Living in a Post Washington Post World

Yesterday, The Washington Post, once a crown jewel of American news, was killed by its owner, Jeff Bezos. The method of execution was Greed in the guise of Sophomoric Philosophy. The Post was 146.

The reactions to Jeff Bezo’s defenestration of his newspaper’s reputation and place in American political life have ranged from sadness to anger, the stages of grief laid out in blogs and posts across the country. For those of us who grew up in the Washington area, and in politics, the offerings feel like obituaries, eulogies, and elegies; to my mind, accurate and appropriate.

The Salad Days

In my younger life, the Post was of course Watergate and Woodward and Bernstein. But it was also the place of Graham, Bradlee, Broder and Balz; of Quinn and Kornheiser. It was, despite its grand political status, very much a hometown newspaper for those of us cloistered and cossetted inside the Beltway.

As a kid, it was not just where I read the Orioles box scores (we didn’t have a team of our own) and read the Redskins recaps, but regularly saw my dad, Rich Galen, quoted alongside people who showed up to our house for weekened dinner parties. In a more recent time, I’ve been lucky enough to have my own work published there a few times.

I don’t get nostalgic very often, but Bezos’ actions put me in a reflective mood. Like Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, at its the Post was willing to take a chance on the 1st Amendment, stood up to presidents before the Supreme Court, and uncovered for the country and the world what we needed to know.

Mrs. Graham and her team didn’t have to do any of that. They chose to take on the mantle of the Fourth Estate because they believed that a healthy, vibrant, independent press was not just necessary, but essential to a functioning and functional democracy, just as much as Congress debating legislation across town.

When Bezos bought the paper in 2013 it was the end of an era, the passing of a torch, the torturing of one more cliche. Billionaire buys newspaper. What’s next? Maybe an NFL team? The reality of his purchase was far more prosaic:

He’s an overheated nerd who wanted to protect his government software contracts.

After he took ownership, I was consistently confused by why, even when the Post was losing money, nothing unusual about that now, he’d still make the bosses conduct layoffs. Rather than holding up the Post as a sacred trust, he saw it as just one more asset. I guess you don’t get to be the richest man in the world (at the time) by standing on principle.

A Change Is Gonna Has Come

With last year’s messy introduction of Murdoch-trained hoods into the Post’s leadership, it was clear that one more Washington institution, like the Republican Party of my earlier career, was well and truly gone. Longtime leadership, reporters, and editors have left for other outlets or resigned outright.

Last year, Bezos blocked the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris resulting in approximately 250,000 readers to hit ‘unsubscribe.’ Last month, cartoonist

Ann Telnaes

left after sketch depicting Bezos and other mini-me types bowing before Trump was spiked. She promptly left and launched a successful Substack.

So Jeff’s message to staff this week, though odious, is not surprising. The opinion pages of the Post, he wrote, will now focus on, “on the support and defense of two pillars: Personal liberty and free markets.”

Further, he wrote: “We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.”

Politics, Economics and Philsophy

The Post is closed for business. Period. Full stop. While he mentions only the opinion pages, Bezos’ hand-picked goon, Will Lewis, will ensure that the day-to-day coverage of the Trump Administration, Leon Musk, and the rest of the MAGA rat’s nest will be given every benefit of every doubt. They’ll put Peter Doocy to shame with their fawning before long.

Bezos’ focus on ‘individual liberty’ and ‘free markets’ is 2025 code for: I’ll do what I want, when I want, how I want (unless Trump doesn’t like it.) It’s also self-serving. Amazon is monopolistic across myriad industries and there are still those sweet Pentagon and GSA contracts for Amazon Web Services.

Funny how so many of these ‘free market’ absolutists rely on billions of OUR dollars and government action (or inaction) to protect their business from that pesky word, what is it…oh yeah, competition.

Let me talk ‘individual liberty’ for a second. He and the other broligarchs are stuck on page 344 of Atlas Shrugged and imagine themselves as modern-day Hank Reardons and John Galts. Wealth is no object for them at this point so now they’re looking for power and adulation.

They’re all stuck in the freshman philosophy at Standford and think they’re recreating history with their neo-monarchist, reactionary bullshit when the truth is, Bezos, like Musk, Andreesen, Thiel, and Zuckerberg will always be the weird guys no one wanted to hang out with. We’re the victims of their chronic Low-T and self-consciousness.

The loss of another American institution is no surprise. The Huns have taken Rome and they’re knocking down everything in their way. Bezos is nothing new or special throughout history, just one more guy who, when he had the chance, chose himself over the greater good. Someone said the other day, “What good is fuck you money if you never say ‘fuck you?’”

News and Notes:

Here are a couple of the pieces I wrote for the Post over the years.

Republicans, It’s Time to Choose (October 2020)

The Fight Against Trumpism is Just Beginning (December 2020)

Check out my latest podcast conversation with author Katherine Stewart about her new book covering Christian Nationalism, the New Right, and its dismantling of American instutitions and democracy.

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