What does Jeff Bezos' non-endorsement mean?

PLUS: "Big Justice" and "A.J." and "The Rizzler": Why?

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In this week’s newsletter:

• Thinking through the implications of Jeff Bezos’ interference in the Post’s editorial endorsement process;

• an exploration of the phenomenon of “The Costco Guys”; and

• a correction regarding the New York Yankees.

A reminder: This newsletter is conceived, written, edited, designed, promoted, etc., by one single person--me! I’m able to devote my weeks to necessary tasks like “figuring out the Rizzler’s deal” thanks to the generosity of paying subscribers, who not only support the fine independent journalism (about, again, “the Rizzler”) of this newsletter but also receive a second weekly email containing book, movie, and music recommendations. A paid subscription to Read Max is roughly the price of a beer a month, depending on your location--if you think you get about that much value from the eight newsletters I send out every month, consider upgrading your subscription now:

Why doesn’t Jeff Bezos want to make an endorsement?

The Washington Post will not be endorsing a candidate for president this year. Reportedly the paper’s editorial board (the nominally independent body of journalists, separate from the news-gathering organization, that writes the unsigned editorials meant to reflect the institutional views of “the paper,” which is to say its owner) had already prepared a column endorsing Kamala Harris, only for the Post’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, to intervene last week and kill the endorsement.

Post workers--both opinion-side editors and news-side reporters--have loudly registered their objections to this last-minute interference (some even resigned), and something like 10 percent of Post subscribers have apparently cancelled their subscriptions. On Monday night, Bezos defended his decision in an op-ed published in the Post:

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one. Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, thought the same, and he was right. By itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.

A similar conflict has been brewing at the Los Angeles Times, where another billionaire owner, the medical-device entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong, has ended the practice of presidential endorsements, also over the objections of many employees.

One of the funny (“funny”) historical ironies here is that, at least on the surface, the positions of the owner and his employees are the reverse of what you might expect. News reporters, generally, don’t like the practice of unsigned editorials and endorsements, which can give their work the appearance of bias, and make it difficult to find sources or respond to critics. And owners, well--what’s the point of owning a newspaper if not to use its reach and platform to advocate for your preferred candidates and policies? But here we have a billionaire borrowing arguments long-made by working journalists against endorsements, and journalists strenuously objecting to their rich boss’ gesture toward a studied neutrality.

Obviously the specific circumstances here are suffice to explain it: The timing and the sense that Bezos inserted himself into and violated editorial processes make the “neutrality” to which he supposedly aspires seem partisan, or at least self-interested. In other circumstances many or most of those journalists would be happy to see the practice of editorial-board endorsements ended, eliminating a common source of awkwardness and misunderstandings about a paper’s integrity or trustworthiness.

But even if it’s good in the long run to end the endorsement custom, it strikes me as interesting, and probably somewhat worrying, that Bezos seems to have no interest in the institutional endorsement project. Reporters have gotten what they wanted, but I think it’s come at a heavy cost.

Over the last few years, billionaires have been buying up prominent media outlets, among them The Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, and The Atlantic. These purchases, often referred to as “legacy plays,” are usually accompanied by laudatory coverage and lavish praise; the word “stewardship” is bandied about.

I don’t think it’d be crazy to include, in this list of “billionaire media playthings,” Twitter, which was purchased and taken private by Elon Musk in late 2022. But the coverage of Musk’s ownership has been very different--largely because Musk has openly leveraged Twitter’s power (and his power over Twitter) to advance his political and personal goals, while Bezos has (until now) done everything he can to avoid the impression that he exerts influence over the Post’s editorial decisions. Musk treats Twitter like a weapon to be used against his enemies; Bezos usually treats the Post like a nature preserve--a charitable endeavor to preserve an endangered species, the actual interior ecosystem of which is not particularly relevant to his life or fortune.

The idea of a billionaire sugar daddy buying and “stewarding” your institution as a charitable legacy project sounds kind of nice compared with alternative ownership structures (private equity, Macanese gambling syndicate, the GRU). But it’s fatally condescending to those newspapers and magazines. A good rule of thumb is: If the billionaire that owns you is not trying to influence you to hurt his political enemies, it’s because you don’t matter very much. Bezos calls the Post a “complexifier,” which is just a fancy way of saying “annoyance”; this first major example of editorial interference is not about wielding the paper’s power so much as about blithely asserting its powerlessness, and limiting the damage it can accidentally and indirectly do to his own interests.

None of this, for whatever it’s worth, is the fault of the Post workers, who produce phenomenal journalism every day, and who are doing the right thing by protesting Bezos’ clumsy and ill-timed interference. It would be horrible if he were exerting the more traditional forms of owner influence, leaning on editors to go after his enemies and support his allies. But it actually might be a little reassuring about the long-term health and power of an institution. As a journalist, you don’t actually want your publication to be used as a political weapon for a billionaire. But it would be nice for your publication to be so powerful and unavoidable that a billionaire might try.

Do A.J., Big Justice, and the Rizzler have “authentic” fans?

TikTok stars A.J. and Big Justice--the “Costo Guys”--and their compatriot, “the Rizzler,” recently appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon:

Fallon is sort of ironically dismissive of the trio, and Twitter users have been sort of ironically (?) mad at Fallon for this.

I am not sure what to make of any of this, to be honest. I have been meaning to write about the Costco Guys (government names Andrew and Eric Befumo) and the universe of TikTok characters and bits they have collected around themselves¹, but I am unable to find a way in. Their viral fame isn’t entirely inexplicable to me--I think the Befumos have “it,” for some definition of “it” (possibly just: total, shameless commitment), and Befumo now has years of experience in the “trying to get famous” business as a former professional wrestler, YouTuber, and host of “a web show about being a MAN.”

But it’s also impossible for me to believe that even the most witless 11-year-old would earnestly enjoy a Costco Guys video? It feels, as it often does when I encounter “TikTok stars,” like there’s a bit or a joke lurking somewhere behind their content, and the vast universe of content around them, that I haven’t been let in on. Are there “real” or “authentic” fans of the Costco Guys out there? Or is their presence in my field of vision entirely the product of an unspoken collective agreement to ironically follow them closely as you would a “real” celebrity, because it allows you to make funny jokes on X?² The dynamic reminds me a lot of my conversation with Henry DeTolla, d/b/a “h00pify” on TikTok, whose videos about “Baby Gronk” and “The Drip King” had a similarly stultifying effect on my brain, and whose relationship to authenticity and irony seemed orthogonal to my own.

To some extent this is a long way of saying: I’m getting old. But I am also writing these words down so future historians understand that, contrary to the huge portion of the written record located on X and in comments on TikTok and Instagram, there are many of us alive at this point in time who are non-participants in the “A.J.” and “Big Justice” and “The Rizzler” phenomenon, and who are indeed not entirely aware of what its nature or purpose is.

A correction

Due to a production error a recent edition of the Read Max newsletter incorrectly implied that the Major League Baseball franchise “New York Yankees” are fun or enjoyable to root for. Read Max regrets the error.

1. EJ Dickson surveys the essential Costco Guys lore in Rolling Stone:

Over the past few months, the Befumos have built a devoted audience of more than 1.3 million followers on TikTok, largely thanks to their “Costco Guys” video from early last March, in which they declare their allegiance to the big-box warehouse retailer with sound bites like, “We’re Costco guys. Of course we go shopping while eating a chicken bake.” That video has more than 47 million views; a clip they posted a few days later, of them ranking Costco food court items on a scale of “boom” to “doom,” has 25 million views. (All of the items, including a chicken bake and a double chocolate chunk cookie, received a “boom,” though A.J. says he regrets his rating for Costco’s turkey sandwich. “That should’ve gotten a doom,” he says ruefully.)

In building their brand, A.J. and Big Justice have created their own internal iconography of sorts, such as catchphrases (“Meat! Alllllll meat!”) and recurring characters like the Rizzler (a child content creator known for his Rock-esque “rizz face”) and Cousin Angelo (who is, contrary to the nomenclature, not actually the Befumos’ blood relative).

2. In a way, even complaining about them or acknowledging them feels like inadvertently participating in the bit.