> If the rocket had blown up, all the fingers that denied him credit would be pointing at Bezos.

Do you believe Bezos should be free from scrutiny, or even criticism, if Shatner was killed due to a launch failure that was organized as a publicity stunt?

There are two perspectives here: the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for someone to go to space, and a corporation's PR stunt. Even if you ignore one of these aspects, they don't just go away.

But some low level guy would go to jail, teams would lose jobs and Bezos would be poked fun at next time he hangs out with Branson

> some low level guy would go to jail, teams would lose jobs

Is that what's happened with past rocketship catastrophes that killed the passengers? (Or airplane catastrophes, for that matter?) I don't think so...

Unless you buy into some of the Soyuz conspiracy theories, no. However in cases of extreme negligence, people have gone to jail for causing airplane catastrophes