Well, The National Enquirer seems to have stepped in it by trying to go toe-to-toe with Jeff Bezos and his unlimited wallet.  The lame supermarket tabloid published details of Bezos’ affair (which I do not know because I never got caught up in the story) which has led to an impending divorce and Bezos wanting to know how those losers got information about his private life and having the means to launch his own investigation.  The tabloid retaliated by threatening to publish a “below the belt” photo of Bezos unless he ended his investigation and declared no wrongdoing. Bezos took to Medium to expose their threat.

The head of American Media Inc is David Pecker and the New York Post, write on cue, came up with “Bezos Exposes Pecker” as a headline.  I don’t usually root for Bezos.  People with his level of wealth are undeserved royalty, I think he and his ilk have too much say in how our society operates and that it’s antidemocratic.  I’m not excited about their HQ2 showing up in Queens given the subsidies we New Yorkers will be paying and the strain on infrastructure like the subways, but I’m all in for Bezos here and hope AMI goes down.

Not going to look up the link but I saw a headline from a major outlet that said something like “why do smart people still send nudes?” I didn’t read the article because the answer seems obvious to me — because they feel like it.  This kind of thing shouldn’t have long term consequences.  For Bezos, it doesn’t and won’t.

While it’s surely that AMI made a mistake in fighting Bezos because Bezos is bigger, richer and can quickly turn AMI into prey, I think there’s something else going on here, which is that after AMI exposed the Bezos affair, they left him with nothing left to lose.  He’s getting divorced.  The affair is out, he and his longtime wife are splitting. There’s nothing else AMI can credibly take from him, so he’s free to take them down.

Well, they could publish the “below the belt” shot, I suppose.  But good for Bezos if his response is “so what?”  Maybe the lesson here is “let them.” Because it doesn’t really matter if people see you naked.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s really nothing to be especially guarded about.  Who cares?

The whole notion of “revenge porn,” and I think this qualifies, is predicated on the embarrassment and shame of the victim. It can be overcome and neutralized by purposeful shamelessness. You don’t need billions of dollars to immunize yourself against this kind of thing.

To the chagrin of conservatives, our culture has been etching away at shame for a long time.  We clearly have a long way to go, though. Maybe Amazon’s been a mixed bag for the culture, by expanding access to so many goods and services while killing local businesses, among other things, but Bezos might do some unambiguous good here just be publicly refusing to be ashamed of himself.

Do what makes you happy.  Don’t let anyone with a website or supermarket rag make you feel sorry for it, no matter what.