Watching billionaires like Richard Branson race to leave Earth in a rocket ship left “Late Night” host Seth Meyers so appalled that he had to reunite with his former “Weekend Update” co-host Amy Poehler for a round of “Really?” On Tuesday night’s show, the pair of “Saturday Night Live” favorites got together in person for the first time during the pandemic to perform their signature “Saturday Night Live” bit while roasting Branson and Jeff Bezos.
Virgin Galactic’s Branson was the first to go into space this past weekend, with a brief, suborbital flight. He’ll be followed by Amazon billionaire Bezos and his Blue Origin on July 20. It’s a new space race, only instead of America and the Soviet Union competing, it’s a bunch of absurdly rich men trying to outdo each other while they ostensibly ignore real problems their billions could help fix.
Meyers and Poehler yelled at them about it. “Really, billionaires? This is what you’re gonna do with your unprecedented fortunes and influence? Drag race to outer space?” Meyers said. “If you’re trying to be more likable, this won’t work. It’s like if Tom Brady tried to be more likable by wearing a fedora and yammering about bitcoin. I mean, really.”
“I miss the old billionaires,” Poehler added. “The ones that wore top hats and ate caviar with their hands. Now all these new guys do is intermittent fasting and they learn krav maga so they can dodge all those taxes. Like they don’t have 12 layers of security at all times. You know who isn’t going into space? Any women. Really. Yeah, we’re staying down here because we have to fix all the things. We have s— to do down here.”
“Also, Richard Branson, you didn’t go to outer space,” Meyers pointed out. “You just went pretty high for a plane. You went to outer-sky. I mean, really. You did the astronaut equivalent of driving by your ex’s house to see if the lights were on. What was the best thing you saw out the window, a kite?” (That’s a really good joke.)
Poehler observed that the obsession with the phallic rockets is not subtle for these ego-driven men. “Even Freud is like, ‘You don’t need me for this, right? You get it. Those rockets are d—s,” she said.
“Really, I gotta say, it’s a little concerning that all of a sudden every billionaire is in a race to leave Earth,” Meyers said. “I know it was 130 degrees in Death Valley and the ocean was on fire last week, but is there more? What are you not telling us? Did anyone check to make sure there wasn’t a UHaul strapped to that rocket?”
Meyers and Poehler also pointed out something true: Space isn’t that great as a tourist destination. There’s nothing to see! You can’t even get out of the rocket! It’s just a thing for rich jerks to brag about. Really, who needs it.
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