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| He won't be blackmailed. |
Jeff Bezos Exposes Pecker.
He won't be blackmailed. He is today's new hero.
Even as people tisk-tisk and chuckle at the headline in the New York Post, and wonder about what kind of hell his now-separated wife will go through, Jeff Bezos is looking good.
Bezos came out. He publicly is owning his problem, and he attacks back.
People like that. One of the things my Trump-hating friends have a hard time seeing is that Trump is successful at some things, and deflecting criticism is one of them.
To be shameless, it helps either to be a thorough narcissist like Donald Trump, or else the richest man in the world. One can imagine Bezos waking up in the morning, looking himself in the mirror, and thinking "I'm OK." So the National Enquirer can do its worst and, in the end, Bezos will still be the richest man in the world. And OK.
Bezos is suing the National Enquirer for their politics of "catch and kill" extortion. They let Bezos know they had embarrassing photos and texts from him but they wouldn't publish them if he paid them off. Bezos said no. Do your worst. Oh, and I am calling you on it and plan to sue you into oblivion.
Bezos is doing the two-step process that has elevated Trump to the White House. This might not have worked in earlier media and political environments, but it works now. America is less moralistic than it used to be. In 1964, Nelson Rockefeller had been divorced, and wasn't thought morally fit to be president.
Step one: Own the problem. Don't backpedal or apologize. Be shameless. Stand tall. Popeye: I am what I am. If the photos are published, say, yes, that's me.
Step two: Accuse your accuser. Assert they have no standing to question or shame you. They are worse. The real issue is them, e.g. for Trump, the fake error-ridden news media, or Senatorial critics like Pocahontas, or the CIA which got Iraq wrong.
We see Trump do it constantly. Bezos is doing it now, saying the real villain is the National Enquirer.
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| Not this. |
But here Bezos is positioned as oddly heroic. If the photos are published it demonstrates just how principled Bezos is, to be willing to face supposed humiliation. Only it won't be humiliation any more. He volunteered. The photos and texts would be evidence of his courage. The worse they are, the more courageous he is.
Hypothetical. The mess in Virginia might be playing out differently if the Governor, Ralph Northam, had done the two-step. He might have owned it, in step one, and said that, "yes, this exemplified the casual, stupid thinking of 1984 Virginia, when young white men were thoughtless and cruel, and racist without thinking hard about it. It was a time of Strom Thurman and Jessie Helms, when the Byrd dynasty openly fought de-segregation. They won elections in this part of the country because that is who a great many Virginians were back then. Yes, that was me and I am no different from many white people back then. But I changed as Virginia changed, and thank God for it."
Then, step two, and note his accusers were different back then, too. Accuse the accusers.
Say something like this, in a combative and unafraid tone:
"My accusers used to think "don't ask, don't tell" was an OK response to homosexuals in the military. My accusers did not speak out the way they should have about men in power who harassed women. My accusers have a past, too, Democrats and Republicans, both. Senator Klobuchar says I should resign, well Senator, stop abusing your staff. Senator Warren says I should resign, well Senator get your Indian heritage straightened out and then criticize me.I have a past, and I am different now. Virginia has a past, and it is different now. Let all my accusers who don't have a past that no longer reflects them, cast the first stone. I have moved on. Let's face today's problems and go back to work."
Would this work? I don't know. But it starts with Governor Northam owning the person he was at the time the photo was taken, saying yes he used blackface back in 1984. Then accusing.
Democrats can learn from Trump, if they allow themselves to do so.
2 comments:
""yes, this exemplified the casual, stupid thinking of 1984 Virginia,..."
The problem is that it's still true. Yes, it's not quite as overt, but 50 years of civil right activism has simply driven it underground. Are these folks really the best Progressives the state can offer? I get the image of a football tight end who caught the ball on the sideline and is now skipping along trying not to go out of bounds. The 9 point victory for Democrats may simply point to similar candidates with different party affiliations, more like a primary than a general.
The Weiner/Bezos comparison is not apt. Weiner broke the law texting to a minor and I doubt that if he had brazenly defended himself it would have done much good. Also it was seen to be a compulsion, not simply dumb. Not to mention I have no interest in Bezo's somewhat tawdry private life, or nor should anyone else.
The issue here seems to be that once you document an act on your phone or wherever it's not private anymore. Our devices provide us with access to a world of information but it's a two way street. Consider the Strzok FBI texting case in the same context. I doubt if they would have been so cavalier knowing that those texts could potentially become public.
Unless there's some exhibitionist thread at work here...
A bigger question just might be, "where the phone texts came from"? Who took them from the phone? The private company that Bezos hired, seemed to think that the government may have taken them.
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