Close reading Jeff Bezos
James Wood on "personal liberties and free markets" at The Washington Post
When a text helplessly screams to be interpreted, a literary critic may sometimes be needed to put the poor thing out of its incoherent misery.
On Wednesday, February 26, Jeff Bezos announced such an extraordinary shift of policy at The Washington Post that the editor of the opinions section of the newspaper, David Shipley, resigned rather than enact it. The doxa of the diktat are grotesque enough. But the wording of Bezos’s text may be, if anything, even more alarming than its contents. Here’s what Bezos wrote:
I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. 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.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t “hell yes,” then it had to be “no.” After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision. We’ll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.
I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.
Like everyone else, I’m struck by the wild contradiction of these so-called two pillars — “personal liberties and free markets” — which blaringly oppose each other, and wouldn’t support the flimsiest Whole Foods branch, let alone the solid edifice of a once-distinguished newspaper. Presumably, if one supports “personal liberties” as fanatically as Bezos says he does, then such support might run to — oh, I don’t know — the personal liberty to write the occasional opinion piece critical of “free markets.” You have to wonder what such liberty could meaningfully amount to, if all it is allowed to do is trumpet its own virtues (“I’m such a strong pillar!”), or trumpet the virtues of its brother, the free market (“You’re such a strong pillar!”). Freedom is ethical and “minimizes coercion,” preaches Bezos, while he busily coerces liberty itself. Coerced liberty has been given its marching orders. Actual liberty must go elsewhere: “Viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.” When I first read this sentence I tripped up, mistaking it for some menacing sign straight out of Animal Farm: “Viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be punished by others.”
Bezos’s text about freedom is so terribly good at minimizing freedom. Look at the rampant illogic of his second paragraph: in the old days, he says, newspapers used to bring you a broad range of opinions (something, actually, that one might traditionally have thought of as the free market of ideas). But, Bezos continues — as he goes about casually killing off the newspaper’s fusty old raison d’être — that’s better done nowadays by the internet. End of paragraph. He doesn’t complete the thought, but the logic seems to be: because you can get the (old-fashioned) broad range of ideas amidst the freedom of that great new marketplace known as the internet, it’s time for The Washington Post to restrict the freedom and range of its offerings, all the while trumpeting the paramount importance of freedom. Bezos assures us — assures Donald Trump, one imagines — that he is “of America and for America, and proud to be so.” (Good for him. Who doubted it?) America didn’t get where it is “by being typical.” In the same breath, he asserts that what essentially typifies America is its great commitment to non-coercive freedom — which is why the Post needs to be, going forward, less free. And it’s why, in this great spirit of freedom, I offered my opinion editor, whom I greatly admire, an entirely coercive choice: either you’re 100 percent with us, or I must assume you are against us. After “careful consideration,” our esteemed opinion editor decided to “step away.”
Rather swiftly, one imagines: “Hell, no.”
From start to finish, Bezos’s curious announcement is an exercise in defensive and gaudy propaganda, and thus a sadly “typical” text of our moment — a text that announces, in the hoarse tones of a politician at the hustings, how essential freedom is, while violating it in both logic and deed. Bezos can pull this off because his announcement isn’t really, despite its protestations, a document about freedom at all; it’s a document about freedom as a commodity. When he writes that his new twin pillars will be “personal liberties and free markets,” we’ve seen that he doesn’t really mean personal liberty. He only means “personal liberty as it relates to free markets,” which is a way of saying “the free market of personal liberties and free markets.” Market is the word that chimes through his announcement; he returns to it at the end. His two pillars are, he says, “underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion.” Okay: in the current market, there is not enough talk about free markets; the current market is not free enough, so a bit of top-down, direct planning from the owner of The Washington Post is going to force the issue and ensure that this new, freer market talks only about the value of free markets. I get it.
And who will lead us in this new direction? Ah, that will be the owner, who gives himself away in his every incautious word: Jeff Bezos will be searching, he says, for a new opinion editor to “own this direction.” Indeed.
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James Wood
Staff writer and book critic, The New Yorker