{"id":45447,"date":"2025-12-05T16:03:31","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T00:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=45447"},"modified":"2025-12-05T16:03:32","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T00:03:32","slug":"jeff-bezoss-very-own-editorial-page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/12\/05\/jeff-bezoss-very-own-editorial-page\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Bezos\u2019s very own editorial page"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Meyerson on TAP<\/strong> (Prospect.org)

The Washington Post\u2019s new editorialists have turned the page over to screeds defending not just laissez-faire capitalism but Bezos himself.<\/em>Shortly after he installed some longtime Rupert Murdoch polemicists to the top posts at\u00a0The Washington Post<\/em>, Jeff Bezos\u2014the paper\u2019s sole owner\u2014also announced that the paper\u2019s editorial pages would no longer feature a diversity of viewpoints, but become instead a megaphone for laissez-faire capitalism. In the months since, the paper has hemorrhaged talent from nearly all its departments, though its news coverage remains sharp and essential reading for anyone interested in current affairs.

The same cannot be said of its editorial pages, where the mass eviction of columnists and editorial writers has laid waste to what once was an essential read as well. To be sure, there\u2019s still a kick in reading George Will\u2019s indictments of the Trumpified Republicans\u2019 failure to live up to Will\u2019s 18th-century standards for governmental adequacy, and Kathleen Parker\u2019s laments over MAGA\u2019s failures to live up to genteel Carolinian decency. But for any readers who were simply anticipating a general carbon copy of\u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u2019s editorial jihads against regulation and social insurance, the new Bezos-ized\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>editorials are also bizarrely personal in a way that the\u00a0Journal<\/em>\u2019s commentary is not.

By that, I mean that a large percentage of\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>editorials actually read as defenses of Bezos himself; some even seem to have been written by Amazon\u2019s founder. Yes, there are generic,\u00a0Journal-<\/em>esque anti-worker rants (in the past month, for instance, calling for the privatization of\u00a0air traffic controllers<\/u><\/a>\u00a0and the deunionization of the\u00a0Department of Veterans Affairs<\/u><\/a>), but what really stands out are the Bezos-specific pieces.

Consider: In just the past three weeks, the\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>has run two editorials against wealth taxes:\u00a0one<\/u><\/a>\u00a0explaining why Swiss voters were right in rejecting one wealth tax proposal that would have obliterated what the\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>called the nation\u2019s \u201cstable and predictable business climate\u201d; the\u00a0other<\/u><\/a>\u00a0excoriating a proposed California ballot measure (for which signature gathering has yet to begin) that would impose a one-time wealth tax to enable the state to preserve residents\u2019 Medicaid coverage that was eliminated by Trump\u2019s One Big Beautiful Bill. Neither editorial mentioned that Bezos is the third- or fourth-wealthiest human on the planet and the hit he\u2019d take if wealth taxes were widely adopted.

Or consider an\u00a0editorial<\/u><\/a>\u00a0that the\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>ran last week on the subject of Black Friday shopping. \u201cBlack Friday used to be ugly,\u201d the editorial began, citing out-of-control shoppers mobbing stores and roughing up retail sales workers. \u201cNot a good look for capitalism,\u201d the\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>lamented.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFortunately,\u201d the\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>continued, \u201cthings have changed. Now, people don\u2019t expect to see customers shoving each other on Black Friday. In fact, they don\u2019t expect to see them at all. People can shop online, at a discount, from the comfort of their own homes.\u201d In any other paper, Bezos would have to pay for that Amazon ad copy to run in its pages; in the case of this editorial, he prepaid when he bought the paper. Why the editorial editors think such ad copy is suitable for posting as the paper\u2019s own considered opinion is not readily apparent. If Bezos dictated the piece over the phone to them, they might have the decency to say so.

The solicitude that the editorial pages show to Bezos isn\u2019t limited to direct defenses of his wealth and hosannas to his retailer\u2019s moneymaking acumen. Political threats to Bezos\u2019s fortunes have been grist for the\u00a0Post<\/em>\u2019s mill as well. In addition to the countless anti-Mamdani editorials they ran\u2014way more, I suspect, than any other paper not based in New York\u2014they also took it upon themselves to\u00a0go after Katie Wilson<\/u><\/a>, the newly elected socialist mayor of Seattle, Amazon\u2019s historic home base. Wilson had been involved in previous campaigns to raise taxes on that trillion-dollar company, and as the editorial complained, had just successfully campaigned on a platform including raising progressive taxes that would, as the\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>put it, \u201cforce residents of Seattle to pay for \u2018free\u2019 child care and other goodies.\u201d (Why it\u2019s reasonable for taxpayers to fund education and care for children aged 5 through 18 and socialistic for taxpayers to fund education and care for children aged 1 through 4\u2014their most formative and impressionable years\u2014is something that\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>editorialists and their ilk invariably fail to explain.)

Wilson\u2019s reasons for favoring free, universal child care had to be personal, the\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>insisted. \u201cWho is Wilson?\u201d the\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>asked\u2014and answered: \u201cShe does not own a car. She lives in a rented 600-square-foot apartment with her husband and two-year-old daughter. By her own account, she depends on checks from her parents back east to cover expenses. To let them off the hook\u201d was the reason she favored free child care, the editorialists concluded.

Coming from an editorial page that prioritizes the personal concerns of the paper\u2019s owner\u2014extolling the company in which he\u2019s the largest shareholder, defending him from the specter of wealth taxes and elected officials who favor such taxes, even if in a city that\u2019s more than 2,700 miles from the paper\u2019s office and reader base\u2014attacking Wilson for being one of the allegedly self-interested poor is, well, rich.

However doctrinaire the\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0<\/em>editorialists may be, at least they don\u2019t view their primary mission to be the defense of Rupert Murdoch. Would the same could be said of the\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>and Jeff Bezos.

\u2013HAROLD MEYERSON<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meyerson on TAP (Prospect.org) The Washington Post\u2019s new editorialists have turned the page over to screeds defending not just laissez-faire capitalism but Bezos himself.Shortly after he installed some longtime Rupert Murdoch polemicists to the top posts at\u00a0The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos\u2014the paper\u2019s sole owner\u2014also announced that the paper\u2019s editorial pages… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45447"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45448,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45447\/revisions\/45448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}