Jeff Bezos, you insufferable nob

I was one of your customers. Now I'm not and I won't be again.

Sit down. I have a story.

A hundred years ago, a former editor at the Hartford Courant disagreed with something I wrote for a column that was set to run the next day. It was a goofy column in which I made fun of what was then the early stages of Husky Mania (UConn’s mascot is a husky dog). I’m from sports-crazy Missouri, and painting one’s face blue and white (UConn’s colors) hardly qualifies as going all in for the team. I believe I made fun of the Yankees for trying.

The editor thought I was being too hard on UConn fans. Did he threaten not to run the piece? I don’t remember. I do remember reacting with a plan for vandalizing an item on the storied newspaper’s property. And yes, even then as a hot-head I knew that action would prove nothing other than I was pissed.

And that, sports fans, is the single, solitary time an editor ever told me I was not allowed to hold a particular opinion in public. And I’ve been writing columns since 1990.

(I don’t even remember if the thing even ran. If it didn’t the world kept turning but I remained incensed at the thought of not being able to say something.)

Enter now Insufferable Nob Jeff Bezos, who recently told the editorial staff at his Washington Post that moving forward, the opinion section would promote “personal liberties and free markets,” whatever the fuck that means.

David Shipley, now former editor of the Post’s opinion section

If this dictum smells rank, that’s because it is rank. The editorial page editor quit over it, as well he should. Editorial sections have historically been free from corporate overlords spitting into their content. The overlords (see the storied Courant) may cause great harm and suffering at those newspapers with their craven drive to make more money faster, but the overlords who want to keep a newspaper alive stay out of the news/opinion sections, the latter of which are supposed to serve as that vaunted marketplace of ideas in which things are floated, shot down, re-floated, embraced, or shot down yet again.

I started as an Amazon customer back when they only delivered books. Eventually, I incorporated (without paying attention) the company into my life with Amazon; then Amazon Prime; then Amazon Music (which I could never quite figure out), then Subscribe & Save (a lifesaver during the worst of the pandemic) and finally Audible (where I purchased, on average, eight books a month but became not one bit smarter).

When Bezos bought The Washington Post, I cringed, but then Marty Baron told us in his “Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and the Washington Post” that Bezos was a different kind of newspaper owner, one who respected the process and was happy to pay the bills and stay out of the way.

To say Baron is not pleased with this latest turn of a turncoat is an understatement. From The Daily Beast:

“It was only weeks ago that The Post described itself as providing coverage for ‘all of America. “ Now its opinion pages will be open to only some of America, those who think exactly as he does.’

I quit being a Post subscriber when Bezos — whom Trump used to call Jeff Bozo — stopped the opinion section from endorsing Kamala Harris for president, as they were poised to do. I was not the only person to have done so. I do not need Amazon Prime or Subscribe & Save. I have Costco. I dropped Audible last night in favor of Libros.fm (so far so good) and in the comment box for why I left, I typed, “Jeff Bezos is getting less and less of my money. It’s not you. It’s him.” My teeny-tiny actions to get him out of my life isn’t going to put a huge dent in his bank account. But if we all did just that one thing?

I leave you with this: