It’s becoming clear that long-popular “CBS Mornings” co-anchor Gayle King and her famous friends Katy Perry and Lauren Sanchez have landed at the center of one of the most spectacular public backlashes against celebrity cluelessness and rich-people hubris in a long time.
The cluelessness, hubris and “audacious” display of power by “the billionaire class” came as these three wealthy celebrities made a big show about going on a “historic,” 11-minute, space-tourism ride Monday morning to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere — aboard a commercial Blue Origin space rocket owned by Sanchez’s billionaire fiancé Jeff Bezos.
This image provided by Blue Origin shows from left: Jeff Bezos, Kerianne Flynn, Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, Aisha Bowe, Gayle King, Amanda Nguyen, Sarah Knights, director of Blue Origin’s astronaut office, and Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp. (Blue Origin via AP)
On Tuesday, King continued to show cluelessness as she tried to defend herself and her friends from growing online ridicule and condemnation. One way she did so was by likening their trip to the truly historic 1961 flight taken by “Right Stuff” astronaut Alan Shepard. As a member of NASA’s original Mercury 7 astronauts in the early days of the Space Race, Shepard became the first American and second human in space.
In an interview outside CBS’s Manhattan studios, King said when confronted by a TMZ reporter: “I really resent that people are calling it a ride.”
“We duplicated the trajectory of Alan Shepard’s flight back in the day,” said King. Indeed, King participated in what Bezos has called his New Shepard rocket program.
“No one called that a ‘ride,’” King said, referring to Shepard’s pioneering voyage. “A ride sounds frivolous. It sounds insignificant.”
“This was a bona fide flight,” King emphasized about what she believes that she, Sanchez, Perry and the other women accomplished on Monday. “I don’t like people trying to minimalizing what was done here.”
To many, King’s protest rang hollow in light of the world witnessing that her ride was nothing like Shepard’s flight. The world also had been hearing plenty in the lead-up to what critics called Bezos’s and Sanchez’s “PR” stunt. For weeks, King, Sanchez, Perry, Bezos, Blue Origin and King’s “CBS Mornings” heavily publicized the trip as “historic” because its six-person “crew” of “astronauts” were all female.
But as the Blue Origin participants pushed a female-empowerment message, they also talked about their trip like it was a girls night out, emphasizing how they would “glam” themselves up by wearing make-up and eyelash extensions. They also proudly modeled what Feminist News called their tight blue “Barbie” body suits — which ended up making them look 1980s bit players in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
“This is not, repeat not, a giant leap for womankind,” said Daily Beast writer Joanna Coles. She called Sanchez “Marie Antoinette” for brazenly leading this trip, amid the global economic turmoil unleashed by Donald Trump’s tariffs — “when most Americans are trying to figure out whether they can retire before 87.” A-listers, like Olivia Munn, similarly called the trip “gluttonous” and a waste of resources, while others referred to it as a “joy ride for the rich.” Feminist News said it represented “perhaps the most conspicuous exploitation of female imagery to bolster the reputations of the oligarchs—almost all of whom are violent men.”
Then, as CBS and other news outlets breathlessly covered the event, almost as if it were an Apollo launch, many got to see the Blue Origin rocket for the first time and what actually was involved.
For one thing, viewers, including Coles, couldn’t help but notice that Bezos’s New Shepard rocket is bizarrely shaped like a penis. Then they got to see how “minimal” the whole venture seemed — contrary to King’s claims. Since the Blue Origin capsule is fully automated, King, Sanchez, Perry and the other women genuinely were passengers — not “astronauts,” as they seemed so eager to anoint themselves.
A couple minutes into their trip. they were free to unbuckle themselves from their seats, so they could float around the craft in zero-gravity weightlessness, take in panoramic views of the Earth below and shriek like Bravo housewives on a girls’ night out. Perry, amid her struggling pop-music stardom, also got the chance to promote her upcoming tour.
Then the women were back on the ground. Bezos notably — and rather metaphorically — stumbled and face-planted as he approached the craft to open the hatch. Each woman made her exit, posing for the camera, and, in Perry’s case, majestically kissing the ground.
= RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE – MANDATORY CREDIT “AFP PHOTO / NASA” – NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS – DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS = (FILES) (FILES) This NASA January 1, 1961 file image shows astronaut Alan Shepard fitted in his space suit prior to the first marned suborbital flight. Freedom 7, Shepard, boosted by the Mercury–Redstone 3 launch vehicle, lifted off on May 5, 1961 making Shepard the first American in space. May 5, 2011 marks the 50th anniversary of the historic flight. AFP PHOTO/HO/NASA (Photo credit should read HO/AFP/Getty Images)
For the record, Shepard’s Mercury-Redstone 3 mission rocket also was automated, which was a bone of contention for the Mercury astronauts, according to Tom Wolfe’s classic book, “The Right Stuff.” As experienced aviators, war veterans and test pilots, they liked to be in control of their craft.
Shepard’s flight also was short — just 15 minutes — but he got the chance to briefly switch over to the manual controls to try out the roll, yaw and pitch controls, Wolfe explained.
Unfortunately, Shepard didn’t get much of a chance to enjoy any of the sense of weightlessness of space travel because he was tightly strapped into his seat in the cramped capsule, as if encased “in Styrofoam,” Wolfe wrote.
As Wolfe also wrote, Shepard could have felt terrified by being the first human to sit in a tiny capsule on top of a 66,000-pound Mercury rocket. But he mentally reverted to his flight experience and rigorous astronaut training. He also didn’t have much time to experience much joy or wonder about being shot up into space, as he had a limited view outside his capsule and he was focused on his job — observing how the craft operated during the flight and staying alert to the possibility of something suddenly going wrong.
Shepard continued his career with NASA for another 13 years and went on to walk on the Moon as commander of the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, famously hitting a golf ball during a moonwalk.
Shepard’s daughter, Laura Shepard Churchley, offered a much more apt way than King of discussing any parallels between Blue Origin space-tourism rides and her father’s flight, according to CBS News. As a guest of Bezos’s, she participated in a Blue Origin trip in 2021, but she, unlike King, called her adventure what it was — a “ride.”
Churchley rode up in the capsule with Michael Strahan, another TV personality. She noted that her father had to stay strapped to his seat, while she and her fellow passengers were able to leave their seats, float around and look out the window.
“He didn’t get to enjoy any of what I was (enjoying),” she told Bezos. “He was working.”
Bezos agreed: “It was all business.”
“Right, he had to do it himself. I went along for the ride,” Churchley said.
Meanwhile, King hit back at critics earlier Tuesday in another tone-deaf way, according to the Daily Beast. While appearing on “CBS Mornings,” she lavished praise on Bezos and said everyone should get educated on the work that he and Blue Origin do to keep “us safe” and to “advance the cause.” If people would only educate themselves, she said, “I think you’ll have a very different perspective.”
What King didn’t mention was the high cost of taking one of those flights, the Daily Beast reported. She, CBS News and Blue Origin have refused to say whether she herself paid for her seat or she was a guest of Bezos’s generosity.
Blue Origin also does not disclose how much seats cost for its New Shepard rocket program, but potential passengers must agree to pay a $150,000 deposit to begin the process, the Daily Beast reported. Meanwhile, billionaire Richard Branson, who runs Virgin Galactic, a competing space tourism competitor, offers its trips for $600,000, with a similar $150,000 deposit.
