposed to be dazzled by couture cosplay and champagne dreams, the reality underneath is a bloodletting of the American working class.

At Amazon, tens of thousands of jobs have been cut in waves — roughly 30,000 corporate roles gone across the past year alone, many in the name of “efficiency,” “flattening,” “automation” — translation: “AI.” Entire layers of people are erased, so the machine runs cheaper and faster. The same company turns around and hires engineers to build the systems that will replace even more of them.

According to reports, at The Washington Post, the day-to-day is just as dark. Cut the newsroom in half. Double the output. Reduce journalism to an engagement score. Gut metro coverage, shutter desks, lay off reporters across the world, then ask whoever remains to produce more, faster, cheaper, better. Dumb it down for clickbait and call it a day. A century-old institution reshaped in the image of a logistics platform. And it’s not just layoffs, it’s the slow hollowing out of anything that once mattered: newsrooms flattened into dashboards, workers reduced to line items, public trust bartered away for private optimization. All of it is executed with the same breezy detachment that shrugs, smiles, tells you to have more fun, and tune in later to see our crazy, cool, fun, and expensive outfits. Did we say expensive?

Local D.C. residents who read the Washington Post joined members of the guild to protest during a rally outside the Washington Post office building on February 05, 2026 in Washington, DC. Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images

What else have Jeff Bezos’s political donations been underwriting?

As of early May 2026, more than 770 anti-transgender bills have been introduced across 43 states, with at least 39 already passed, making this another record-breaking year in a campaign that is no longer abstract or theoretical; it is systematic and relentless. Bathroom bans that criminalize existing in public spaces. Laws that redefine “sex” in ways designed to strip legal recognition from transgender and nonbinary people entirely.

Nearly 200 bills target schools, forcing teachers to out students, banning names and pronouns, and erasing any mention of identity from classrooms. Another 180-plus target gender-affirming care, restricting or outright banning access not just for minors, but increasingly for adults. Federal actions move in lockstep, restricting accurate IDs, opening the door to housing discrimination, and allowing federally funded hospitals to deny care.

Whole states are now effectively being labeled “do not travel” zones — places where using a bathroom, carrying accurate identification, or simply trying to exist in public can carry legal risk. Florida, Texas, Kansas — each pushes variations of enforcement that turn identity into liability, backed by systems that invite surveillance, punishment, and civil action.

This is what that money is doing. This is what happens while everyone else is told to relax and have a fun night looking at clothes and the people who wear them. And look, I like seeing some of my favorite stars on the red carpet. It is fun. It’s also part of the gig so I do get why they do it. And we all do need some levity. But at some point, we really do need to ask ourselves, “At what cost?”

Josh Ackley is a political strategist and the frontman of the queerpunk band The Dead Betties. @momdarkness @thedeadbetties

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