Celebrity Reviews: MacKenzie Bezos (Scott)
Once upon a time, a tiny prince with a noble bald head swung his dagger and felled the trees of Seattle, building for himself a castle of wood pulp, paper, and carboard packaging materials. And just as Charles Foster Kane had named his estate after the fabled ancient city of Xanadu, so too the prince observed what remained of the surrounding trees, recalling those storied forests that had been similarly decimated by other pioneers and saviors. And so, he called his domain Amazon. He took with him a wife, and the two lived in splendor forevermore.
Well, we know how that story really ended, but back in the day, Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Bezos Scott were thick as thieves. Or you’d have to assume as much based on this week’s Celebrity Review, which also happens to be celebrating an anniversary.
Now, MacKenzie is not nearly as prolific a reviewer as her ex-hubby Jeff, but they both have verified and publicly viewable reviews to their names, on Amazon. Which, now that I think about it, is a bit like old “Citizen” Kane writing a review of his wife’s opera performance in his own newspaper. Huh. Weiiird!
Anyway, there are only three reviews on Ms. Scott’s profile, all for books, but only one of these is important to us today, unless you’re really into hearing what she thinks on a couple random novels. No, the one review we want is for a very specific book on a very specific topic:
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
Yeah.
Here’s a snippet of the description: The Everything Store is the revealing, definitive biography of the company that placed one of the first and largest bets on the Internet and forever changed the way we shop and read.
This book was written by Brad Stone, and was billed as a true look inside the megacompany that little Jeff built. It released on October 15, 2013.
On November 4, 2013, MacKenzie Bezos left her review. It was the first one star review the book received.
You can already hear the tension crackling up like a fire, can’t you? Just wait.
The title of that review was: I Wanted to Like This…
Ooooohhh! The tea is about to get spilled, straight from the kettle!
So, in honor of the 8th Anniversary of MacKenzie then Bezos’ review (of the book about her husband and the company he built (left ON the website OF the company he built)), here is that review in its entirety (also viewable HERE):
She certainly sounds like she knows what she’s talking about, like she’s got receipts for what she’s saying. And if Jeff bought that book off Amazon, maybe she DOES.
It’s not like she ever gets mean or harsh, or passively aggressive either. She is just knows how to craft an argument that’s logical and lined with a slight flavor of “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.” And her point about “characters” in real “stories” being able to speak of their own accord, separated from the text is a good one.
Still, it’s hard to look at this without recognizing her own bias. And how weird is it to be excited about reading a book telling the true story of something you were there for anyway? How thrilling, shocking, surprising, or inspiring was this going to be if she DIDN’T hate it? She was there for it all, she knows it all, so why bother reading it?
Oh, right. Jeff wasn’t interviewed at all for this “biography.” So is it possible she was going into looking for points of failure? I can’t say, only assume. Just like I can assume she wrote this to defend the little prince. You assumed the same thing, I assume. But it’s still easy to believe her, and not the man who wrote the angry book.
Good thing he penned a response!
Just like the “characters” from the book who can speak of their own accord, the villain from her review, BRAD STONE, is able to speak for himself in this day of internet interconnectedness.
And thankfully the Wayback Machine lets us go back to see what he said (and helps us around paywalls).
Okay, he makes some decent points as well. He’s not backing down and it seems like he can take the criticism in stride, defending his honor as a journalist, whilst not prolonging the fight. I mean, he probably wasn’t going to have a hard time selling his book in the first place, but a little bit of dramatic publicity never hurt any book’s sales.
Related: Our man just dropped a follow up in May 2021: Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire.
At the moment, it looks like Ms. Scott is staying silent on this one, but maybe she is just using a new account these days. Either way, she’s her own woman, she’s probably not paying him any mind (as much as that’s possible in an Amazon-driven world), much less thinking about how best to come to his defense.
But let this little episode be a lesson on the thorny permanence the internet can have. Not unlike an image on Facebook or Instagram, we have a snapshot of the relationship of these two people. A moment in time, captured, shared, and preserved.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: reviews are pretty much social media. You might not think of it that way (which is scary), but you can reveal an awful lot with a simple “Came home for the weekend to have a birthday dinner at my favorite local place. Drinks were great, as always, and I was able to walk home through the park. Five Stars.”
So we know what town you call “home,” we know when your birthday roughly is, we know you’re over 21, and that you are likely at college or otherwise out of this town most of the time. That’s enough to be dangerous, especially if your username is just “VinceCallucci69” and you have a headshot as your profile pic.
MacKenzie Scott doesn’t really have to worry about stuff like this (she notably had no profile picture, though she did list her location as Seattle), but dumb old Vinny Calluch? Watch out, bud. You’re no celebrity.
