What's the National Enquirer So Afraid Of?
You don’t threaten to publish naughty pictures of the world’s richest man unless you’re worried he’s got even nastier stuff on you.
By JACK SHAFER February 08, 2019
Diving deeply into the vat of scum and deceit that looks to my layman’s eyes like an attempt by the National Enquirer to blackmail Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the most telling detail is not the alleged Bezos “dick pic” the supermarket tabloid’s editor and lawyer say they have obtained. Nor is it new love texts from Bezos to his mistress beyond the ones the Enquirer already published. Neither is it the other revealing photos of Bezos and his mistress they claim to possess. It’s not even the Enquirer’s explicit threat, spelled out in its lawyerly correspondence to Bezos and reproduced by him in a Thursday Medium post, to publish the photographic kompromat if he doesn’t do their bidding.
No, the most flabbergasting fact is that the Enquirer gang thinks Bezos is being mean to them! The tabloid and its executives want Bezos and his investigator, Gavin de Becker, who told the Daily Beast that political motives might be behind the Enquirer exposé, to stop soiling their reputations!
The notion that the Enquirer’s reputation could be damaged doesn’t go down easily, no matter how big a whiskey chaser you take with it. But that’s the position of Enquirer attorney Jon Fine takes in his letter to Bezos’ attorney. He claims Bezos and de Becker have defamed the Enquirer’s parent company, American Media, by expressing their views that the Enquirer’s January exposé of Bezos’ love affair was “politically motivated.” To the contrary, writes Fine, "Simply put, this was and is a news story."
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/08/jeff-bezos-national-enquirer-224933
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