Tom Smykowski: Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don’t have to.I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can’t you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?

In light of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’ purchase of The Washington Post, I’ll just point out that two weeks ago, using my Amazon Prime account, I purchased 100 pounds worth of dumbbells (no, not Jim Hoft and Matt Boyle) and received them in two days without paying any shipping costs. So, it’s not like Bezos doesn’t already have experience in running a business at a loss and convincing shareholders that it is a highly profitable operation.

The question will be whether Bezos (or his WaPo turnaround specialists) will hang onto loss leaders like Charles Lane and Marc Thiessen, as well as past-their-freshness-date-who-gives-a-shit-what-they-think pundits like Robert Samuelson and Richard Cohen. Although one can easily imagine  The Bezos Bob’s trying to fire Cohen and him protesting that he has “people skills“.

And, no, Jennifer Rubin will hang onto her job because, like Megan McArdle, her continuous wrongness and the hilarity it engenders is web traffic gold and The Market Demands It…