UH OH: If Jeff Bezos Is ‘Temu Lex Luthor,’ Bill Gates Is Superman With An Epstein Footnote

NEW YORK: Lisa Ann Walter gave the country a beautiful gift when she called Jeff Bezos “Temu Lex Luthor” during a Met Gala protest. Then everyone made the mistake of finishing the comic-book universe and discovered the only available Superman was Bill Gates, a man whose cape arrives with Epstein meetings, Microsoft antitrust fumes, and the Blue Screen of Death stitched into the lining.

For a few clean minutes, the Bezos insult stood alone. It was cheap, rude, bald-forward, and accurate enough to make a room full of people briefly believe language still works.

Then someone asked who Superman was.

After several hours of research, debate, apology breathing, and one woman suggesting Dolly Parton before being told not to drag her into this billionaire sewer, experts reached the only available answer: Gates.

“We hate it too,” said Martin Pell, a pop-culture historian who had spent the morning staring at a whiteboard that read PLEASE LET THERE BE A NORMAL HERO. “But if Bezos is Lex Luthor, even a Temu Lex Luthor, then the opposing billionaire has to be another globally famous tech lord with a softer public image, unsettling glasses, and a charity apparatus large enough to make reporters forget the other tabs open on the browser.”

Pell said the Gates selection became more troubling once researchers reviewed the full character sheet.

“This is the man who helped give the world the Blue Screen of Death,” Pell said. “Great guy. Put him in a cape. Let him hover over Metropolis while everyone tries not to ask why the sky just crashed and restarted.”

The committee briefly tried to treat Gates as the wholesome option, pointing to global health spending, mosquito nets, vaccines, and the general philanthropic glow that comes from being rich enough to hire goodness by the acre.

That version lasted 11 seconds.

“Then someone mentioned the Epstein dinners,” Pell said. “That is a difficult note for Superman to carry. You cannot have the symbol of hope floating above the city while a compliance officer underneath him is whispering, ‘Before he saves the orphanage, we need to clarify the convicted sex offender meetings were for philanthropy.'”

Reports have said Gates met Jeffrey Epstein several times beginning in 2011, years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction in Florida for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Gates has said the meetings were about possible philanthropy, called spending time with Epstein foolish, said he regretted it, and denied wrongdoing.

Experts confirmed that while those statements may be legally important, they do not make the Superman costume less disgusting to look at.

“Every superhero has a weakness,” Pell said. “Kryptonite, magic, red sun radiation. Bill Gates has someone saying, ‘Actually, the Epstein connection was a fundraising strategy,’ which is the kind of sentence that makes the cape crawl back into the closet by itself.”

The problem, analysts said, is not that Bezos looks like a discount Lex Luthor. The problem is that Gates as Superman forces the public to pretend one billionaire’s better PR department is the same thing as moral clarity.

“Superman is supposed to be a farm kid raised by decent people,” said Marcy Wilton, who attended the protest and immediately regretted understanding the metaphor. “Not a software monopolist who got rich enough to buy a halo and then somehow still ended up explaining why he was having dinner with Jeffrey Epstein.”

Wilton said the phrase “Temu Lex Luthor” had been fun until the Gates sequel arrived like a Windows update during a funeral.

“I could accept Bezos as the villain,” she said. “That part tracks. But if Gates is the hero, the movie is already broken. That is not Superman. That is a man in a cape asking whether your grief can be converted into a pilot program.”

Several DC fans objected that Gates could not be Superman because Superman does not spend the first act apologizing for networking with a dead sex offender, the second act being deposed over monopoly behavior, and the third act making a room full of civilians accept a licensing agreement before he saves them.

Those objections were overruled by the current state of American culture, which has handed food, space, media, medicine, charity, software, public infrastructure, and half the future to billionaires and then acted surprised when its superheroes started looking like men who say “impact” while standing near private jets.

Witnesses said other candidates were considered. Elon Musk was rejected after experts determined he was “the Riddler if the riddles were just custody disputes and rocket statistics.” Mark Zuckerberg was classified as “a Kryptonian lab sample that learned pickleball.” Warren Buffett was named Batman for 11 minutes, mainly because he is rich, old, and might sleep upside down in a Berkshire Hathaway storage facility.

Keanu Reeves was nominated by public demand but rejected because he is not a billionaire, has done nothing to deserve this, and would probably rescue people without first creating a foundation dashboard.

Early concept materials for the Gates version of Superman reportedly show the Microsoft co-founder wearing a red cape over a blue business suit while hovering four inches above the ground and promising to save the city after a short stakeholder session.

In one draft scene, Gates rescues a bus full of schoolchildren by convening a roundtable, hiring McKinsey, reducing bus danger by 17 percent in participating counties, and telling the remaining children that long-term outcomes now have a color-coded slide.

“He would save the city,” said one person familiar with the fictional reboot. “But first he would define the city, measure the city, buy a large portion of the farmland around the city, and then invite the city to a dinner with a man he later says he regrets knowing.”

The Daily Planet would reportedly continue operating for three weeks before Gates purchased it, merged it with a media-literacy nonprofit, and replaced the newsroom with PlanetIQ, a dashboard showing 93 percent fewer uncomfortable follow-up questions.

Lois Lane would be rewritten as a grants manager with strong Outlook calendar discipline, while Jimmy Olsen would become a 26-year-old policy fellow who keeps saying the word scalable until Perry White walks into traffic.

“That is the cruelty of the comparison,” Pell said. “Lisa Ann Walter did nothing wrong. She found the correct insult for Bezos. The rest of us made the mistake of living in a society where the hero alternative is a man whose public image has to step over Windows crashes, monopoly lawsuits, and Epstein footnotes before it can even reach the phone booth.”

At press time, experts were begging Walter not to call anyone “discount Joker” in case the math somehow makes Peter Thiel into Wonder Woman with a bunker.