Kourtney Kardashian has sparked a debate about privilege after struggling to recognise Jeff Bezos, which she claimed was because she doesn’t “watch the news”.
Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian recently took Vanity Fair’s lie detector test, where they took turns interrogating each other and revealing secrets about the famous family.
When it was the Poosh founder’s turn to be hooked up to the polygraph machine, sister Khloe showed Kourtney a picture of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and asked whether she would take business advice from the billionaire.
However, Kourtney couldn’t give her sister a clear answer because she didn’t know who the man was pictured in the photograph.
“I don’t even know who this is,” she said, staring at the picture of Jeff Bezos.
“Kourt, you’re joking, right?” her sister replied. “Jeff Bezos?”
“Well, I don’t know what he looks like,” Kourtney said. “You guys, I don’t watch the news. I don’t look at news stories. Does that mean I need to know what Jeff Bezos looks like?”
Now, people have called out the moment on social media, with many users claiming Kourtney Kardashian is showing her “privilege” by choosing not to watch the news.
“The deep privilege of not watching the news,” one user wrote under Vanity Fair’s Instagram post.
“Nothing screams privilege than ‘I don’t watch the news,” someone else commented.
“‘Not watching the news’ is not something an adult should be proud of,” a third person said, while another user commented: “How privileged does one need to be to not pay attention to the news.”
The Kardashian-Jenner clan have often come under fire for failing to recognise their privilege as reality stars and entrepreneurs with a wealthy background. Most famously, Kim Kardashian was widely criticised this year when she offered some unsolicited business advice to women looking to succeed.
In an interview with Variety in March, the 42-year-old billionaire said she has “the best advice” for women in business. “Get your f***ing ass up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days,” Kardashian said.
The advice quickly fell short on social media, when Twitter users called her out for the broad statement despite growing up in an upper-class California neighbourhood.
“Also: be born rich. Really helps,” tweeted journalist Soledad O’Brien.
“If there’s one thing that resonates with normal people, it’s being told to work harder by people who were born rich,” tweeted another user.
“Yikes,” someone else said. “Maybe the best person to solicit advice for everyday people is not the person who grew up rich, connected, and privileged in every conceivable way.”
Elsewhere during the lie detector test, the famous sisters also revealed that Khloe doesn’t allow her four-year-old daughter, True, to spend the night at Kourtney’s house. When the Lemme founder asked if her niece was allowed to spend the night at her home, Khloe replied: “Probably not.”
Kourtney then asked her sister to specify why True isn’t allowed to sleep over. “Okay, and is that because we have too much fun?” she asked.
The Good American founder said that she “didn’t think there was enough time on [the] show” to explain “what the reason is”.
Khloe Kardashian shares her four-year-old daughter, True, with ex Tristan Thompson. Meanwhile, Kourtney is a mother to three children – Mason, 13, Penelope, 10, and Reign, eight – whom she shares with ex Scott Disick.
