Earlier this week, a moderately famous man publicly insulted a moderately famous woman, seemingly out of nowhere, calling her “ABSOLUTELY REVOLTING” in a social media post. I am about to tell you why I think that was a good thing (kind of).
The players in this pas de deux were outspoken New York restaurateur Keith McNally—occupying the plaintiff/hater role—and media personality Lauren Sánchez—the defendant and hatee. Sánchez is engaged to billionaire tech titan Jeff Bezos, and the two are demonstrably very in love, which is to say, whether in the pages of Vogue or on a red carpet, an unmistakable air of horniness seems to accompany them wherever they go. Most recently, that horniness cloud and the couple inside of it found their way to no less than a White House state dinner. If I were to attempt to inhabit the twisted mind of Keith McNally for a moment, I would guess that photos from this event, which took place last week and for which Sánchez donned a rather racy corset-inspired gown, were the thing to trigger his Instagram outburst. The dress was, in all fairness, a pretty wild thing to wear to the literal White House.
So McNally, possibly inspired by photos from the state dinner, possibly by whatever other sick forces impel him, posted a slideshow of images of Bezos and Sánchez on Monday evening along with the following text: “Does anybody else find Jeff Bezos’ New wife - Lauren Sanchez - ABSOLUTELY REVOLTING? What an ugly and Fucking SMUG - LOOKING couple they make. Is this what having 1000 Billion dollars does to people?” (Psst, Keith, they’re not married yet. That wedding is going to be fun.)
Now, a little background on McNally, who is himself a millionaire: This is actually a very typical thing for him to post. McNally holds the distinction of being both the owner of several illustrious, celebrity-magnet New York restaurants and the Azealia Banks of his generation (which, it should be clear, is boomer). I don’t need to visit his Wikipedia page to confirm that it has a “Controversies” section, and in his short time on Instagram, he’s started multiple bizarre feuds. It’s what he does. At least, it’s what he does when he’s not busy being Woody Allen’s staunchest defender (for real, he posts about him regularly), oversharing about family matters such as his not speaking to his son for 15 years, contemplating the lyrics of “All Too Well,” or reminiscing about his friendship with Anna Wintour … it’s actually impressive, all he does with the form. The reports he sometimes posts—about how a particular night went at his restaurant, including which celebrities came in, who tipped big, and how many people sent back their food—are often quite lovely.
So while I don’t generally support insulting people for no reason, McNally is a troll and an agent of chaos, and there’s nothing to be gained from engaging with some nut on the internet. Bezos and Sánchez’s enormous wealth also makes it difficult to muster up much sympathy for them. True, no one deserves to be called ugly, but that’s a problem much less dire and much less easily solved than Bezos’ workers being forced to pee in bottles because they’re not given adequate breaks.
And though he did so in pretty crude terms, McNally is not exactly wrong to observe that something about Sánchez sticks out in an uncanny way. Imagine meeting her at a party: Most of the people I know wouldn’t hesitate to turn to their date afterward and comment that that lady’s face looked, ahem, perhaps a tad overly cosmetically enhanced, though most of us would probably—blessedly—be kind enough not to broadcast this on social media. I too lament that we as a society waste so much time talking about and judging people’s looks in this way, but if we pretend otherwise, aren’t we on some level just admiring the emperor’s new clothes? It’s not surprising that someone like Sánchez would seek out whatever treatments and procedures purport to rejuvenate her, but it is surprising, given her resources and standing in the world, that she wouldn’t opt for something more subtle. I can also see why Sánchez’s style, which might be described as whatever the opposite of quiet luxury is, might offend someone like McNally. He probably has all kinds of biases about women and race and class that are worth interrogating … or would be, if it weren’t Keith McNally, world’s biggest Woody Allen fan, that we’re talking about here.
The other thing that might sap your instincts to defend Sánchez and Bezos is a whirl through McNally’s comments section. Several famous people, including Chrissy Teigen and Jessica Seinfeld, in a now-deleted comment, leaped to Sánchez’s defense after the post went up. “She’s actually incredibly dynamic, accomplished and kind, and everyone who knows her would say the same,” Teigen offered. It does seem like Sánchez is really well-liked among celebrities, and kudos to her for that. In what I assumed was a joke, incoming Daily Beast executive Joanna Coles posted on Instagram that she was looking to hire a “senior Lauren Sánchez correspondent”: “No one since Brooke Astor has dominated the American social landscape faster than Ms Sanchez with her aviation skills, philanthropy and fabulosity,” Coles wrote. I would hope that if a journalist were actually hired for such a position that she would select someone who aimed to do more than publicize their subject’s fabulosity.
This is just another case of rich people failing to grasp how out of touch it looks when they defend each other’s rights to be rich and above criticism. Remember when everyone rallied around Jeremy Strong because the New Yorker dared to write an article about him that he didn’t like? Or think of every time a second-generation celebrity declares that it’s offensive for anyone to suggest nepotism gives people in the industry a leg up. This is how flaccid these clapbacks at McNally look. McNally isn’t the class warrior I expected, and he’s honestly wrong about most things, but I won’t complain about him keeping a few billionaires on their toes.
Plus, you can accuse McNally of a lot, but let no one say he’s not interesting. I noticed that in the time since his Sánchez/Bezos salvo went up, he put up a post teasing his memoir, which comes out next year. Did he promo his book because he knew people would be looking at his page … or did he engineer a way to get eyeballs on his page because he wanted to promo his book? No way to know for sure. But the book is already available for preorder on Amazon, which I’m sure Jeff Bezos is just thrilled about.
