All Spaced Out

In my blog post on Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos from this past January, I wrote that Bezos has capitulated to Trump to prevent Trump from getting postal rates on packages raised, which would be a detriment to Amazon.  I had completely forgotten that, while Musk has own own outer-space pursuits and has contracts with the government in relation to that endeavor, so does Jeff Bezos.  I forgot about Bezos' own space-exploration company, Blue Origin.  

Of course,  Bezos wants to keep his government contracts for his space-exploration endeavors as well, in this time where even the exploration of space and the expansion of human knowledge of space have been privatized, so of course that ties in with capitulating to Trump.  Bezos wants to be a player in this lucrative and relatively new business as much as Musk does.  And in order to promote his own interests, Bezos has to pull an egregiously dumb publicity stunt involving an all-female "space" crew to promote the role of women in space exploration even as Trump is purging references to female astronauts and going after programs in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) designed to foster female astronauts in an attack on diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

Here's what went down - or, should I say, up.  Bezos selected a six-woman crew to fly into the outer atmosphere of the earth for roughly ten minutes in a capsule and then come back down.  The "flight" was yesterday.  The women on board included only one real astronaut - Aisha Bowe, a former aerospace engineer for NASA.  The other crew members included, among others, TV newswoman Gayle King and former TV entertainment reporter Lauren Sánchez, who is better known these days as Jeff Bezos' fiancée.

Oh, and pop singer Katy Perry.

WHAT?????????????????????  

Katy Perry is no one's idea of a great singer.  She's a lightweight performer who's known for cottony songs and a superficial image.  Her career owes her existence to the influence of a certain single-named dance diva from Michigan who did more damage to popular music than cocaine.  Perry is, in a word, an airhead.  And her utter cluelessness in describing her "mission"  was obvious.

"It's about making space for future women and taking up space and belonging," said Perry, who somehow failed to bring up Trump's attack on women in NASA. "And it's about this wonderful world that we see right out there and appreciating it . . ..  This is all for the benefit of Earth."

And just how is this more significant than Sally Ride becoming in 1983 the first American woman in space, who has been followed by dozens of American female astronauts?

"Space is going to finally be glam," added Perry, who, along with her traveling companions, discussed having their hair and makeup done for the "flight" with that noted science and aviation magazine, Elle. "If I could take glam up with me," Perry added, "I would do that. We are going to put the 'ass' in astronaut."

She's already done that on her own.

And to think Hillary Clinton made her a leading surrogate for her 2016 presidential campaign.  No wonder she lost.

This wasn't a scientific mission to see how women could fare in space or anything like that.  This was a publicity stunt for Bezos, for Sánchez, and for Gayle King,  whose participation in the stunt was covered by her employer, CBS.  King violated the cardinal rule of journalism.  She went beyond covering the story to being the story.  

But then, given that she moonlighted for CNN by hosting a talk show with Charles Barkley that was meant to be "centered around the news stories and cultural moments that Gayle and Charles are most interested in," that was likely to be expected.

Bezos remains the main villain in this sorry escapade of ego and superficiality in what was clearly a "news" story meant to be entertainment.  But Perry,  Sánchez and King shouldn't get off scot-free for allowing the trivialization of women in space.  As Maggie Harrison Dupré wrote in Futurism, there was "an insidious hollowness to the sweeping characterization of the flight as a great achievement for women that's somehow paving roads for aspiring future space travelers . . . that's deeply, and cynically, at odds with the way that new federal mandates about diversity policies are actively working to erase women's legacy in American space exploration."

I once foolishly included Katy Perry on my soon-to-be-terminated blog "Pictures of Beautiful Women" (POBW), back when I wasn't aware of what a joke she was, but I took her down a couple of weeks ago, as I no longer wanted her included on my blog in its final weeks of operation (I'm shutting it down on May 31).  But I also added Gayle King to my blog.  I now have to remove her as well.

King Of All Media

Here's a disturbing media story that, ironically, isn't getting much attention in the media.

Gayle King of CBS's morning-news program, "CBS This Morning," recently interviewed Women's National Basketball Association legend Lisa Leslie about Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash last month, and brought up a topic that, touchy as it was, was something King thought needed to be acknowledged.  She raised the rape allegations against Bryant from 2003.  It wasn't a large part of the interview with Leslie - it was actually pretty minuscule, I'm led to understand - but it was somehow used by CBS to promote the interview.

Well . . .you know all the sick death threats promising all sorts of gruesome forms of murder people who have criticized Rush Limbaugh have gotten?  Gayle King has been geting threats just as bad, if not worse, for bringing up Bryant's past.  One of those threats came from a fellow from California named Calvin Broadus.  Who?  That's Snoop Dogg's real and legal name. Once again, I am showing my utter disrespect for rap by calling a rapper by his given name.  But then, Broadus doesn't reserve respect from anyone.  He told King that he and his friends would come and get her if she didn't "back off," and on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough had to remind viewers that Broadus was once charged with murder in the 1990s.  (He was acquitted.)

This is hideous.  There is no excuse to attack an accomplished individual like King, and an accomplished black woman at that, with death threats.  Black women have had to deal with far more adversity than I ever will (ask my friend Karen Hunter), and no one - least of all Broadus - has any right to undermine King, who showed the same journalistic integrity with Lisa Leslie that she did when dealing with an unrepentant R. Kelly last month over his sex-abuse scandal (still ongoing) and should be taken seriously as a person who has lived up to her abilities as a journalist and as an interviewer.  The rape allegations against Bryant were too serious not to ignore, and King was right to deal with it.

As a white man, I owe a lot to black women I have met over the years.  At least two black women gave me employment.  A black female professor was my academic adviser in college.  Another black woman gave me a break by letting me interview her for an on spec profile article (which was the second article I ever got published).   I have wonderful personal relationships with other black women, the details of which are too personal to share here.  So watching what's happening to Gayle King makes me mad.  And that is why I wrote this post.

And this is also why I am adding myself to the number of people who have shared this hashtag: #IStandWithGayle.  

I haven't put Gayle King on my beautiful-women picture blog yet, but after this, you'd better believe that I'm going to do so in the near future.