New York Post and HuffPost have the same perfect 3-word summary of the Jeff Bezos-National Enquirer imbroglio

David Pecker and Jeff Bezos
(Image credit: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for WIRED25, Francois Durand/Getty Images)

We live in wondrous times. On Thursday night, the world's wealthiest man, Jeff Bezos, revealed that the tabloid National Enquirer was threatening to publish what Dylan Howard — chief content officer of American Media Inc., the Enquirer's parent company — referred to in an email as a "below the belt selfie — otherwise colloquially known as a 'd*ck pick'" if Bezos didn't drop an investigation into how AMI acquired his private text messages to his mistress. Howard and other AMI officials put these threats into writing, and Bezos put that writing into his post.

This could cause serious legal problems for AMI and its chief, David Pecker, who have a non-prosecution deal with Manhattan federal prosecutors in a separate "catch-and-kill" case, and Bezos' investigators reportedly suspect that a government agency or foreign government originally intercepted the Bezos text messages, which could potentially implicate President Trump, a longtime friend of Pecker and vocal critic of Bezos. But let's not lose sight of what's important here: the gift this is to headline writers. In fact, the New York Post and HuffPost had the same obvious-in-retrospect banner:

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Headlines don't really write themselves, but sometimes all the right ingredients are there for the taking.

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.