Wealthy, nude man fights the National Enquirer
Jeff Bezos is naked beneath his clothes. As are we all, so all hail Bezos, who isn’t overly bothered by the accusation of nudity. When the Amazon CEO refused to let the National Enquirer blackmail him with threats of making his private sex photos public, he struck a blow for everyone ever sexually tormented online.
On the other hand, look at the sight of me saluting the Down There of the world’s richest man. British journalist Marina Hyde brought the righteous back to Earth with a thump: “He may be the less unpleasant guy in this particular fight, but lol at people saluting Jeff Bezos’s ‘dignity’ when people who work for him sleep in tents and piss in bottles out of fear of being fired.”
On the other hand, there is no way for anyone to become a billionaire — or, in Bezos’s case, a squillionaire — without crushing other humans to a greater or lesser extent. Taxabhorring Amazon destroyed any number of small businesses — and big ones too in publishing, delivery and retailing — by creating a monopoly and doing what monopolies do by their very nature: evil.
On the other … I see I have run out of hands and we’re just getting started. Bezos privately owns the Washington Post, the most essential newspaper in the U.S. in this horrific era, and President Donald Trump bitterly resents them both. AMI (American Media Inc.), which owns the Enquirer, was trying to stop Bezos investigating how it got hold of the photos.
AMI wanted him to state, possibly in the Post, that there was no political reason for the Enquirer’s style of journalism. a.k.a. “Catch and Kill” or serially suppressing sexual scandal stories about Trump. The Enquirer was just in a mood not to enquire.
Same goes for AMI chair David Pecker, alleged to have done favours for the Saudi government for business reasons. Coincidentally surely, the Post’s coverage of the Saudi murder and tearing apart of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has been stellar. But Bezos wrote in his public statement on Medium.com that his investigation, particularly the Saudi angle, had made Pecker “apoplectic.”
Bezos also wrote this: “My stewardship of the Post and my support of its mission, which will remain unswerving, is something I will be most proud of when I’m 90 and reviewing my life, if I’m lucky enough to live that long, regardless of any complexities it creates for me.”
Bezos, who employs 600,000 people, has no moral sense. What he has is the same insecurity that plagues Trump and all humans. He wants to be admired. Bezos uses a good American newspaper to cloak himself in moral glory and Trump uses gilt, a great big presidential airplane and, eventually, a great big war but the motive is the same.
The odd thing is Bezos would probably like to be president, and Trump would like to be the richest man in the world. Yet they are unable to trade places. Is there no limit to male yearning? (Answer: there is no limit to male yearning.)
The vile Elon Musk wants to live on Mars, vengeful Peter Thiel wants to be forever young, and Mark Zuckerberg, puppeteer of billions, wants to be liked. None will succeed.
I only single out males because Betsy DeVos is infused with frightening wealth, and all she wants is to torment schoolkids, which is pretty easy to do in the U.S. Rich women’s dreams are crazy small. Adjacency money — bestowed by marriage or inheritance — seems to be a real blood-thinner.
Pecker, until recently a Postmedia board member, is just a guy named Pecker trying to overcome his surname instead of changing it (did you know that Ralph Lauren started out a Lifshitz?) and did the silliest thing you can do, explicitly threaten someone in writing. He was so used to bullying women who had sex with Trump that he thought Bezos, the man who rolls over entire nations with the Amazon machine, would break as easily as they had.
The truly astonishing thing is that AMI, demanding that Bezos grovel, didn’t even offer to destroy the photos it obtained by means as yet unknown for reasons not explained. Worse, it did this despite a plea deal with federal investigators looking into the Enquirer’s dealings with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen in which it had promised not to break the law.
In other words, Pecker, simultaneously goading Bezos and the U.S. southern district attorney in New York, has invited the wrath of god upon his head. Why? Fear of dismemberment?
The journalist Ronan Farrow says he too was threatened — “stop digging or we’ll ruin you” — by AMI. This makes me consider whether everyone, theoretically at least, is considered blackmailable over some personal secret.
The trick is not to care. As Jon Ronson, author of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, says thoughtfully of the Bezos story, rich people have the advantage, as do emotionally “leathery” people. As Pecker has discovered, wealth is the toughest leather of all.
“My stewardship of the Post and my support of its mission … is something I will be most proud of when I’m 90 and reviewing my life, if I’m lucky enough to live that long.” JEFF BEZOS AMAZON CEO, WASHINGTON POST OWNER