DON'T MESS WITH JEFF

Now playing at Amazon Music:
"I Threw it All Away" by Bob Dylan.

It's remarkable what a little extortion will do for a guy's reputation -- especially when it isn't the extorter's desired outcome. 

Until this morning, what was the first thing that came into your mind when you heard the name Jeff Bezos?

Amazon! Admit it -- even if you read the Washington Post, as far as you're concerned, he's the guy who let you binge on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel last weekend. 

And what is it about Amazon that's so newsworthy? Other than getting your leg wax delivered to you before lunch.

No, more likely it was headlines like this one in Forbes: AMAZON IS HELL ON WHEELS FOR DRIVERS. News reports of how said drivers had to make up to 200 deliveries over eight hours, forcing them to skip lunch, break speed limits, and urinate in bottles or buckets (for men) and baby wipes (for women). 

"...And here's a picture of me bleeding like a pig..."

One driver, who, in an accident, received lacerations on his hand deep enough for him to see a bone, received no sympathy from his dispatcher. "Are you dying right now? Girls have come back with worse wounds than you."  Why, just this morning, the Los Angeles Times reported that the tips received by Amazon drivers actually go toward their base pay. That's one way of saving a buck!

And all that was after reports of the working conditions at Amazon warehouses, usually described as "horror stories", including the reliable urine buckets. A guy like Jeff Bezos, worth $137-billion, can't afford to have his people take bathroom breaks or half-hour lunches, or pay a decent wage without his drivers picking up the slack themselves. How you like your leg wax now?

Thanks to plastic surgery, Sanchez can now
play Donald Duck without a costume.

This morning, however, all that is forgotten in the wake of the National Enquirer's attempted extortion regarding Bezos' ill-considered affair with B-list TV "personality" Lauren Sanchez, currently a correspondent (meaning holding a microphone and reading off cue cards) for Extra, and formerly of KTTV's Good Day LA and Ten O'clock News. 

Lauren Sanchez, a news reporter? To paraphrase Cindy Adams, only in L.A., kids, only in L.A.

Jeff Bezos' reputation as the worst example of capitalism has become that of speaking truth to power at its finest, literally overnight -- just like Amazon Prime! And what is the name of the bad guy involved in this extortion? Pecker! Don't you dare tell me you would have believed it if you saw it in a movie. 

The transformation of Jeff Bezos.

To recap: a billionaire who runs his business like a 19th-century sweatshop... who became symbol number one of everything that's wrong with the American way of life... is now a hero for throwing down the gauntlet to the publisher of a scandal rag... who, in turn, is doing the bidding of a gangster president... who doesn't want a legitimate newspaper investigating the death of one of its columnists at the hands of a Saudi Arabian prince... who, in turn, is the best friend of the gangster president's son. 

All this over some dick pics of the billionaire. 

This is indeed a great country.

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