Amazon's Charmless Charm Offensive (Coming Back For More)

<Amazon Mailer:
Rear Photo: The Reckoner>

<Suggested Soundtrack: 
"Here We Go Again" (The Sex Pistols)>

<i.>

They're at it again, or so it seems. Imagine my surprise at getting this latest mailer from Amazon, though I shouldn't be: Christmas is coming, which means they need seasonal workers to handle this, that, and the other. What's interesting here is the wording, starting with the large print buzzwords on the front cover (see below): "Opportunity." "Stability." (Shades of those infamous "Opportunity Economy" adverts that characterized Kamala Harris's losing Presidential campaign.)

From there, it's off to the key planks of what I'd call Amazon's campaign platform, starting with its flagship promise ("health insurance on day one"), free skills training for higher pay, and an average wage of over $23 an hour. (You also get a helpful link to get the company's side of the story.) For extra emphasis, it's repeated on the rear, complete with suitably diverse images of Amazon's worker bees, happily toiling away -- three in all, of Black and brown folk, which seems slightly inconsistent with Amazon's resident Dr. Evil, Jeff Bezos, so happily bending his knee to one Donald Trump.

Which makes him do all sorts of uncool, like, y'know, firing Karen Attiah, the Washington Post's last remaining Black columnist (see below). Or, to put it even more succinctly, someone who enjoys such outsized power and wealth shouldn't be joining history's most lawless President in his current scorched earth war against DEI (or anything vaguely progressive, for that matter).

And that's, before we get into all of Amazon's other sins, from its hostility to unionism, its infamous warehouses and their Dickensian conditions, and their relentless squashing of anyone who tries to compete with them. None of which stops them from arguing, "But hey, man, we're just like you, right? Right?" Wrong. 

<Amazon Mailer:
Front Cover Photo: The Reckoner>

<ii.>

But, again...let's take Amazon's pitch at face value, for the sake of argument. Who wouldn't enjoy making $23 an hour, or the notion of "health insurance on day one?" Sounds appealing on its face, doesn't it? Sure. That is, if you stay there enough to enjoy them. With epidemic levels of "churn" -- the blander way of saying, "never-ending employee turnover" -- approaching 150 percent, something clearly has to give.

Not every task lends itself to automation, and robots can only do so much, even as Amazon keeps looking for new ways of squeezing every last ounce of sweat from its beleaguered workforce (see link below). Judging by the nuggets I stumbled on from this Columbus, OH-based Reddit thread, I'm not only the one who wonders, "Why did I get this in the mail":

#1) "My first thought was 'didn’t someone on Reddit observe that their churn rate was so high that eventually every unemployed person in Columbus would be a former employee?' Has it happened already?

Then I flipped it over, and it was addressed to me and my husband. What the hell? We are both employed at jobs we’ve had for decades."

#2) "They were even frugal enough to sort the list and put both our names on one postcard rather than sending us two."

#3) "This is the answer; seasonal hiring starts now. I was once a seasonal employee for them so yeah. Oddly, I haven't received this mailing, guess they're tired of me!"

#4) "We did! My son works there, but the postcard was addressed to me, my husband and my daughter who moved out of state 9 years ago - so weird!!"

<The only man to last the course: Unione Siciliana President Mike Merlo gets a magnificent wax and flower effigy for his funeral, held on November, 1923, in Chicago.

Pallbearers included Mayor William E Dever, Police Chief Morgan A. Collins, State's Attorney Robert E. Crowe, and future Mayor Anton Cermak. Says something about the culture of the time, doesn't it?>

https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/the_funeral_of_mike_merlo

<iii.>

Of course, extreme situations -- by themselves -- don't always drive people away. One of my favorite examples comes from the 1920s -- another era of rampant inequality, bolstered by a corporate culture of fear and punishment  -- in the Unione Siciliana (or Unione Siciliane, or Unione Sicilione, depending on the account you read).

The Unione began in 1895 as an Italian-American fraternal organization offering burial and health insurance benefits for members, as well as a Juvenile Department that organized baseball and football games for at-risk youth. The organization offered various related activities, including aid to children with disabilities, scholarships, and even an Italian Old People's Home. It also served as an unofficial liaison between the authorities and the community, and settling disputes among parties who didn't want official help -- such as extortion victims targeted by the notorious Black Hand Gang. 

The Unione also supported local political candidates and various causes, such as campaigns against the Black Hand. However, as the 1920s dawned, the Chicago chapter fell under a darker influence, once gangsters realized its importance to the Italian-American vote. The Unione's community origins also offered an ideal haven for criminal activity, once the relevant faction installed its puppet of choice as president.

This state of affairs naturally aroused fierce power struggles among the Windy City's dominant gangster, Al Capone, and his rivals. Between 1921 and 1930, six of the Chicago chapter's seven presidents were murdered The sole exception was Mike Merlo, due to his early death by cancer at 44, in 1924. Only Merlo and Pasqualino "Patsy" Lolordo survived any appreciable length of time, at three years apiece. 

Five presidents held their titles for one or two years, while one (Samuzzo "Samoots" Ammatuna) lasted barely six months before his own murder on November 10, 1925. By then, the organization had renamed itself the Italian-American National Union, as a way to attract Italian-Americans from other regions of their homeland -- and to try and shed the stigma associated with its previous moniker, presumably, though I doubt the press complied.

The Unione restructured as a fraternal life insurance organization in 1937. Over time,  the organization that had once been a lazy headline writer's dream in the Roaring Twenties faded into irrelevance, as its membership and influence declined. Its story ended in 1991, after merging with the Italian Sons and Daughters of America Fraternal Association.

None of this is to suggest that Amazon, nor its founder, are involved in this kind of activity. The basic point is that some people always roll the dice, no matter the circumstances. As several Capone biographers have noted, for those willing to pursue them, the emoluments associated with the Unione presidency simply proved too tempting to pass up, even if it meant a one-way ticket to the morgue.

However, in Amazon's case, the 150% turnover suggests a fundamentally rotten corporate culture that goes beyond basic union busting, or the well-documented conditions at its warehouses. That figure indicates an unwillingness to view workers as anything but mere chess pieces, to push around at will, all in its relentless pursuit of profits. 

Now that Amazon's burn-through approach seems to be catching up with them, it's not our responsibility to save them from themselves -- which taking any of their jobs would mean, especially with Bezos so busy turning off the lights at his flagship newspaper. the Washington Post. (Though I suspect that he'll regret the $40 million he's reportedly dumping into Amazon's Melania Trump documentary -- especially after the bloom starts peeling off her husband's political rose.)

Obviously, everyone has their own choices to make about what types of seek out, or take on. The same goes for Amazon's online ordering, which requires a rewrite of Hamlet's famous soliloquy: "To use or not to use -- that is the question."  But we should always  stay mindful of those issues in dealing with Amazon, or any of its "Frightful Five" brethren (Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft).

For all of these reasons, I'm giving the idea of working for Amazon a miss. And honestly, so should you. Which is also why -- now that it's served its purpose, as fodder for this post -- I'm chucking their latest propaganda straight into the bin. --The Reckoner

Links To Go (Democracy Dies In Bezos):

NPR: How Five Tech Giants

Have Become More Like Governments...:
https://www.npr.org/2017/10/26/560136311/how-5-tech-giants-have-become-more-like-governments-than-companies

Paul Krugman Substack (Karen Attiah Interview):
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/karen-attiah

Reddit: Is Anyone Concerned About Amazon Employee Turnover Rate?:
https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/1aw20uf/is_anyone_concerned_about_amazon_employee/

Sex Pistols: Here We Go Again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETcXCgS788M

World Socialist Worker: Amazon Response To Labor Shortage...:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/01/25/amzn-j25.html

>"Duty Now (?) For The Future"/The Reckoner<

Guest Post: A Gig Site's Lifespan: A Tragedy, In Four Acts

 

<http://www.impawards.com/2021/gig_is_up.html> 

(One of the best documentaries
on the phenomenon -- a must-view!

See Link Below)

Reckoner's Note: It's been some time since we've chronicled the Piecework Industrial Complex, AKA "the gig economy," and its doings. No longer the new kid on the block, many changes have overtaken the Gig Economy, though not for the better (surprise, surprise). 

The "content farm" approach of yore has given way to more practical impulses. Who wants to read somebody's thinly plagiarized content, when the average bear just wants to know, "Who could help me craft my presentation for that big meeting next week?" Or, "Who can I get to clean my floor tonight?" Or, "Where can I hire a tutor to bump up my kid's test scores?"

The emphasis is increasingly on a service-oriented economy -- from delivery (DoorDash, GrubHub, Postmates, Shipt), to transport (Lyft, Uber), and intellectual labor for hire (Upwork), to name some of the "usual suspects." However, many of the same dubious practices that garnered so much bad press during the 2010s -- inconsistent pay/work, lack of autonomy, and ever-shifting work rules -- have remained in place.

We wondered how anyone could still piece together a living this way, so we put out some feelers, and got a response. For simplicity's sake, and to avoid retaliation from his paymasters, we're calling him The Midnight Marauder, who's a decade-plus gig work veteran. "One thing, though, hasn't changed in this line of work," he tells us. "And that is -- the lifespan of a gig site, which follows the same general story arc." His story follows below, as he's written it.

<"So Many Balls In The Air..."/The Reckoner>

<i.> Act One: The Initial Buzz

Like anybody else out there, you worry how to juggle all the balls whizzing in the air. Groceries or meds? Rent or utilities? The pressure never lets up, needless to say. It's the reason why you aren't sleeping so comfortably these days. 

Then, from out of the blue, a solution drops: MakeWork.com, a third party editing site. Maybe you found it during some late night online search, or somebody recommended it as an option -- "I know a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy," as Saul Goodman says -- or you might even know somebody who works for one of these sites. Whatever.

The site seems straightforward enough. People contact you for copyediting and proofing jobs. Most of the deadlines are four to six hours. Pressed for time? Then try the quick 'n' dirty jobs that people upload, which are due in 60 minutes or less. The more involved the job, the more you make, for which you're paid every Monday. No fuss, no muss, no need to pound the pavement, as the copy suggests: "FLEXIBLE SCHEDULING! MAKE MONEY THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY: QUICKLY! WORK HOW YOU WANT, WHEN YOU WANT!"

So you figure, "What the hell," and take a simple copyediting test -- nobody wants "Brian" mangled into "Brain," right? -- fill out some basic info (don't forget the PayPal address), and the usual folderol (desired salary, work hours, job preferences). You hold your breath, and hit Send.

Back comes the answer, a day or so later: you're in! No resume, no job interview, no endless bargaining over rates. You're pinching yourself at how easy it seems. MakeWork.com delivers it all to your doorstep, for whatever princely flat rate the job pays. Seems like easy enough work, you tell yourself. What's not to like? Actually, plenty, as you'll soon find out. But for now, the promise of 200 to 300 extra bucks a week is enough to keep you going.

<"The Humming...Of The Digital Sweatshop"/The Reckoner>

<ii.> Act II: The Upward Rocket

You settle quickly into the routine. Come home, decompress over dinner, then hit the computer. You feel a sense of pride when that first 100 bucks slides through your inbox. You start thinking, what would happen if I spent three or so hours a night on this stuff? Within a month or so, you bump that 100 to 200, then 300 bucks. Now and then, you even scrape the heights near $400.

It's not a free-for-all, though. As a newly-minted MakeWorker, you're responsible for keeping track of its ever-changing style guide, and management's continual stream of edicts, via weekly emails and blog postings that hit your inbox. What's more, if the customer doesn't like your work, they can ask a CE (Copyeditor) to review it.

You get one shot at fixing up that file, and if the CE doesn't agree, your work's rejected.  Poof! That $25, $35, or $50 is no longer yours, and the job gets assigned to someone else. The first time it happens, you're livid, and think about walking away -- until you remember that overdue medical bill. The second and third times, you grit your teeth, and engage in a spirited back-and-forth with your CE. Nothing comes of it. 

Though you can -- and do -- appeal the CE's decision, the lack of results convinces you not to bother again, unless the issue is mega-major. Actually, it already is now, because it's eating up time spent on working. After some thought, though, you shrug it off as the cost of doing business. Invoking the nuclear option of closing your account seems less appealing, since your bills never stop coming.

On top of all this, MakeWork imposes a Maker Minimum requirement. Now, you must do X number of jobs per month, which is calculated into a rolling average. Slip below that number, and you risk having your account closed. You wince at the thought, but for now, it doesn't seem like a big deal.

For one thing, you're scoring some other side gigs, to which you can always transition -- theoretically, anyhow -- if MakeWork doesn't pan out. The image of flying solo as a fulltime freelancer is pretty damn alluring, so you don't want to interrupt the fantasy. And besides, they aren't offering any overtime at the office.

<"Be Reasonable...Demand The Impossible/
Take I": The Reckoner>

<iii.> Act III: The Sugar High

For awhile, you don't spot any trouble looming in Paradise. With over 1,000 jobs on the board at any given time, it honestly feels like a gold rush out there. But soon, another fly pops into the proverbial ointment: MakeWork HQ imposes a new requirement, that allows two more revisions, before your work's rejected for good.

The good news? You get a shot at redemption, and keeping that 25-50 bucks. The bad news? All that extra work jeopardizes your weekly goal of 200 to 300 bucks, and further divides your energy. On one hand, you're still making the same money, but in a real sense, you're not -- because it's taking longer to get there.

A mini-mutiny erupts when MakeWork introduces a lower-paying job tier of QuickWork Tasks that pay $10-15 apiece. Management bills them as "get 'em out the door" projects that can rack up quick money, if you can do plenty of them. However, they're still subject to the same mindless revision requirements as MakeWork jobs, which could eat away at your overall returns.

The announcement curdles your stomach, and for the first time, you begin to question the whole business. However, a quick scan of similar-sounding websites -- BusyBee, CopyEditBistro, Media Cool, Razzer, and so on -- jolts your brain into another unpleasant reality.

Gig work sites act like unions in reverse. Whereas unions generally raise the bar for everyone's wages, gig sites operate as the perverse flipside, by dragging everyone's pay straight to the bottom. Seeing MakeWork's competitors ape their basic business model for barrel scraping wages is proof enough for you.

What's more, the number of jobs is starting to shrink, as MakeWork continues to onboard armies of newbies. To keep up with this potential new threat, you're now forced to park at your computer for several hours a night, gritting your teeth, and telling yourself: Who sleeps beside their cursors? Guess these people do. But you aren't about to quit, since your grocery bills never let up. And neither should you, right?

<"Be Reasonable...Demand The Impossible/

Take II": The Reckoner>

<iv.>  The Downward Spiral

Five or so years down the line, you're well and truly embedded on the site, and its routines. To what effect, though, you're not sure. More and more, you find yourself questioning the setup, as the number of QuickWork jobs continues to grow, while the number of MakeWork jobs continues to taper off. 

As if that worry isn't enough to rattle your cage, MakeWork rolls out another concerning change. Customers can now vote Thumbs Up or Down on your work, whatever the case may be. Too many Thumbs Down ratings in too short a time, and you risk getting busted down to the QuickWork tier. 

Judging by the forum chatter, your stay in MakeWork Purgatory won't be a short one, since it takes 10 Thumbs Up ratings to overcome the one or two Thumbs Down grades that weigh down your standing like a boat anchor. So far, you're dodging that fate, but you don't whip out the confetti, as the amount of QuickWork jobs grows to double, then, triple the MakeWork ones. 

The overall proportion of jobs is also starting to drop. Those $300 weekly totals now seem like a lifetime ago, as it practically takes all seven days to make 200 bucks. What took two or three hours a night now gobbles twice as much time forcing you to hover constantly near your computer. So much for, "WORK WHEN YOU WANT, HOWEVER LONG YOU WANT," right?

On weekends, there's hardly any work, leaving you back to surfing the couch, and binging on Tubi. Not having seen much of you lately, your partner welcomes this new development, even as your wallet whispers insistently in your ear: "You're running out of options, again!" But what else can you do? You signed a non-disclosure agreement, as MakeWork policy dictates, so complaining beyond the forums is out of the question.

And you can't contact customers directly to line up other work, which also runs afoul of MakeWork policy. You're atomized and isolated behind their shiny virtual walled garden, where they wanted you all along. Somehow, that gauzy photo currently gracing the home page -- you know, the woman happily jogging behind her dog -- doesn't make you feel better. Every time you see it, you're ready to upchuck.

Running alongside Rover is the last thing on your mind, with fingers poised on your mouse, hoping to beat someone else to the MakeWork jobs that still roll in. But it's getting harder to do that dance, which eats up more time than ever. Ah, well, what the hell, who needs more downtime, anyway? Couch surfing costs money, especially when you're not making any, right?

<"If I Had A Dollar... (X2)"/The Reckoner>

<Coda> The Morning After

Finally, you realize the party's over. No single magic moment tells you; you're just tired of staring at a blank screen till your eyes pop out. You and your partner return to reselling, to middling success. There's also the new hip record store, where you can sell books, CDs, and other memorabilia from your own collection for 100-150 bucks a pop, which certainly beats MakeWork's rates.

And you still have your job, not to mention all those goodies that MakeWork figured you wouldn't miss -- like health insurance, paid time off days, sick leave, and vacation. MakeWork continues to sputter along, a mere shell of its shinier self. The same site that promised the moon and stars is now lucky to offer 10-20 jobs at a time.

Perversely, you feel way better, since you realize that you're not missing anything. Amazingly, though, a fair number of Makers haven't gotten the memo -- as the forums buzz with various conspiracy theories, rumors, and speculation, to explain where all the jobs -- and the clients -- have gone.

If nothing else, you've learned a good lesson about the life and death of a gig site. From initial buzz, to gold rush era, slippery slope downward, and point of no return, the story arc is always the same. Still, somewhere in America, some vulture capitalist or other is pitching the next MakeWork.com, that some investor is bound to green light.

Why? Because these types of sites operate on dreams, long before they start running strictly on fumes. That dream operates like a siren's song to all those desperate people out there, stuck in the same dead end loop that you're facing -- which bill will you pay this week, and which one can wait till next week?

As long as enough people believe, the site will sputter along, even after those who dreamed it up have cashed out long ago, surfing a wave of bonuses and stock options. How do those who follow them get paid? That's the next sucker's problem, or -- excuse me -- opportunity, or dream.

At least you've gotten away clean (relatively speaking). However, your next door neighbor or friend may not wind up so lucky. But if you happen to encounter them, it might not hurt to run this little bit of Elvis Costello folk wisdom by them: "Oh, no, I've seen the movie/Even though it does not move me." 

Chances are, they'll feel like at the midway, who didn't pick the shell under the right pea. Still, the hardbitten carny holds all the cards, so where else can you go? It's not a good feeling. Now I know, all too well, the reasoning behind the saying, "Experience is the hardest teacher", as some lessons are harder to learn, it seems, than others.--The Midnight Marauder

Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry, Hurry,
Before Your Piecework Dries Up...)
Los Angeles Times: The Gig Economy
Sucked In Gen Z & Millennials Like Me:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-01-14/economy-millennials-gen-z-freelance-gigs

Rice University Media Relations:
Hidden Costs Of Gig Work:
https://news.rice.edu/news/2025/hidden-costs-gig-work-job-insecurity-and-customer-ratings-impact-worker-well-being

The Gig Is Up (Full Movie):
https://tubitv.com/movies/654449/the-gig-is-up

TIME: "It's A Race To The Bottom...":
https://time.com/5836868/gig-economy-coronavirus/

 
"When gig work is the only pie 

that’s available

 to millions of people, 

sharing it means 

that some don’t even get crumbs."

Amazon's Charmless Charm Offensive (Don't Fall For It!)

 

The other side of the story:
Make Amazon Pay protest, London, 2021
<War on Want - Make Amazon Pay Protest, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112850122>

<i.>

Now that the World's Richest Boyfriend has finally gotten married, he needs some way of paying for all the rice that he and his A-list buddies scattered behind them in Venice. That's one takeaway from all those adverts blanketing the airwaves -- you know, all those images of Joe Amazon Man, or Jane Amazon Woman, just good company foot soldiers, doing their best to put food on the table. 

What makes them notable is their presentation, one carefully crafted to refute popular impressions of Jeff Bezos's outfit as an overweening corporate bully -- a bad actor, like many Fortune 500 companies, that seems to view mistreatment as a feature (not a bug) of its corporate DNA. Whether it's Amazon's allergy to competition, unionism, or improving its oft-criticized Dickensian warehouse conditions -- to name three of the more common charges leveled their way -- it's a situation that seems tailor-made for the curt response that Ebenezer Scrooge elicits from his departed cohort, Jacob Marley, as to what this ghost, this awfully scary blast from his past, could possibly ever want with him:

"Much.”

The ads take varying tacks to deflect those charges, whether it's the benefits angle ("Health insurance from the first day"), shout-outs to its DYI roots ("60% of our sellers are independents"), or simpler, more straightforward images, such as the young Hispanic guy who wows his date by taking her to a shiny, fancy steak house -- the implication being, it takes Amazon-level wages to make this kind of outing happen.

It's a bit too close to Scrooge saluting himself as "The Founder of the Feast," after witnessing the Cratchit family's painfully spartan holiday dinner -- but no matter. Like  so many bad actors before him, real or imagined, Jeff Bezos is running in the court of public opinion. And while he doesn't relish getting roasted publicly, he's not going down without swinging. Enter the Charmless Charm Offensive, then, to win us back over.

Presumably, it's the reason for the dizzingly diverse array of characters who populate these ads -- like the Hispanic dad, gently cradling his kids, for instance. It's an image lifted straight from the Norman Rockwell handbook. Who could find fault that? Never mind that Jeff Bezos spiked an endorsement of Kamala Harris, even after it had already been prepared. Never mind that Bezos was among the first major business titans to trip in bending the knee to Trump, by joining him at the podium during his restoration ceremony.  

And never mind, at least on the opinion pages of the newspaper that he oh-so-conveniently owns, the Washington Post, that Bezos has tilted them in favor of his new Washington, DC friends, an intention not-so-subtly telegraphed thusly, in February: "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.”

Translation: "I have to keep the Orange Man happy, so whatever crosses his mind, no matter how outrageous or dangerous it seems, I'll just have to suck it up, and support it. And so should you. My profits come before the public."

<The happy couple, greeted 

in advance of their $50 million spectacle:

https://substack.com@lizplank>

<ii.>

It's a story as old as the hills. Over 100 years ago, John D. Rockefeller began handing out dimes to small children, while cohorts like Andrew Carnegie funded libraries across the nation, in moves meant to distract their favorite pursuit -- the bare-knuckled accumulation of wealth and property, by whatever means necessary. If it meant wringing the last drop of humanity dry, so be it.

Along the same lines, it's worth recalling that America's most notorious gangster, Al Capone, invested in a couple Chicago soup kitchens at the onset of the Depression -- and considered hiring Ivy Lee, the same man who'd coached Rockefeller, to burnish his own public image. Nothing came of it, perhaps because Lee feared being "taken for a ride," had any of his gambits backfired ("I'm sorry, Mr. Capone, but income tax law is not 'bunk,' however ardently you believe that").

If you've ever wondered why public relations is derided as "journalism's evil twin," perhaps these words from the Bill Moyers collection (see link below) should clear up whatever doubts you may yet entertain:

"To the generation before the first World War, Rockefeller was the rapacious Midas, a billion dollar tyrant who would crush anyone in his way. His all-powerful trust, the Standard Oil Company, was broken up by government legislation. Bodyguards had to surround him when he went to church. Even some of his charitable donations were returned as tainted money.

"He was, after all, the man who Senator Robert LaFollette called the greatest criminal of the age. No wonder the muckrakers went after him with all the barbs in their quiver. What a target he was and what a time they had. There he was hoarding his money and thumbing his nose an Uncle Sam while robbing the country of its wealth. He was their one man rogues gallery of barnyard images, as greedy as a pig, as slippery as an eel, as vile as a vulture preying on the public.

'What in the world happened? How did they change the image of the most hated man in America? What transformed the ogre into the grandfatherly choir master of the news reels?"

As Lee himself often reminded people -- to the point of absurdity -- he never changed Mr. Rockefeller, but simply allowed a different side to become better known. Thanks to a media culture that largely kept Blacks, women and other nuisance minorities off to the sidelines, that gauzier image of the grandfatherly figure handing out his dimes to anyone became the most prevalent image of him. Never mind that he had plenty more dimes where those came from, all of them made possible by the countless lives he'd ruined.

And we're still fighting so many of the same battles today. Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays, his successor as the unofficial dean of America's PR industry, would undoubtedly have supported Amazon's charm offensive, one designed to help you forget the company's data security breaches, excessive packaging waste, hostility to unions, and prevalence of counterfeit merchandise (depending on the site). 

Distraction and diversion are the bad actor's stock in trade. As the old joke runs -- why else would they try these tactics, if they didn't really work? Look at Richard Nixon, who wrote 10 books, all of them best-sellers, that did much to burnish his image as an elder statesman, once the excesses of Watergate had burnt his political career to ashes.

Isabel Allende, I suspect, holds a rather different opinion of these efforts, so start with her for the rest of the story. For me, it doesn't matter how many bestsellers Mr. Nixon penned -- his crimes against the unfortunate inhabitants of Cambodia, Chile, Laos, and Vietnam speak to a starkly different reality, one that no amount of apple-polishing and image-making can ever paper over.

And, while Mr. Bezos has never vicariously experienced the thrill of overturning a democratically elected government -- as Nixon and his chief enabler, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, did in Chile -- the enormity of his own moral shortcomings is surely no less concerning. We'll know soon enough how well the Charm Offensive worked -- or didn't, if another one returns to blitz our airwaves.

Either way, we shouldn't let those cozy homespun images divert us from the reality behind the excessive gauziness of the imagery, as Elizabeth Plank's excellent writeup of the World's Most Expensive Boyfriend's wedding should make amply clear:

"A $50 million celebration in Venice, complete with a foam party on a half-billion-dollar yacht, three days of masquerade balls, and ninety-four private jets idling on the tarmac like this was a climate-change-themed sequel to White Lotus. Oprah was there. So were Kim Kardashian, Tom Brady, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ivanka Trump. I watched celebrities, dressed in couture and climate virtue, celebrate (without irony!) a man who has done more to accelerate climate collapse and enable fascism than almost anyone alive.

"It felt like a punchline. Except the joke was on us."

I couldn't have said it better. --The Reckoner

Links To Go: Maybe John D's Ghost
Will Drop A Dime On You, Too!:

Bill Moyers: The Image Makers:
https://billmoyers.com/content/image-makers/

Elizabeth Plank: Paper Straws For You,
Private Jets For Them:
https://lizplank.substack.com/p/paper-straws-for-you-private-jets

The Conversation: Washington Post's Turnaround...:
https://theconversation.com/washington-posts-turnaround-on-its-opinion-pages-is-returning-journalism-to-its-partisan-roots-but-without-the-principles-251189

The Daily Beast: Tragic Real Reason Behind Bezos' Gaudy Wedding:
https://archive.ph/15thY

The rest of the story/Take II: The Reckoner