Ben O’Shea: Why Jeff Bezos’ space trip ushers in a new era of swinging appendages

Forget Ground Control asking Major Tom what shirts he wears, if you really want a space oddity look no further than Jeff Bezos slipping the surly bonds of Earth last week in what can only be described as the bell end of a rocket-powered phallus. I mean, there’s symbolism and then there’s being ejaculated into sub-orbit at Mach 4 by an 18m flying schlong. In the process, Bezos blasted right past Freudian and found himself squarely in Mike-Myersian territory. In fact, given the Amazon founder is only a hairless cat and cocked pinky away from Dr Evil at the best of times, it’s amazing news outlets covering the launch didn’t spontaneously start quoting lines from the infamous rocket launch scene in Myers’ Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Colonel: “What is it, son?” Radar operator: “I don’t know, sir, but it looks like a giant …” Jet pilot: “Dick.” Pilot named Dick: “Yeah?” Jet pilot: “Take a look out of starboard.” Dick: “Oh my god, it looks like a huge …” Bird-watching woman: “Pecker.” Bird-watching man: (Raising binoculars) “Ooh, where?” Bird-watching woman: “Wait, that’s not a woodpecker, it looks like someone’s …” Army drill sergeant: “Privates! We have reports of an unidentified flying object.” Bezos said joining the all-civilian crew on the maiden commercial flight of his Blue Origin aerospace company fulfilled a lifelong dream of his to become an astronaut. Sure, you could make the case the world would be immeasurably better off if the lifelong dream of its richest man was ending hunger or child slavery rather than blowing billions for a 10-minute joyride on the most obvious penis compensator in history, but, hey, it could be worse. Imagine if Bezos’ dream was facilitating election rigging and exacerbating vaccine hesitancy — we’ve already got Mark Zuckerberg for that. While we’re on the topic of vaccine hesitancy, it might be instructional for Australians to frame Bezos’ Blue Origin bravery in terms of something we can relate to. Space travel IS dangerous, after all, so the Amazon founder deserves at least a little kudos for putting his own butt on the line and doing something evidence suggests is 64,000 times more likely to result in death than getting the AstraZeneca jab (that’s a legit stat I needed a calculator to work out, BTW). Unfortunately, any respect Bezos earned for being the first human to test the autonomously piloted, semi-reusable rocket was considerably eroded when he returned to Earth. And, no, I’m not talking about the tech billionaire exiting the capsule wearing a cowboy hat, which ranked only slightly below the shape of his rocket when it came to inspiring derision. The choice of headwear was interpreted variously as a homage to the space cowboy in the Steve Miller Band classic, The Joker; further evidence Bezos was in the midst of a mid-life crisis or proof positive that the answer to the question, “Can I pull off a cowboy hat”, for most blokes, is always “No”. Late night talk show host Stephen Colbert took one look at the hat and thought the recently-divorced Bezos was now officially “extra-divorced”. But the hat sitting on the billionaire’s head did less reputational damage than the words that came out of it. “I want to thank every Amazon employee, and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all this,” Bezos said to the crowd that greeted his return to Earth. The comment was breathtakingly tone-deaf when the vast majority of the planet is dealing with the economic and health costs of a deadly pandemic, but it was also the verbal equivalent of the 170cm Bezos saying to LeBron James, ‘I bet you can’t dunk on me, chump’, only with the part of LeBron here played by the Twittersphere. You see, while the Amazon founder is living his best life, his earth-bound employees have been protesting over poor working conditions, which allegedly include excessively long hours in packing warehouses and drivers being forced to urinate in bottles to meet their delivery schedules. “Jeff Bezos made history today by being the first person to ever feel happy inside an Amazon vehicle,” comedian Mohanad Elshieky tweeted. “Jeff Bezos was in space for five minutes — or as its known at the Amazon warehouse, your allotted break time for a 16-hour day,” posted The Daily Show account. Of course, Bezos isn’t alone in buying his way into the astronaut club — British billionaire Richard Branson did it a week earlier with his Virgin Galactic flight. Throw in SpaceX founder Elon Musk and you’ve got more swinging appendages than a sculptors convention in Ancient Greece. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll look back on this moment and consider Bezos to be the father of space tourism, who ushered in an era in which humanity finally conquered the cosmos. But you can’t blame people for thinking Bezos has one thing in common with his rocket — they both came out of this looking like a giant knob.

Ben O’Shea: Why Jeff Bezos’ space trip ushers in a new era of swinging appendages

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