The Problem Bezos Can’t See
The whimpering op-ed by WaPo owner Jeff Bezos, which Marcy shredded here, starts with a true statement: trust in the media is lower than trust in Congress and has been falling steadily since 1972, according to this from Gallup. Here’s the question Gallup asks:
In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media — such as newspapers, TV and radio — when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly — a great deal, a fair amount, not very much or none at all?
How would any thinking person answer that question? Do I average across all the media I consume or all the media I hear about? Do I average across all the reporters I read or all reporters? Do I allow for size of audience? Does it matter if I’m talking science or SCOTUS rulings or political campaigns? Are we talking about the language of the reporters, the headlines, the way they handle anonymity or something else? I know some of them are deliberately lying. How do I factor that in? I don’t know what this question is measuring, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t very useful for the purposes Bezos uses it.
The interesting fact shows up in the tabs. The huge change comes from Republicans, where the total of “great deal” and “fair amount” went from 68 in 1972 to 12 in 2024; and Independents, from 60 to 27. The drop in Democrats is far less, from 74 to 54, and most of that is in the last two years.
I’d guess that no one distrusts the media they follow. If the question to Republicans was “do you trust Fox News”, the answer would be either “a great deal” or “a fair amount”.
I don’t “trust” the media. I have more confidence in some than others, and I start with an inclination to trust reporting in those. Trust comes from checking the sources cited, documents linked, and the input of other people whose opinions I’ve come to value. Like Marcy.
The actual problem
Ever since early 2016, Democrats in the general population have been complaining about the tilt of major media against Democrats and in favor of Trump and his cronies. Even before that, activists were pointing out that the Sunday shows feature Republicans, and rarely Democrats. It was a running joke that eiher John McCain or Lindsay Graham or both were on every Sunday. The complaints became angry as the media swarmed over the ridiculous Her Emails and Coney Says pieces, because most of us think that coverage made the difference in Hillary Clinton’s loss.
The complaints grew louder after Trump took office and reached a crescendo after the 2020 election when the idiot media failed to recognize that Trump was planning a coup. Tben the media told us that the second impeachment would never succeed, even before it was initiated, and treated it as a game. The facts didn’t matter, and they didn’t care.
Then Biden took office, and instead of attacking Trump as a proven danger, the media treated him as a candidate in waiting. They failed to report the utter failure of Trump’s policies. Tax cuts for the rich raised the national debt without creating any value for the nation. Appointing a SCOTUS so corrupt it would throw out any precedent Republicans don’t like had horrendous consequences for millions an no gain to anyone. Roe ve Wade is replaced by a reign of terror in Red States? Not news. Student loan forgiveness thrown out on spurious grounds? Perfectly normal, and forgotten immediately.
They treated the effective team of Biden and the Democrats as equivalent to the obstructionist Trump and his lickspittle Republicans. They refused to report the successes of the Biden Administration on the economy and on the lives of us normal people. Instead they spewed a steady stream of lies and distractions pumped out by Trump and his billionaire backers.
The media assaulted Biden over his age, but refused to apply the same standard to Trump’s degenerating brain. Instead we got constant sane-washing of Trump’s weird rants. We only knew about them because of assiduous clipping and posting to social media and the amplification given by those not-journalists Bezos derides.
The spiked endorsement was just too much. People exploded.
And Bezos thinks this problem is affected by endorsements? His newspaper treats fantastical Republican talking points as equivalent to reality for years, and he condescends to explain that he has principles so we should suck it up and give him more money? He can’t figure out why his most likely readers and those with the highest trust in media, are furious?
Admit it Jeff: you’re afraid of Trump, and you kissed his ring.
Bezos worked hard to create Amazon and put Barnes and Noble out of business. Then the pandemic hit and Amazon made billions of dollars. But now Bezos is playing it safe. In the world of ideas, he’s chicken, as Ed noted. In the process, he is probably destroying the Washington Post. Its OK. The independent media will take over in ways we can’t even anticipate.
Good work. Thanks. There a few typographical errors.
I hope I got the typos. Bad eyes, small screen.
“Comey says”?
That’s a damn good rundown.
When will this takeover begin? I retired from my newspaper job 14 years ago, and so far no one else is reporting the stories I would be doing if I were still active.
250,000 reporters and editors were RIF’d from daily newspapers. I don’t know how many found other perches from which to gather news, but it’s nowhere near that many.
Did Amazon put Borders out of business? Or did they just mismanage themselves into oblivion?
B&N is still in business, as far as I can tell. A lot fewer stores, though, and more tchtchkes than books.
Borders is long gone to bankruptcy, however. But the founder came out OK: AFIK they still own a $10m spread in the hills above Portola Valley.
Borders ultimately over-expanded and mismanaged the company; the brothers forgot their roots and why their fans kept coming back. Kmart bought them and ran them like every other retail chain in America, ruining the brand and store experience. It operated Borders for nearly two decades before it went bankrupt.
Amazon free-rided on brick and mortar stores then, just as it does now. Its market power now virtually forces small and large businesses to use it as a marketing arm.
Operating from rural and edge-of-town warehouses, Bezos easily undercut independent and retail store prices. Bezos’s timing was also impeccable. The rise of the Internet and package delivery companies made his fortune, as did his investment banking ruthlessness. Operating from warehouses made the latter easier to hide. Bezos’s business model is a lot like John D. Rockefeller’s.
I miss Borders. And Wladenbooks, and B Dalton. I wish that there was still a bookstore at the local mall, instead of 10 miles away on the other side of a freeway with no convenient ramps..
PJ Evans @ 8:41
There’s a Barnes & Noble in Marina del Rey – is that far from you? Also, are you enough of a long-time LA person to remember Pickwick (which was bought out by B. Dalton)?
How did Bezos work hard to create Amazon?
Oh, Badger. Amazon was a market behemoth and Bezos was a multi-billionaire long before Covid hit.
Thanks. Others could have seen it was time to turn the catalog retailers into internet entities. But Bezos did it. But where has the courage and innovative spirit gone now? Ed and Ms. Wheeler might explain how he got played by the Republican nominee and how the dreaded NYT played a deep both sides game and trolled the Post.
Jeff Bezos is many things. Courageous and innovative would not be high on my list. Nor do I think he’s necessarily the one being played.
Regarding Trump’s comments on immigrants, while comparing immigrant Musk’s accomplishments to other immigrants, I offer up the following link to an article about an
exceptional immigrant who contributed to the knowledge and wealth of the country, as well as to the permanent display of great art from other cultures:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/clark-art-institute-monumental-gift-new-wing-2560778
The late Aso O.Tavitian, (from the article):
“Tavitian’s biography reads like a truly American tale of the potential for immigrants to contribute to their adopted homes. A Cold War refugee, Tavitian was born in Bulgaria of Armenian descent and earned a master’s degree in nuclear engineering and at PhD in nuclear physics as a scholarship student at New York’s Columbia University.”
The Media should be reporting such news more widely to counter the false narrative of immigrants committing crimes. The more Trump says it, the more the Media report this falsehood, the more dominant the lie becomes as accepted “fact.” It should also be more widely reported that Trump’s grandfather was a German draft-dodger who was deported when he tried to return to Germany from the U.S. And, that he opened a gambling saloon and whorehouse in the West. Desertion from military service is a crime. Whorehouses are not legitimate businesses. Let us also remind Media that Trump hasn’t given any charitable organizations any contribution except unkept “promises.”
When they go low, we go high? Michelle is a fine woman, but if Media isn’t going to report these truths about a candidate who spews anti-immigrant bigotry, then the Democrats should take up the slack and “make it news.”
My doctors are immigrants, or at least were educated abroad. They’re far better humans than Donnie has ever been.
Not all immigrants are good. Elon Musk is an immigrant.
I first noticed the large number of immigrants in health care as the nurses who cared for me during a 4+ day hospital stay for encephalitis in 2003 were mostly Asian. Since then the number of immigrant doctors at my health care provider have increased. I’m sure other US citizens have noticed the same. And yet all immigrants are criminals and rapists. Trump is a criminal and rapist. One of the myriad projections we are subjected to in his rants.
I lament that the Democrats don’t make more of the fact that immigrants are almost 20% of our work force, that we are at full employment and need hundreds of thousands of new workers now.
And we are not producing enough new workers through birth to meet the needs for the future. Which is I suppose why women are needed primarily for breeding.
Appreciate you putting immigration in proper perspective. My Grandma came to NYC at age 14 ALONE. Family has done well and also done good.
But, for the sake of completness I’d like to add to your Brief Trump Family Immigration Saga that Grandpa Trump also operated a house in Alaska. The Donald, followed in the family tradition with working girls out of Trump Tower (no cash payments).
sources: Noel Casler, Noel’s Notes Substack
Wayne Barrett, Village Voice
David Kaye Johnson, The Making of Donald Trump
Mark Twain said there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Thank you for calling out the disaggregation on the media trust that is truly the elephant in the room. Several things jump out in addition to your great points:
1) “Independents” started out notably lower than even Republicans when this question was asked but still manage to end up more than twice as high, though we should likely be careful about independents post 2015 as studies have suggested that number may now have a notable of never-trumper GOP that tended to be on the more educated side of their party’s average.
2) Election years are nearly always mild to moderate downward spikes for Republicans starting in 2004. What’s interesting is that these polls are primarily offered in September of the given year. Actual October surprise and post-election coverage, to the extent it is remembered, is only accounted for 10 months later.
3) Conversely, Democrats have NEVER dropped below 50% on that metric in all the years it has been asked.
Media cowardice is certainly a problem. But having a third of our survey-eligible, voting-eligible population in essence step away from any media that isn’t a literal court-identified entertainment company is surely another lurking problem. The NYT could perform the expose of the century on Trump and it would do nothing to change that population. And if you add in the lurking parts of the independent camp, you start seeing a very dismal picture emerge of a media-resistant bloc so large it calls into question whether we can even identify them as interested in a democracy at all. I have this sense of dread that from this point on, every federal election now boils down less to candidates and more to “Do we feel like still keeping a vibrant debate-based democracy or not?”
The problem with WaPo these days didn’t start with Bezos, but it certainly ends with him. At the time Bezos acquired the paper in 2013, Marty Baron (previously of The Boston Globe, which broke the story of widespread sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, as depicted in the excellent film “Spotlight”) was the Editor In Chief of WaPo. And with Marty in charge, WaPo did some excellent reporting on Trump, particularly by investigative reporter David Farenthold.
All that changed when Marty retired at the end of February 2021, about a month after Biden’s inauguration. He was replaced by Sally Buzbee, and the political coverage shifted notably to the right. And then Buzbee was quit-fired when Bezos’ hand-picked CEO and publisher Will Lewis – who previously worked for Murdoch – came on board, ostensibly to address the issue of declining subscription rates.
As a business move, the hiring of Lewis has been an utter failure. I am one of the 250,000+ who canceled my subscription after the non-endorsement of Harris/Walz. But I doubt it matters much to Bezos, for which WaPo is another tax write-off, and worth far less than his other business ventures that have made him a multi-billionaire.
Still, I wish his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott would have gotten WaPo as part of the divorce settlement. It would undoubtedly be a much better news source.
Bezos has limited inductive reasoning skills. He’s never been as smart as he thinks he is.
His reference to Eugene Meyer as the shining example of a newspaper owner not allowing his paper to endorse a presidential candidate is naive.
Meyer was an incompetent disaster during the Great Depression. FDR figured that out.
Meyer’s daughter, Katherine, however, was brilliant; her father could never have filled her shoes as the heir/owner of a newspaper.
She knew how to run a newspaper and then sold it to Bezos—her father’s apparent wannabe no presidential endorsement owner.
Bezos is a mooch. He’s mooched off Federal, State and Local government and taxpayers for years.
He’s certainly no Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx. Smith didn’t need the US Post Office to deliver packages.
Bezos and Musk are both frauds and BS artists. They are no different than Trump.
To be fair to Katharine Graham, her incompetent heirs mismanaged the paper and then sold it to Bezos; she had long been gone by then. She is a wonderful example of someone rising to the occasion and achieving greatness.
Musk is also a mooch off the taxpayers.
Thanks for this, Ed.
If anyone should value the way that information flows through systems, it should be Bezos, whose fortune is built on logistics.
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle (former banker, former Bloomberg reporter) points out that by implementing tariffs, Trump creates the ability for him to pick business winners and business losers. Bezos is acknowledging this extremely unsavory — and potentially suffocating — fact.
I have been acquainted with numerous Amazon employees who have come from other parts of the world to lend their talents to Bezos’ behemoth. Some grew up under dictatorships and other forms of misgovernance, and migrated to America specifically to live where they did not have to be suffocated by what might be called ‘constant ring kissing’. Part of Amazon’s appeal was that it enabled them to come to America (or the EU), live free of repressive governments, and live more fully. The word ‘freedom’ *really* resonates with these folks.
I am out of touch with them at present, but oh…. to be a fly on any of their walls!
I suspect that Bezos’ ring-kissing may have long term, unforeseen consequences.
(Kara Swisher lays some of the blame for this mess with the new, Rupert-trained WaPo publisher; she generally has a good inside track on such topics. The fact that Bezos hired a former NewsCorp exec suggested trouble a year ago, but this incident really makes one wonder about why WaPo management would announce such a policy change within days of a presidential election. It’s clumsy at best, and sinister at worst.)
That wasn’t his ring Bezos kissed. Just sayin…
British slang “ring”/“ringpiece” is your friend here
https:// [ ] www. urban dictionary. [ ] com/define.php?term=Ringpiece
Close, though—Bezos kissed Trump’s “ringpiece,” as the Brits would call it.
Ya beat me to it, SteveBev!
“Ring” is more common than “ringpiece” in my experience, but there are probably regional variations.
But I would expect most adults to recognise “ring” as a double entendre
Ivanka and Jared Kushner are neighbors of Bezos in Indian Creek Village, FL. They also party together. Coincidentally, Bezos and Kushner have birthdays only a couple of days apart. The Jarvanka flew to CA to celebrate Bezos’ birthday this year.
Remember that dinner party Ivanka and Jared had on January 7, 2021 where nobody talked about the attempted coup the day before? I think I read that Bezos was there but I can’t find a citation for that (though there are plenty of articles about it, I can’t find the one with Bezos’ name.)
The WAPO has published little about the utter corruption of Javanka including that 2 billion from the Saudis — or the Chinese trademarks gained when Trump was in office and they worked in the WH. Jared got his 2 billion moments after walking out of the WH. Yet there was a breathless headline on the front page this week about the ‘conflict of interest’ Harris’s brother in law’s interests might pose to the WH if Harris is elected. The double standard would be funny if not a further sign of the corruption of the WAPO.
I trust what I read in the Post, except for some of the columnists. But I only trust it to be factually accurate. I don’t trust their selection or emphasis. That’s why I read The Guardian and AlJazeera and Haaretz. (Haaretz is pretty good on AlJazeera’s blind spot–what’s going through Israelis’ heads.)
Philip Bump is mostly good, and he has a weekly newsletter about statistics and graphing which is a lot of fun.
I like your phrasing better than mine.
Too many folks talking about “trust in the media” treat it as some abstract thing, rather than as a part of the social landscape, shaped by all kinds of forces.
Looking at the graphs in the Gallop piece, a couple of things stand out to me.
1) 1972-76 – media trust went up slightly among Dems and strongly with Independents, but sharply down then slightly up with GOP. Can you say “Watergate” and “Vietnam”? (GOP in 72: “we would have won in Vietnam if it wasn’t for the media siding with the fng Hippies”) Sure you can.
2) 1980-92 – generally stable decline across the board. Folks could smell the lies over Iran-Contra, AIDS, etc., but the media never pushed it as eventually happened with Watergate.
3) 1996-98: GOP up, Dems down, I’s flat, as the Great Penis Hunt raged on and then collapsed under its own hot air.
4) 2000-08: Up and down, but generally down as the Iraq War dragged on and on. Scooter lied, Gitmo opened, Abu Ghraib photos came out, torture tapes, etc.. Dems viewed the media as too soft on Dubya & Co., and the GOP viewed them as insufficiently patriotically suppporting. Either way, respect went down.
5) 2008-16: GOP up and down through the Great Recession (down at passage of ObamaCare, up as economy recovers, etc.); Dems more down than up – maybe because they felt the media was not giving Obama sufficient respect for his achievements, or (among some) too much of a pass for his failures (i.e., no Medicare for All, giving too much back to the big banks, etc.)
6) 2016-24: GOP basically flat and sees media as untrustworthy (led there by Trump), Dems up big then back down to where they started, frustrated at the inability of the media to report honestly about Trump.
Interesting and excellent timeline!
On October 7, 1996, FOX News commenced its on-air TV programming. It was never “Fair and Balanced” and always promoted Republicans and Republican Party ideology.
The Fairness Doctrine was eliminated.
FOX and Rush Limbaugh also developed a symbiotic relationship—one on TV and the other one on radio.
Republicans viewers and listeners were inundated with falsehoods, conjecture and speculation.
The result was the 2000 election with G.W. Bush becoming president for what turned out to be eight ghastly years.
New at SFGate (no paywall):
Drew Magary’s opinion
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/billionaire-owners-wapo-la-times-19877875.php
Best headline this year, I think.
Drew writes his own, and kudos to SFGate for allowing him to do so.
Drew Magary:
Excellent article, thank you for the link.
Not quite an epiphany but mayhap appropriate – about three months ago a rather large, wild/feral cat appeared at the Piedmont home. One front leg badly damaged and it kind of knew my morning routine. Left out food and water as always.
Took a couple of months of sitting still next to the food and some minor blood loss from the forearms down but he eventually allowed human touch. Then found his way through the pet door and knew a good thing when he found it. When he jumped up in the bed and snuggled in for the first time it was over.
Always had been in a fight when he showed up this huge uncut male – with a head the size of a small cantaloupe; dubbed him ‘Ginormous Gorky Head’.
As of Tuesday morning I am at the Mountain home where our Veterinarian resides, on Wednesday morning Gorky Head became one of the Castrato – he will reside here with me through next Tuesday morning when Mrs. Benji arrives and we both go to the voting station*. She will then stay with him here through Saturday morning, away from the other cats and without going outside while he heals.
So what if Ginormous Gorky Head is parable to a candidate, and I (we all per Mr. Magary’s last paragraph) as Veterinarians/Voters DO have power, DO have agency and Do matter to castrate the son-of-a-bitch?
We can kick this orange buffoon to the curb as a eunuch and hope to help restore some semblance of order to our Federal/State/Local governance? While we can kick his sorry ass – and by proxy Musk, Bezos et al – it will still take decades to restore the Judicial to even keel.
Don’t think I want to adopt that many strays though…
*Learned something yesterday – here in Alleghany County spouses can vote together in the same booth! Not a chance we will but I can see some male MAGAt choosing that option for his wife to ‘help’ her vote ‘correctly’.
https:// youtu.be/FaCPck2qDhk
Perhaps we can take that smarmy dood to the Vet next….
I hope voting in the same booth is not common practice.
OT: there is growing evidence that supports the conclusion that Ms. Wheeler’s earlier comments about creation of the permission structure allowing former voters for the Republican candidate to switch to Harris/Walz were accurate. She might want to revisit the topic and speculate on what type of coalition government might result if there is a heavy crossover vote.
A coalition government is a bridge too far, imo.
A coalition government is an assumption too far.
There’s a MASSIVE difference between appointing presidential advisors who are self-identified conservatives and appointing MAGA-identifying cabinet members.
Don’t get too far out in front of the election. What we see right now is a means to win the election.
Let’s not forget that earlier this year the Post (Bezos) brought in one editor/manager from the Wall Street Journal, and another from the English branch of the Rupert Murdoch Empire … I believe one was forced to decline the position, one was named editor until “after the election.” That’s when I cancelled my subscription to the Washington Post. I don’t see journalists on NPR’s News Hour or elsewhere including this as back story to Bezos’ refusing to endorse a candidate. The Press loses when it tries to be (un)scrupulously neutral. How much more does Bezos carethan Musk about trashing a media platform to serve an agenda? Both can afford to do so.
For as much as the mainstream media is criticized for being ineffective and too accommodating on one side, they are still held in contempt on the other… I read something recently about Trump referring to Maggie Haberman as “Maggot Brain,”or some such term of endearment.
Three thoughts.
One, Bezos’s refusal to let the WaPo endorse was probably baked in. Have you ever seen the Daily Telegraph from which Lewis came.?
Two, the ensuing row has probably done more to help Harris than an endorsement would ever do.
Three; slightly OT; how widely has media reported the evident fact that Trump could not actually judge how far away the door handle of his garbage truck was, by about three inches? There’s something significant going on there, either vision or worse.
Farther than that, IMO: his arm was fully extended, and it shouldn’t be for that. He was about 18 inches too far from the door.
Spacial awareness and dexterity are both impacted by dementia.
He looked like my dog at the foot of unfamiliar stairs. She has cataracts and a walleye. What’s his problem?
To be fair, trump has always had the door handles of his vehicles (golf carts, bumper cars, limos) adjusted for his short reach and tiny fingers.
Guess a garden-variety dump truck just couldn’t be down-fitted in time.
Amen, Ed.
Media handling of Trump over the past 8 years has varied from insufficiently-honest to downright simpy. There have been occasional pieces of great investigative journalism that broke through, but overall most journalists have repeatedly fallen for Trump’s distractions and repeated his outright lies without any pushback and without putting his bullshit statements in the proper context for their readers. Platforming nonsense does no one any favors.
On the specific topic of Bezos’ idiotic op-ed trying to defend his decision to spike WaPo’s endorsement of Harris, my favorite article so far was by Jay Willis today over at The New Republic:
Jeff Bezos Doesn’t Understand That He Is the Problem
There’s a lot going on in Trump’s newly-filed, frivolous, $10 billion lawsuit against CBS for allegedly manipulating its interview of Kamala Harris, causing him and his campaign, especially its fundraising, irreparable harm.
I assume Trump is trying to stay in the headlines, to blame the press for his upcoming electoral loss or to claim he won despite their overt interference, to lay the ground work for alleging the press is plotting against him and must be stopped at all costs. I assume he’s aiming to forestall Harris from pointing out the extent to which the mainstream press, the right wing press, and foreign states, notably Russia, have contributed millions to his campaign, by normalizing him and putting out shit about Harris
Normally, such a lawsuit would not have legs. Had Trump filed it in district court in DC, it would not long survive. The bad news is that Trump filed it in Amarillo, in the Northern District of Texas, in Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk’s court. He’s a radical among Trump’s radical appointees. He makes Judge Cannon look like Louis Brandeis.
https://www.salon.com/2024/10/31/sues-cbs-for-10-billion-over-harris-60-minutes-interview/
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.396451/gov.uscourts.txnd.396451.1.0.pdf
It should get tossed just for being in the wrong district: NONE of the parties are located there.
It is also a preemptive strike against the media who might be inclined to report accurately on a torrent of lies which might flow post election.
It is about testing proof of concept of Lawfare intended to counter the example of rule of law consequences of Fox caving to Dominion in righteous law suits. It is about exacting obedience with the threat of vexatious legal bullshit. And with Musk tossing $m about you know and they know, Trump is a very deep pocketed very very vexatious litigant.
And a preemptive strike against media outlets calling states for Harris. Especially early.
And should Kacsmaryk pull a Trump win out of his arse, the appeal will go to James Ho’s Fifth Circuit lunatics, where any legal atrocity can be justified…only to be sent up to our specially corrupt SCOTUS.
I used to live in a country where I could laugh things like this off. Not so anymore.
“trust in the media is lower than the trust in Congress”, not holding back there. Good line!
Bezos operating newspapers, does make you wonder. Some very rich people like to own newspapers because it makes them think they’re smart or they want the influence they think owning a “name” newspaper gives them.
There is nothing about Bezos which makes me think he is a brave individual. Suspect he is afraid if Trump wins and he has opposed him he’ll be a target. It maybe why Musk has jumped on the Trump band wagon. There isn’t anything about Bezos which makes me think he cares about his country or the world around him. Same for Musk, Zuckerberg, etc. Sometimes I wonder if they’re all at the low end of the spectrum. They’re missing something in their character.
Large newspapers which do not make a statement one way or the other just want to play both sides of the street. In this American election, that isn’t going to work too well for the country. If Bezos is afraid of Trump, he needs to give his head a shake. Trump is a bigger coward then he is. Perhaps it is just as well they don’t take a position. It would most likely not one which would benefit the country.
I read blogs, check in with the Guardian and sometimes Dutch newspapers. Reading what the labour movement prints also can fill you in on what is going on in your area.
Amazon, one of these days or years it will go the way of the dodo bird also, just like other methods of commerce has. At one time we didn’t have malls, we had shopping areas and most shops were locally owned. Next we get chains, then malls, then almost all chain stores, then it went on to ordering on line with organizations such as Amazon. Cloths are cheap, made off shore, etc. At some point things will shift again. With the cost of housing and food in parts of Canada people will simply not have enough disposal income to purchase extras from Amazon. It could be also that major corporations such as Amazon tank because they don’t do anything for the enviornment and it all ends. Supply chains are essential to corporations such as Amazon and sometimes supply chains crash, etc. Even the drug dealers have started manufacturing their drugs in British Columbia instead of importing, supply chain issues and of course Customs.
Thanks for your comment.
This bit could have been omitted: “Sometimes I wonder if they’re all at the low end of the spectrum. They’re missing something in their character.”
It’s ableist; “missing something in their character” is not a hallmark of neuro divergence.
Great post, Mr. Walker. Thanks again for sharing your wisdom. You are absolutely right – trying to assess and evaluate media sources as wildly diverse as NewsMax TV and PBS Newshour, using the same grading scale, is absurd. It serves no purpose other than to smooth out the deviations. Let’s hope Donald Trump’s final exit from the American consciousness is very near!
If Bezos wants to be remembered as a great defender of the freedom of the press then he should create a private foundation to support the Washington Post independently and walk away from this. It is pocket change for him anyway.
I don’t trust the media at all. First define “media.” It is established national outlets that Bezos represents. Bezos pulling the endorsement magnified the editorial already written, that the WaPo people wanted Harris. There is a sameness that defies probability. They talk to one another. They manufacture a story at some level, and vary it. They ignore some glaring things, magnify minutiae to differentiate but are an oligopoly. Beyond chance probabilities. Local papers are on the ropes and largely choose feeds and write some local content – that being often their best. Video outlets? Simpler but there is Murdoch and others. Ratings drive TV and BIG web presences hinge on clicks sold. Why trust any of it at all, beyond seeing the sameness and having to dwell between the lines, the things not spoken, or universally spoken being its own story. It is supportive of the two party system. Which I also greatly distrust. Jeff has bigger fish to fry than WaPo, and put it under the bus in a way that magnified the staff bias toward Harris. Strange. And he took his paper and printed his statement. Words are cheap. Where WaPo goes from here to a future is something we separately watch and judge from this instance in time and action. But trust the media? It seems a yes/no question, with “sort of” being a crutch.
Please break up your comments into a few intelligible blocks. Good practices suggest a leading paragraph with an overview; the body with sufficient white space between the salient points; and then possibly an optional conclusion.
As soon as I see 20-30 run-on sentences within a single paragraph (and I read on a large desktop monitor), I stop trying. My old eyes can’t follow thousands of letters…..
With Trump’s recent threats to have Liz Cheney executed by firing squad the last part of the mask hiding the dictator are now off. I see the Bezo thing different than most, he is definitely trying to protect his life.I personally will not blame him for that By threatening a critic like Cheney he is threatening with death all his critics. I think the National Guard should be brought in to protect; voting places, drop boxes, etc
You’re telling me you think one of the richest of 700 billionaires fears for his life.
A man who could buy a small nation fears for his life.
A man with his own rockets fears for his life.
This insanely-wealthy man who fears for his life can reasonbly be expected to fuck with the largest economy’s democracy by way of screwing with its media days before an election.
What the fuck is wrong with you.
Sorry Rayne but Challenger is probably right. Dont like the actions Challenger then calls for, a bit over the top to handle the risk of stochastic threats, only real threats should recive that level of act.
Bezos is functioning on an idiot level, which has him playing and pulling punches for sick violent idiots.
If he was less of an idiot he wouldn’t be a rich mooch. But he wants to scam game on fwd.
His wealth comes from weighing largess on local bodies to extract subsidies. Its a dysfunctional model with giant potential for any fed up ripped off segment of the working class to truly see as robber baron activity and attack it.
MAGA brings weapons and weaponized tools and items places.
Jeff Bezos has a rich shiny head that screams ‘guilded spoils you’ll never have’.
Only a non-self-valuing person would miss the math, despite idiot agenda mindset. A healthy self-valuing person would get more honest. And see what Ed’s post points out, then fix that and live up to the WaPo slogan rather than subvert it.
We will see how much fire Jeff wants to keep tending and playing going fwd.
We’re not going back tho
“Bezos is functioning on an idiot level”
This I won’t argue with. But if you think Bezos — who could move Blue Origin offshore and build his own missiles — has a reasonable fear, get a grip.
“Jeff Bezos has a rich shiny head that screams ‘guilded spoils you’ll never have’.”
What the actual. Well-maintained male pattern baldness is not a sign of wealth when most white men have some degree of male pattern hair loss and hygiene is a matter of discipline.
Rayne
I am with you FWIW
Just to put some figures on this
As of October 2024
https://currentaffairs.adda247.com/richest-man-in-the-world/
Bezos is assessed the be the 4th wealthiest individual in the world with his Net Worth assessed to be $204.4bn
(Musk #1 $264bn)
To get a sense of how huge this wealth is
For a rough comparison with various countries’ GDPs
Ranked By GDP the list of 212 Countries in 2024 https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/by-gdp
at #56 Hungary $236bn
At #69 Venezuela $102.33 bn
At #116 Haiti $ 24.5bn
At # 179 Samoa $1.02 bn
At # 182 Tonga. $581 m
The GDPs of 17 out of 50 US States are less than Bezos net worth
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP#
Bezos capacity to insulate himself from stochastic terrorism is not easily matched. Any where by any private citizen.
Whether he could insulate himself from Putin style state organised interference with life and limb is a different story
Yup, you did the math. Bezos could fucking buy Trump.
The persons who have a reasonable fear of the outcome of the election are, in no particular order:
— women of childbearing age;
— persons of color;
— trans persons;
— lesbian and gay persons;
— undocumented persons;
— disabled persons;
— persons who still wear masks in public to protect themselves;
— persons who are members of non-Christian faiths;
— federal employees.
For starters. The threats are immediate and often living right next door, like the undisclosed MAGA living in the same neighborhood who has been itching to eliminate that person they hate who is one of the above.
In the case of women of childbearing age, they’re already dying because of what Trump did his first term.
Bezos has billions at his disposal to protect himself. The people above do not.
Another comparison
Estonia is ranked #100 on GDP at $43.49bn
Estonia’s 2024 defense budget is estimated to be $1.437bn which is 3.43% of its GDP.
That sum is 0.703% of Bezos net worth
Reply to SteveBev
November 1, 2024 at 1:50 pm
He could move to Estonia and hire the military to protect him, a country which has superior information security compared to the rest of its nordic neighbors and the EU.
He could even offer his Blue Origin rockets to a country like Estonia in exchange for security. Jeebus, this isn’t rocket science, just economics.
Rayne
November 1, 2024 at 1:32 pm
Indeed.
Bezos concerns are protecting his wealth and its capacity to grow; and he has made deliberate choices to smooth the path for such in advance, hoping to avoid unnecessary inconvenience.
Rayne
November 1, 2024 at 2:05 pm
If Bezos decided to spend $58.9bn so his net worth became equal to Warren Buffet (#6 in world $145.5bn) then Bezos could pay in advance an amount sufficient to cover 40 years worth of Estonia’s defence spending at current level
What is wrong with me is I believe Trump when he says he wants to be a a dictator. I think Trump worships Putin, and is probably on the phone with him right now. Putin routinely throws his dissenting oligarchs out windows, this is how he maintains his power over the richest class, the people with the most power who help him stay in power. Putin has just murdered six hundred thousand of his own people, for no reason in Ukraine, without a care. This is what dictators DO! In my opinion Putin is Trump’s role model. Trump sought violence against his own VP Pence on Jan6. He watched without a care as Capitol police were beaten, one tazed multiple times, into unconciousness, and multiple heart attacks. Have you forgotten about this? Here is a question for you. Do you think Trump is on the phone with Putin right now, and should that concern Jeff Bezos?
There do seem to be a number of Russian Oligarchs who fell out of windows.
Hence my caveat
“Whether he could insulate himself from Putin style state organised interference with life and limb is a different story”
LOL. Trump would love to see Democrats militarize voting places with the National Guard.
Threatening a critic like Liz Cheney is Trump attacking the remnant of the old Republican Party that remains anti-Trump. His usual, “Who me?”, approach, uses code to persuade others to do his dirty work. It hasn’t the slightest effect on billionaires, backers or not.
Also, it’s one more instance of him initiating a group fantasy of directing violence against an uppity woman. A “nasty woman.” A woman who opted not to stay in the place he defined for her.
It’s scary to witness how rabidly so many of our fellow Americans seize upon such fantasies and participate in them.
Emphasis on the implied “uppity” reserved almost exclusively for Black women.
Speaking of which, I should note how little concern Jeff Bezos had about WaPo’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2016. I suppose he had a problem with the endorsement of the more “uppity” woman candidate.
No Earl, I am suggesting a reasonable level of security, to protect against ballot box burning, and so voters and election workers can feel safe
That’s exactly what I am saying, you have it completely right. Don’t ask me if the threat is real, ask Liz Cheney. As far as Bezos kissing Trump’s ring, he did not,However Musk did kiss Trump’s Ass. Bezos oped words are a red herring. He could of published this headline. I WOULD HAVE ENDORSED KAMALA BUT I FEAR FOR MY LIFE. THis may have been more accurate and honest, but you see the problem with it
When the chips are down everyone has a different risk tolerance. I think there are more important topics like protecting the vote, the voting infrastructure, and election personnel
Learn how to use the Reply feature because this comment is not attached correctly.
Bezos kissed Trump’s ring? His ring?
Oh, Ed… Ed… Ed… you’re being far more polite here than I’d be…
And I beg to differ…
Bezos mostly likely sees the problem and is quite aware of what he’s doing.
Jeff’s gotta be worrying about his future.
Russian businessman falls from 11th story window in Moscow.
It’s a shocker for sure,and in a Polish tv public service announcement
Dorka she tells you straight up no chaser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEDZ2MyDq7c
Anyhow, the Russian upper crusties are worrying and waiting,
but nothing was the same after the bar burned down
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWoFkJYBlZQ
They’re not a particular wealthy or powerful Russian businessman if they are inside a building in Moscow.
They’re not a particularly wealthy or savvy businessman if Russian henchman can access them outside of Moscow.
They’re definitely not smart if they think being an executive for a Russian fossil fuel company will exempt them from defenestration.
Russians. They’re not Jeff Bezos, the third or fourth wealthiest human.
Yes Bezos has rockets, businesses and tons of money. So does Musk. They compete in some areas. Musk has tanked twitter to turn it into a propaganda and disinformation machine for Trump. Musk paid 44 billion for Twitter now reportedly it’s worth about 9 billion. Musk is all in on Trump. Musk wants to be a top guy in Trump’s dictatorship. Dictators take by force, businesses from owners and kill or imprison them. I don’t think there is anything here that Bezos doesn’t see. You know Putin, Trump, and Musk are all on a call right now discussing what? Plundering what companies, countries, not locker room talk, DICTATOR TALK
If this was a reply to a previous comment you missed attaching it correctly again.
You’ve made your
apologiapoint, you think Bezos is justified in kissing Trump’s ass because money. Now move on.