The New York Times’ new profile on Lauren Sánchez Bezos is causing some critics to facepalm — including journalist Katie Couric.

Amid a completely bewildering war with Iran that caused gas prices to spike, which only accelerated the financial strain many Americans were already feeling, Amy Chozick wrote a profile of the wife of billionaire Jeff Bezos for The New York Times titled: “Someone Has to Be Happy. Why Not Lauren Sánchez Bezos?”

“The NYT is rage-baiting us,” a user on Instagram Threads said while sharing a screenshot of the article — and it seems that Couric resonated with that take.

“Hi @amychozick 👋🏻,” Couric said in response to this post, tagging the article’s author. “Are you allowed to refuse assignments? This feels, um, off.”

Lots of users appreciated Couric’s blunt response.

“I love @katiecouric ’s zero fucks era so much. ❤️,” one Threads user said.

“If Katie THE Couric questioned my journalistic integrity I would just quit and work in a wilderness store in Wyoming,” another user joked.

“I didn’t read it,” another user admitted. “I’ve heard enough about Lauren Sanchez to last the rest of my life. My first thought, though, was that this journalist should have written about the EX wife, MacKenzie Scott, who IS doing actual meaningful things. This current wife might be doing good things too but we can’t see beyond all the glitz, photo ops, and the huge boobs and lips. Smh.”

Chozick posited in her profile that Sánchez Bezos represents a new attitude for the uber-rich.

“After years defined by financial crisis, pandemic lockdowns and moral earnestness,” Chozick wrote. “Unabashed rich-person exuberance is back with a Blue Origin bang, a Mar-a-Lago makeover of the White House and a Zuckerberg rap cover. The Bezos’ marriage seems, at times, as much a cultural inflection point as a love story — the moment American money stopped apologizing and decided it might as well enjoy itself.”

The journalist pointed out the stark contrast between the philanthropic styles of Bezos’ first wife, MacKenzie Scott, and Sánchez Bezos.

Scott’s public image, Chozick wrote, is “bookish, private and almost defiantly out of the spotlight” as she quietly gave away “roughly $26 billion of her fortune.”

Sánchez Bezos, however, “embraces philanthropy, but also the pleasure that comes with wealth — the visibility, the proximity to power, the fashion, the fun.”

The bulk of the lengthy profile includes observations about Sánchez Bezos’ unapologetic embrace of her opulent lifestyle.

For instance, it seemed important to Sánchez Bezos that she make clear that she was friends with many of the couple’s celebrity friends before Bezos entered the picture.

“People act like he’s my new friend,” Sánchez Bezos said of actor Leonardo DiCaprio. “No, I’ve known Leo since I was 25. Twenty-five.”

Chozick also noted how Sánchez Bezos “does not traffic in cynicism” and seems to shrug off most of her public controversies.

During a trip to an elementary school to read from her children’s s book, “The Fly Who Flew to Space,” Sánchez Bezos told the kids in attendance of her widely panned Blue Origins flight: “I went to space with Katy Perry… Yes! How fun is that? It was like a girls’ trip to space.”

Chozick wrote that Sánchez Bezos “choked up talking” about the backlash to her Venice, Italy, wedding that attracted A-listers and was estimated to cost between 40 and 48 million euros. She said “the public didn’t see” intimate details like “the toasts by all their children; the high school friends of Mr. Bezos’ whom nobody bothered to photograph,” Chozick wrote.

Chozick also highlighted that Sánchez Bezos is extremely proud of one of her hobbies.

“If there’s one thing [Sánchez Bezos] wants people to know, it’s that she is a helicopter pilot, a rarity in the notoriously male-dominated industry,” Chozick wrote.

But one of Chozick’s more interesting observations was that Sánchez Bezos “is breezy and agile at pivoting back to the fun topics” and notes several times that the former journalist dodged any kind of question involving politics or her husband’s controversies.

When asked about the hundreds of layoffs at The Washington Post in February, which is a newspaper owned by her husband, Sánchez Bezos got pretty vague.

“I was a journalist, and I know how important journalism is,” she said. “But I don’t make those business decisions, so I really can’t answer them.”

By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.