Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

T R E 4 5 O N

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

So many bastards, so little time.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

When I was faster i was always behind.

You are here: Home / Interesting Development

Reader Interactions

102Comments

  5. 5.

    JPL

    Mr. Bezos, Please move George Will to the sports section and let him bloviate about baseball.

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    Also, too, apparently this is the season for spinning off newspapers; the NYT sold off the Boston Globe a few days ago, netting a few percent of the ~billion dollars they originally paid for it.

  8. 8.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Oh, I think Rubin and Cohen are perfectly OK with Bezos.

    The question is, did he just buy Pravda on the Potomac, or Kaplan overall? Did Kaplan dump the Post, get rid of the loss leader?

    BTW, the site is still not remembering my name or email address. Forgets it every time I change threads, in fact.

  9. 9.

    NickT

    @PsiFighter37:

    Item #1 reallocate 1 Rubin unit to Amazon order fulfillment facility in East Bumfuck, SC
    Item #2 reallocate 1 Cillizza unit to individual alternative entrepreneurial opportunities
    Item #3 oh screw it, let’s just shutter the joint

  10. 10.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Also, Tina Brown’s Beast thing is dumping Newsweek — which used to be owned by the Washington Post.

    Journalism, thy name is lncest.

  12. 12.

    piratedan

    from what i’ve read it’s Bezos himself (i.e. not Amazon) that bought only the paper, not the entire Kaplan poopoo platter of offerings

  14. 14.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Oh, the Newsmax headlines are hilarious.

    “Priebus Warns NBC, CNN: Pull Hillary Projects or Else”

    Like anyone is afraid of that sniveling little sack of shit.

  17. 17.

    Elizabelle

    And please do not let the Koch brothers anywhere near the LA Times.

    I still value that paper. Subscribe digitally to It and the NYTimes.

    Was thinking today we can get by without the WaPost, but may stick around in event WP improves.

  18. 18.

    Elizabelle

    I wonder if you’ll get better writers because Bezos can help push their books out with his other company?

    Quick: name a WaPost reporter OTHER than Dana Priest, who is rarely present.

    Can you?

  19. 19.

    Burnspbesq

    If Bezos thinks he’s going to sell me a Kindle by limiting the availability of the WaPo on other platforms … fuhgedaboudit.

  20. 20.

    The Moar You Know

    Well, he can’t make it any worse than it already is.

    Will probably hire more conservative commentators.

    You know, for balance!

    @Nemo_N: I should add that Bezos is a libertarian of the vilest order, about as far from a liberal as it’s possible to get, so yeah, maybe it can get worse.

  22. 22.

    MazeDancer

    Purchase did not include “WaPo Lab’s digital development operation”.

    As said in other thread, if a rich guy can control what DC reads every morning, why not do it? He’s worth 25 Billion.

  24. 24.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Elizabelle: Did not read it.
    I posted this on a dead thread yesterday, but Brad DeLong’s pimping of Summers for the Fed Chairman position is iffy, considering that he has been a co-authored many papers with Summers. Conflicts of interests he has them. Has he addressed this on his blog?

  25. 25.

    PeakVT

    It’s interesting that Bezos bought the WaPo personally, instead of incorporating it into Amazon where he could have subsidized it as a loss-leader without anyone complaining. As a personal property, I think he will be less inclined to run it at a loss, for better or worse.

  28. 28.

    The Moar You Know

    Oh, the Newsmax headlines are hilarious.

    “Priebus Warns NBC, CNN: Pull Hillary Projects or Else”

    Like anyone is afraid of that sniveling little sack of shit.

    @Villago Delenda Est: By Friday: “NBC and CNN Clinton biopics pulled.” I will bet my last dollar on it.

  29. 29.

    Quicksand

    @PeakVT:

    It’s interesting that Bezos bought the WaPo personally, instead of incorporating it into Amazon where he could have subsidized it as a loss-leader without anyone complaining.

    Is “howling outrage” not considered complaining?

  31. 31.

    Quaker in a Basement

    Why? Did he just run out of places to keep his money and decided to pound a few million down a rathole?

  32. 32.

    Spaghetti Lee

    @The Moar You Know:

    OK, I guess that answers my question.There is no more reliable source of awful ideas wrapped in awful prose than self-proclaimed genius libertarians.

  33. 33.

    Amir Khalid

    @JPL:
    Or make Will a rock music critic. After all, this is the guy who called the song Born In The USA “a grand, cheerful affirmation”.

  36. 36.

    reflectionephemeral

    Seems like good news. I’ll roll the dice with a billionaire’s whims over WaPo as a reputation- and money-shedding-losing subsidiary of Kaplan.

    I would love to see where Sally Quinn and Richard Cohen wind up plying their craft, if they wind up being rightsized in all of this.

  37. 37.

    beltane

    @Betty Cracker: It would be rude not to spare a thought for Sally Quinn. Jeff Bezos is as rich as they come but he might not be housebroken to Ms. Quinn’s standards. There is the possibility he’llt trash the place or something.

  38. 38.

    Roger Moore

    @JPL:

    Mr. Bezos, Please move George Will to the sports section and let him bloviate about baseball.

    As a baseball fan, let me say, “Hell No!” He’s as bad when writing about baseball as when he’s writing about politics. Maybe worse, since as a minority owner of the Orioles he has an obvious conflict of interest.

  39. 39.

    becca

    Poor Sally Quinn.

    The Social Register of her heyday is finally dead and buried. I’m sending her some sympathy jonquils.

  40. 40.

    beltane

    Where does Bezos stand on I/P issues? Will Charles Krauthammer still have a job at WaPo?

  43. 43.

    Violet

    Jeff Bezos buying the WaPo is just another sign of our return to the Robber Baron days. Rich people want or need news organizations to be the mouthpiece for their beliefs. They either buy them or create them. Bezos saw an opportunity.

  44. 44.

    dedc79

    Maybe amazon prime members will be offered the option of customizing the Op/Ed page (ie excluding every columnist other than Eugene Robinson and EJ Dionne)

  45. 45.

    Anne Laurie

    Mr. Bezos addresses the WaPo employees:

    So, let me start with something critical. The values of The Post do not need changing. The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners. We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads, and we’ll work hard not to make mistakes. When we do, we will own up to them quickly and completely.

    I won’t be leading The Washington Post day-to-day. I am happily living in “the other Washington” where I have a day job that I love. Besides that, The Post already has an excellent leadership team that knows much more about the news business than I do, and I’m extremely grateful to them for agreeing to stay on.

    I prefer the Post to the NYT. This development does not make me hopeful.

  46. 46.

    PsiFighter37

    In all honesty, though, this seems to be a money-losing proposition unless Bezos has some kind of tie-in that would work with the Kindle. Newspapers are selling for cents on the dollar these days.

  48. 48.

    Violet

    @Anne Laurie: That’s exactly the kind of thing that gets said in every corporate takeover–current leadership team is excellent, we have the highest confidence in them, no changes expected…until things change. And they always do.

  50. 50.

    David in NY

    I think that if Bezos’s personal politics affect the Post, we’re all going to be sorry to learn what “libertarian” really means.

  51. 51.

    Jack the Second

    I assume if he wanted to run a profitable business, he wouldn’t have bought a newspaper.

    He could run it at an annual loss of $25 million out of pocket for the next 30 years, and in total he would have spent 4% of his net worth.

  54. 54.

    fuckwit

    @Violet: The 1%, up in their crib.

    @The Moar You Know: Yep, that’s what I’ve always considered him to be. BTW another commeter in another thread noted that he gave some substantial money for marriage equality, so he’s a California Glibertarian: could probably hope to see WaPo turn more liberal on personal issues but expect it to turn even more fully Robber Baron on economic ones.

  56. 56.

    Chris

    OT: apparently, John McCain looked into Abdel al-Sissi (new Egyptian military leader)’s eyes and saw his soul.

    While I hate all Republican politicians… McCain just sucks.

  57. 57.

    Suffern ACE

    @PsiFighter37: it’s not about the money. I don’t think this is going to change much. How is this different from the Waltons buying the paper?

  58. 58.

    Botsplainer

    Hahahhaha!!!!

    He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the Swiss 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland.[27] He is a member of the Executive Committee of The Business Council for 2011 and 2012.[28]

    The nutballs are going to be apoplectic.

  59. 59.

    PeakVT

    @Quicksand: Amazon’s financial reporting is somewhat opaque from what I understand, but the Kindle is clearly a loss leader at this point. The company’s share price hasn’t exactly suffered from either factor. So I doubt shareholders would care if he ran the WaPo at a loss within Amazon. What other people would think about that wouldn’t matter.

    But that’s not the case, so I think WaPo employees have a bit more to worry about given the way Bezos decided to structure the purchase.

  60. 60.

    Botsplainer

    @Arthur Salm:

    The Post cost Bezos just 1% of his net worth ($25 billion). I’m trying to get my mind around that and not even coming close.

    Clearly, somebody needs a tax cut. The price should have been much less as a percentage of his net worth.

  61. 61.

    Steeplejack

    @beltane:

    There is the possibility he’ll trash the place or something.

    And it’s not even his place! Oh, wait. Yeah, it is.

  62. 62.

    Cluttered Mind

    @PeakVT: I disagree that he won’t run it at a loss. How long did Rev. Moon run the Washington Times at a loss for? Some people don’t consider it a loss to lose money on a newspaper if they’re getting their message out for the money.

  63. 63.

    Botsplainer

    @JPL:

    Mr. Bezos, Please move George Will to the sports section and let him bloviate about baseball.

    I already don’t read him. That little move would make me not read him even less, which creates mathematical singularities in the multiverse.

  64. 64.

    Elizabelle

    @Violet:

    I suspect you’re right re Robber Barons, or “Glibertarian Barons who finally can afford to collect sales tax”, but I shall be hopeful.

  65. 65.

    Rabble Arouser

    I think we can expect the paper to move even farther to the right, and if there are any pro-labor voices left at WaPo, they might as well clean out their desks now to save the hassle later on. If anything, I’ll bet Jeff doubles down on the Rubins and Cillizzas of the world once this fishwrap is his.

  66. 66.

    Scotius

    I’d love for all the pundits there to have to re-apply for their jobs and make a business case for how they add to the WP’s bottom line. I’m looking at you, Richard Cohen.

  67. 67.

    Belafon

    @PeakVT: According to the google, Amazon sells the Kindle at cost, and it made $565 million in profits last year on stuff sold on the kindle. That’s also why it releases software to run on other devices like android, windows, and ipad.

  69. 69.

    Elizabelle

    @Scotius:

    make a business case for how they add to the WP’s bottom line.

    Never mind the bottom line.

    I would ask that the columnists, and all reporters, be accurate and factual, and provide context for their reporting. Be journalists and truth tellers.

    Not just — you know, stenography and page views over rightwing-appeasing headlines that might not fit the actual published story that well.

    Which is what Post digital dishes up, day after day after day.

  71. 71.

    Hungry Joe

    @Botsplainer: Goddam &^%*# header used my real name instead Hungry Joe — I have to re-enter it practically every time I post something, and this time, like a complete fool, I typed my real name — and who, after all, EVER TYPES HIS REAL NAME WHERE IT SAYS ‘NAME’? I don’t mind people knowing who Hungry Joe is — it links to my book’s website, after all — but others might be accidentally outed as well. Can’t this be fixed?

  72. 72.

    Arclite

    @Anne Laurie: Well, of course he’s going to say that publicly. But I’m sure there will be behind the scenes changes for better or worse. You don’t buy something like WaPo without ideas about how to mold it into some ideal you hold. What that is exactly remains to be seen.

    EDIT: Violet beat me to it.

  74. 74.

    NotMax

    Why does the line “I think it might be fun to run a newspaper” from Citizen Kane keep ringing inside the head?

  75. 75.

    Shalimar

    Over a decade ago, I was making a living by buying books at thrifts and book sales and reselling them on Amazon. They had a sterling reputation, everyone drooled over their customer service, so I couldn’t figure out why they treated the sellers in their program so poorly. It was constant lies, obfuscation and bullshit for even the tiniest problem, and I swear to this day that they had a program that limited which used books customers could see when they were browsing, to limit sales to individual resellers (I assume like a credit limit, to limit losses should that reseller fail to fulfill orders).

    I would save up hundreds of high demand books to list at one time to test this theory, then track sales in detail to see any changes from normal patterns. The results were what you would expect, my sales spiked to 10 or more times normal with all the new top sellers available, then went down gradually hour by hour over the next few days as most of them sold. Except there would be long periods in the middle with no sales at all, like access had been shut off when a sales limit was reached and then turned back on after enough other resellers had matched or beaten my prices for some of those books. Anyway, I’m not a mathematician so I can’t prove any of this, just show very suggestive data. And it was a long time ago, so I no longer really care. They are a huge company, they can do whatever they want.

    While I was worrying about this, though, I did read the first biography of Amazon’s growth and also read everything I could find online about the company. There was a lot about Bezos, how he had studied booksellers to find out how best to operate, and created an Amazon ethos from that, customer service first, the customer is always right, etc, etc. The fascinating thing I found from reading Amazon’s mission statement is that it basically was a bunker , “Us against the World” mentality, Yes, the customer was always right, but they were also part of “them”. You could say anything you want to “them” as long as it assuaged their anger. There was no mention of honesty anywhere in the mission statement or even in the biography.

    This always struck me, you can’t trust Amazon to be honest because honesty isn’t even part of their vocabulary. They would say anything they had to so you would stop complaining. Truth was whatever they needed it to be at the time. And now the founder of this ethos owns one of the premier newspapers in the country. Joy.

  78. 78.

    ericblair

    @Scotius:

    I’d love for all the pundits there to have to re-apply for their jobs and make a business case for how they add to the WP’s bottom line. I’m looking at you, Richard Cohen.

    I’m hoping we get a real public clusterfuck of a war between The Village and Left Coast Glibertopia. Up till now, they don’t seem to have interfered with each other much: the Village being concerned with the proper selection of dinner forks, and the Bay Area libertoonians not caring where you’re from as long as you can build the next big app (well, as long as you went to Stanford, duh). It’s the Professor versus Thurston Howell III, if the Professor had about a thousand times as much money as Thurston.

  79. 79.

    burnspbesq

    Bezos = Kane. “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.”

    Who’s going to be his Leland, his Bernstein, his Rosebud.

  80. 80.

    MazeDancer

    @Shalimar:

    All well said. Interesting post.

    On the other hand, Bezos at least believes in reading.

    It’s possible, since he bought it for himself, not as an Amazon division, that he thinks this is a “do good” project. Preserve the Fourth Estate kind of thing.

    Or maybe he just wants to have dinner parties with the people in charge of our gov. And lobby for whatever it is he wants. No taxation via pixel representation?

  81. 81.

    Scotius

    @ericblair:

    t’s the Professor versus Thurston Howell III, if the Professor had about a thousand times as much money as Thurston.

    I’m rooting for casualties, myself.

  84. 84.

    Scotius

    @beltane:

    Maybe Jeff Bezos will be the Silvio Berlusconi America has been waiting for.

    Good news for any unemployed under age hookers.

  85. 85.

    Shalimar

    @MazeDancer:

    On the other hand, Bezos at least believes in reading.

    He really doesn’t. Bezos picked books to start his company because he thought they would be the easiest product to develop a reputation with and compete online against established brick and mortar stores. From the beginning, he had a vision of what Amazon would later be, not just a small startup bookseller. There was nothing in his biography about him personally caring about reading. He studied and charmed the existing booksellers like any good narcissist with a goal would. He also expanded rapidly beyond books as soon as he was able to.

  86. 86.

    Spaghetti Lee

    @Scotius:

    I’d love for all the pundits there to have to re-apply for their jobs and make a business case for how they add to the WP’s bottom line.

    “I have people skills. I am good at dealing with people. Can’t you idiots UNDERSTAND THAT? WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?!”

  87. 87.

    AdamK

    One noble family has sold their vanity rag to another noble lord. Let us all bend over and make kissysucky noises.

  88. 88.

    Citizen_X

    So, he’s destroyed bookstores, and now he’s moved on to finally putting a stake through the heart of the newspaper business?

  89. 89.

    PsiFighter37

    @beltane: Don’t think he’s had enough plastic surgery to match the magnificent forehead that Silvio has going for him…at least not yet.

  90. 90.

    p.a.

    Well Amazon doesn’t have an operating profit, so buying a newspaper is a natural. If he does dump Rubin (early Christmas!) which neocon welfare carnival will she end up at? If he dumps Rubin and Cohen will the New Republic call him an anti-dentite?

  92. 92.

    Elizabelle

    Was it Violet, if memory serves, who said our problem is the country has a center-right PRESS (not necessarily that the country is center-right)?

    She is so correct.

    Fact: today’s WaPost headlining Style article was about Liz Cheney, daughter in waiting, who’s running to unseat Wyoming GOP Senator Mike Enzi.

    It was a suckup piece (but not totally), replete with photo of Liz Cheney waving at a political convention, swaddled infant son in her other arm. (Subliminal: “Our gals is fecund and true Americans.”)

    Although:

    In her campaign-launch video, she says it is time for new blood in the Senate. “Instead of cutting deals with the president’s liberal allies, we should be opposing them every step of the way,” she says.

    Just what we need. More obstruction. She’s running to the right of Enzi.

    And the Post did snarkily report she does not yet qualify for a “prized” Wyoming hunting license.

    She has not lived there 365 consecutive days.

    Take that, carpetbagger.

  93. 93.

    kindness

    Initially I thought new management at the WaPo had to be better than what we have. Then I thought how Bezos is a somewhat self important Randian greedy bastard (and yes I do buy things on Amazon from time to time knowing that).

    Soooo, tossup unless he comes in and immediately fires Jen Rubin (and 5 other columnists). Then he’d be a real nice change.

  97. 97.

    trollhattan

    Will allow myself to pray that Jenny, Chuckie and George-George will be set afloat on an iceberg assigned to craft the paper’s editorial stance WRT climate change.

    As to what our oligarchy is up to, I guess this is still better than how Ellison squanders his billyuns.

  98. 98.

    Kay

    This might be good. If they all start getting treated like Amazon warehouse workers, we may get a less monied-suckup viewpoint.
    Jennifer better get herself a window air conditioning unit. The warehouse workers pass out a lot.
    Step up production, Talent, and remember, you’re TALENT not WORKERS.

  99. 99.

    liberal

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    I used to read BDL’s blog all the time, then eventually gave it up. Two things really turned me off: he respected Alan Greenspan, and he’d routinely censor comments (from both right and left) for no good reason. Basically, a dick.

  102. 102.

    David Koch

    @p.a.:

    Well Amazon doesn’t have an operating profit, so buying a newspaper is a natural.

    You always read and hear about earnings, earnings, earnings, and here is a company that doesn’t have earning yet it’s worth billions.

Comments are closed.