DAVID VERSUS BEZAMAZON

Musafire Achieves #1 in Political Humor, Plus American Rebirth Playlist 8

May 15, 2026

I wasn’t invited to the Met Gala last week. Even if I had been, I probably wouldn’t have gone, being Monday which is generally laundry night. And many celebrities declined as well, uneasy climbing those stairs in full-body portable airplane hangars while Amazon Emperor Jeff Bezos and wife Lauren Sanchez served as honorary co-chairs, uncomfortably posing under hot camera lights that seemed to be melting away their makeup and a layer of skin at the same time.

But a grander story was happening under the radar, at least in my modest universe. While Katy Perry pranced in a fencing mask and Beyonce struggled in the most expensive Halloween costume ever created, my new book Musafire-Rebirth of a Nation was rising in the Amazon digital Colosseum, my version of Maximus stalking Commodus, George Bailey renouncing Mr. Potter, Rocky pounding Apollo Creed, the Gamestop short squeeze of 2021, and Dizzy Gillespie running for President in 1964.

On May 8, the book started gaining momentum and reached #2 in Political Humor, surpassing Bill Maher, two John Lithgow Trump satires, and the amazing Lessons from Cats for Surviving Fascism by Stewart “Brittlestar” Reynolds. The only hurdle left was Senator John Kennedy’s How to Test Negative for Stupid, a seemingly easy obstacle considering my years of reading The Economist.

And Wednesday, it happened. Musafire took the #1 spot in Political Humor, surpassing another book by the Louisiana senator who apparently now controls a Washington monopoly over the word “stupid.” Like Tito Pappas and Josette Baker, the gold-hearted underdogs of Musafire who mesmerize the nation, I entered the machine and came out with a victory.

Is Jeff Bezos intimidated by my accomplishment? Probably not, considering that he gets most of the profits anyway. But let’s consider that this leviathan dominating our society also bears seeds of democratization, a technology that enables rebellion against itself. As we attempt to reinvent the American Experiment, let’s find these opportunities within the structures that domineer our society. For example, we can buy a few shares of an oil corporation and become shareholder activists. We can boycott brands that we deem as doing harm to the common good, organizing others like the next Ralph Nader (I’m currently boycotting Louis Vuitton, and Tommy Hilfiger’s on my watchlist). And if we’re born in the United States, we can run for President like Dizzy Gillespie did, although it helps if you’ve pioneered some kind of pop phenomenon, like Bebop or Afro-Cuban Jazz.

The protagonists in my stories are mainly Don Quixotes, eccentric idealists who dream big and delusional, often winning but just as often stumbling in their idealism. This moment may be brief, but it’s a taste of what we can achieve if we dream and scheme, if we say no to settling for a world with great imperfections. And after all, is it so important to validate ourselves by accumulating ten million dollars every time we boil an egg, or wearing these Prada devil collages?

Here are a few more songs to inspire the underdog spirit:

CASCINEMA

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