What's wrong with a £30 million wedding? Bezos has done Venice a favour
One gathers from insiders, business journalists and whistleblowers that Amazon offers a workplace that is, shall we say, challenging at best. The company's culture is, of course, that bestowed by its CEO Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world.
Bezos and MacKenzie Scott, an intelligent, impressive and decent-seeming woman – who helped Bezos found Amazon – divorced as he pursued his affair with TV anchor Lauren Sanchez, a busty Latina known for her vaulting ambition and enormous personality.
The Amazon CEO is a changed man with Sanchez: he's got himself a decent set of abs and a new wardrobe. The pair canoodles constantly in public, showing the world their love (and lust). The weekend saw them host a foam party aboard Bezos's yacht moored off Croatia. It was allegedly for Sanchez's son's birthday, but that didn't stop the lip-locked pair stealing the attention with their own lustful antics.
Their €48 million wedding this week in Venice reflects their outsize passion. Due to take place at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, a 16th-century compound in the centre, it has attracted all the loathing and disruption you might imagine. Protesters from a group called No Space for Bezos threatened to fill the canal with inflatable crocodiles and thus block arriving guests. As Tommaso Cacciari, a member of the No Space for Bezos protest group, put it: ' This is a big victory for us. Who would have thought that we could change the plans of one of the richest men on the planet? '
The victory is limited, however, with the ceremony merely moved to the Arsenale, an even more glorious venue, and one with crenelated walls and a drawbridge that will be better at keeping protesters out. Venice Marco Polo is a traffic jam of private jets. Guests from Diane von Furstenberg to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have already arrived, looking hot (as in sweaty).
Of course one can sympathise with the natural antipathy many feel towards a wedding like this. Bezos is not a likeable character, the wedding is hardly a fairytale sort of romance, and at a moment of extreme income inequality, Amazon's evasive tax practices, while legal, do sit badly.
Even so, Bezos is absolutely within his rights to take over Venice for his nuptials in as vulgar and showy a way as he chooses. Yes, the cost of the week's celebrations alone could save many lives less fortunate, but tough cheese. It's his money and he can do with it as he pleases.
Indeed, those against the wedding are simply falling prey to the old European antipathy to wealth, especially American wealth, a hatred so extreme that many in the bloc are willing to be the poorer for it. Spain's anti-tourism antics, which include cracking down on Airbnb and second homes, show as much.
The truth is that Venice, like most Mediterranean cities, would be completely lost without its income from foreigners, the wealthier the better. The main home-grown economy now is tourism and the money that people spend on hotels and everything else when in town for the film festival, the Biennale, and of course the holidays is their lifeline; the Covid lockdown nearly ruined Italy by keeping tourists out and restaurants partially shut. Venice's own costs are precipitously rising due to the rising sea level. It is the most expensive city on earth to renovate. Bezos's wedding will provide much-needed cash to the city and locals alike.
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