https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/10/fear-laughing-riyadh-comedy-louis-ck/684527/?gift=SKtFP-7gCBnFn1bNJdqPMi_7j1-Q3xFUfh3oXFEbWpw
As I ate dinner one night at the Ritz-Carlton, in a Chinese restaurant overlooking the indoor swimming pool, I reflected that the promise of a five-star hotel is insulation, a cocoon against the outside world. A rich person—a successful comedian, say—could glide from the business-class lounge to the front of the aircraft to an air-conditioned limo to a luxury hotel where your dinner is interrupted by five different people asking if everything is okay. Live enough days like this, and the whole world becomes your bellhop. No wonder these guys like Saudi Arabia. The way that daily life bends around rich people is that little bit more obvious here.