We’re done, Jeff.
For a while, I found you irresistible.
Anything I wanted, you’d bring it to my door, sometimes within 24 hours.
I needed to send a gift, you’d do it for me: no trip to the mall, no wrapping or packing, no waiting in line at the post office.
I wanted to read books in a land where there were very few books in my language. You sent me a digitized version of whatever book I wanted and an electronic device to read it on.
I wanted to watch an old movie. You delivered it to my TV in less time than it took me to pop corn.
You were like a genie: My every wish was your command.
It’s true that I paid you for all that you did for me, but you were totally worth it – until October 2024. That was when you became meddlesome.
Eleven years prior, with the same ease with which I bought wind-up jumping chicks and bunnies for my granddaughters from you ($8.99), you bought the Washington Post for $250 million.
At the time, you promised that you would treat your new acquisition more like a wall-hanging – bang in a nail, hang it up, leave it be – than like a plaything. By all accounts, you were true to your word, leaving the journalism to the journalists.
Then, a month before the 2024 election, you took the wall-hanging off the wall and started futzing with it. You effectively marched into the Post’s offices, ripped an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president out of the typewriter, crumpled it into a ball and tossed it in the trash.
I wasn’t as incensed as a lot of readers. I had thought for a while that candidate endorsements undermine news organizations’ claims of being free of bias. But your timing was fishy: It looked like you didn’t care so much about safeguarding the Post’s independence as you did about currying favor with Donald Trump.
Those suspicions were confirmed when you donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee and then occupied a front-row seat at the swearing-in ceremony. To see you, Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Sam Altman (Open AI), Tim Cook (Apple), Sundar Pichai (Google) and Sergey Brin (also Google) cozying up to the new president was deeply disappointing. You guys have power that could counterbalance Trump’s power. But when push came to shove, you neither pushed nor shoved; you groveled.
And your newspaper began groveling as well, first by killing an editorial cartoon that showed you and your tech bro buddies groveling, then by adopting a new editorial policy. Henceforth, you decreed, the Post’s opinion pages should focus on “personal liberties and free markets.”
Those values may not seem objectionable in themselves – though it sounds like democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani would not be asked to submit guest commentaries. It’s dictating what should and should not appear on those opinion pages that’s objectionable.
Each of these actions – killing the Harris endorsement, killing the Ann Telnaes cartoon, changing the paper’s editorial philosophy – triggered a wave of subscription cancellations. I remained loyal. Not to you, Jeff. I’d already fallen out of love with you. But to all the talented reporters and editors who continued to tell me what was going on in the world.
Then came the Jan. 3 editorial that heaped praise on the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Key words and phrases from that valentine: “success,” “triumph,” “major victory,” “celebrate,” “good news.”
About 8,000 readers posted responses. Few expressed sympathy for Maduro. Most objected to American thuggishness — and to the Post’s endorsement of it. And so came another wave of subscription cancellations.
Now we learn that your company (over)paid $40 million for the rights to “Melania” and is spending another $35 million to promote it. Meanwhile, you’re cutting staff at the Post. Not a good look.
Don’t you get tired of selling your soul, Jeff? I’m tired of helping you do it. So: No more Post. No more push-button films, books or gifts.
I know you won’t miss me as much as I’ll miss you. I read “War and Peace” on my Kindle during the season I spent in Ukraine. I just enjoyed a mini-Jack Nicholson film fest in my living room (“Five Easy Pieces” and “Chinatown” were just as good as I remember). And that Kohler Canister Valve Replacement Kit you sent me for my toilet in 2017 brings joy even now.
But of the three ways we non-bazillionaires can fight the power — vote, protest, boycott — boycott might be the most effective. As you know better than most, money doesn’t just talk, it roars.
Boycotts are hard, though: They entail sacrifice and inconvenience – tough sells to us consumption- and convenience-loving Americans. (An online search turns up plenty of alternatives to Amazon. One that caught my eye was Ethical Consumer.)
But if folks in Minneapolis can brave ICE and ice, surely some of Amazon’s 300 million customers can say, “Be gone, Bezos.”
As for the other tech foes: Zuckerberg, you’re next. Farewell, Facebook. Nothing but Bluesky from now on.
