Photo of Jeff Bezos via Flickr

Kneel, once-great American cities! Debase yourselves before your god, The Amazon Corporation! Lo—Jeff Bezos is your lord, and your city’s mayor is his humble servant!


As you may recall, Amazon is holding an excruciating nationwide competition to see which city will offer it the most shocking amount of public money and power in order to locate its second headquarters there, bringing thousands of jobs that will be held by the sort of people known for ruining Seattle. You would think that every self-respecting city in America would jeer at these corporate goons asking for handouts from the public till. And they did. Unfortunately, there are no self-respecting cities in America. So every city tripped over itself to submit a fawning financial welcome mat, each more grotesque than the last.

Today, Amazon announced its list of 20 “finalist” cities for this honor/ shame. It included the obvious major cities and regions, along with the following ones that were included only for PR purposes, to keep things interesting: Columbus, Ohio; Raleigh, North Carolina; Newark; Indianapolis; and Newark. The only way that Amazon would build its second headquarters in, for example, Newark, would be if Jeff Bezos reckons that Cory Booker will be the next president and wants to have the next president be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Amazon corporation. Which is possible, but not likely, because Jeff Bezos is already more powerful than the US president.


The main “takeaway” from today’s bullshit intermediary step of this ongoing awful spectacle proving America’s social collapse is this: All you 218 other fucking yokel cities that went to all that trouble to submit proposals to Amazon for this enormous corporate handout are not only completely lacking in self-respect and civic responsibility, but also, you are pathetic morons. Tucson sending Amazon a cactus? The mayor of Kansas City personally writing 1,000 Amazon reviews? You disgust me. You can’t even sell out with dignity. You are like a man offering up names of imaginary collaborators to the Gestapo even as they tie the noose around his neck. It’s over for you. You never should have gotten involved in this sordid business in the first place.

Anyhow I hope Boston gets it, because Boston sucks.