Rocketman Jeff Bezos (Image: EPA/Blue Origin handout)

Jeffrey Bezos, you did it! Elsewhere in today’s Crikey we’ve looked at the phenomenon of free marketeers arguing vociferously against capitalism. Billionaire Jeff Bezos’ trip to space has given us another example. Bezos thanked Amazon employees and customers upon his return. “You paid for this,” he beamed, because no one was going to point out precisely how they paid for it — through horrifying work conditions, union busting and tax evaded with Neo-like dexterity.

“Capitalism, not socialism, sent Jeff Bezos to space and back today,” Republican strategist Amy Tarkanian proudly tweeted. We’re not sure pointing out that one man who by forcing his workers to pee in bottles was able to take a 10-minute vanity jaunt into the beyond while the world struggles through the greatest public health crisis of the past 100 years is the glowing endorsement of the way the world works she thinks it is.

Sky finds its limit What’s that screeching echoing throughout Holt Street? Why it’s a great arching U-turn! Media Watch revealed that Sky News boss Paul Whittaker does have limits in dealing with the sort of rubbish Alan Jones and guests like the discredited Craig Kelly spruik on their sessions. After the pair drew some some highly dubious conclusions regarding the fatality rate of the Delta variant, Sky published a lengthy correction, followed up with palpable reluctance by Jones.

Could this have anything to do with a similar shift at Fox News, Sky News’ insane dad? An internal memo to all staff reveals a significant change of heart at the network, previously a nexus of America’s right-wing nutjobs when it comes to the dangers of COVID-19. As new infections in California bounded past 4000 a day and LA County re-implemented a mask mandate, Deadline reports, an email was sent out to all Fox staff in the region. It told them: “Masks will be required indoors across Los Angeles County, including at Fox locations, regardless of your vaccination status.”

And like clockwork, high-profile presenters such as Sean Hannity started giving measured, scientifically backed advice to their viewers, almost as though it had been possible all along.

Like grains of sand Here in 2021, among all the new and distinct things to be flabbergasted by, there’s some good old-fashioned bizarre sexism. Norway’s women’s beach handball team has been fined a little more than $2000 for being “improperly dressed” after the team wore shorts instead of bikini bottoms at a European championship.

We quickly checked out the men’s game and, oddly enough, they are able to play in shorts — even longer and baggier than those the Norwegians chose, if you can believe it. It put us in mind of Sepp Blatter back in 2004 arguing female footballers should wear “more feminine clothes … for example, tighter shorts. Female players are pretty, if you excuse me for saying so, and they already have some different rules to men — such as playing with a lighter ball.”

That’s not true, but why would Blatter know that, he was only the goddamn head of FIFA (the Fédération Internationale de Football Association).

Vale David Leckie A fond farewell to the alleged television prince, a man whose genius was expressed by Graham Richardson in today’s Oz, as “he bought Lost” for the Seven network. Crikey correspondent Guy Rundle — “Seven: no new ideas since 1961!” — remembers a meeting with him after having sold the network a show: ” ‘My doctor’s told me to stop drinking beer and switch to wine,’ a portly Leckie said from a sort of throne armchair, pouring wine into a glass.

“But,” notes our correspondent, “it was a pot glass, and he was filling it. It was chardonnay. After three POTS OF WINE over an hour, he was both pissed and dehydrated, and drifted into incoherence, then sleep, before an attendant hustled us out. We were not sure whether we had sold the show or not.”

Thanks for the culture, Big Davo. Safe voyage across the Styx.