Opinions are like an appendix: everyone has one, it serves no particular purpose, most of the time it’s completely ignored and you only notice it when it’s removed.

This is exactly what occurred to me when I observed the manufactured controversy involving Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post editorial board. The Amazon wunderkind’s decision to prevent the Oracles of DC from handing down their wisdom from Delphi on the Potomac triggered waves of outrage from the sort of people who take their marching orders from elite strangers with golden laptops.

These are the folks who treasure their appendixes and mourn the loss of something they just realized they needed to fully function in this democracy.

I have to say it was amusing to watch over 10 percent of the Post readers announce publicly that they were canceling their subscriptions. Social media was replete with the righteous indignation of (mostly) liberals who clutches at their pearls and acted as if Bezos had purchased the original copy of the Constitution from the National Archives and set it aflame while wearing a MAGA cap.

There is an arrogance to the suggestion the world needs endorsements from the Fourth Estate. This is not a violation of the First Amendment. The press is not being infringed upon by the government. If anything, it is the free market system at work, where a private owner is entitled to use his property as he sees fit.

The fact that the property is viewed as a public service does not change that principle. People have every right to send whatever message they want with their dollars. No one is owed loyalty.

I was once let go from a paper where I’d worked for almost 18 years. I was the one “notorious” conservative who supported police officers against claims of brutality, the Boy Scouts against claims of homophobia, unborn babies against claims of being expendable at momma’s whim and Bill Cosby against claims of being a rapist.

That last one triggered so much anger among the nice suburban readers that my editor was forced to write an editorial apologizing to them for running my column while regretfully reminding them about that annoying principle of free speech.

The subtitle was “An editor asks: How I can live with myself giving a platform to someone who stands for everything I abhor?”

Ultimately, even that limited level of tolerance fell by the wayside and I was fired for being a prolific social media presence. When readers wrote to tell me they’d canceled their own subscriptions because I’d been let go, it made me both happy and a bit embarrassed.

Happy, for obvious reasons. Embarrassed because no one’s opinion matters that much in the grand scheme of things. At least, it shouldn’t.

That’s why I’m completely bemused by the head banging and wailing from those who think they’re entitled to a Post endorsement or, to a lesser extent a Los Angeles Times or USA Today endorsement. Who cares?

Truly, who needs a disconnected voice with no expertise other than an ability to string words together slightly better than Joe Biden telling them who to vote for? Do these people not have eyes and ears?

What magic incantations are they expecting from the editorial pages?

Do they really need these opinions to become better informed?

Or, as I suspect, do they simply want some liberal intellectuals — and I use that term ironically and oxymoronically — to confirm the validity of their own views?

Opinions are completely personal. They have no inherent value to anyone other than to the opinionater.

They sometimes do have the power to trigger change like, for example, if you’re George Clooney and you commit elder abuse on behalf of Barack Obama.

That sort of thing gets people to pay attention because you have an Oscar and a very important human rights lawyer wife.

But in general, mature Americans shouldn’t need someone else to tell them what to think and how to choose their leaders.

And if they do, their votes are worth even less than The Washington Post’s editorials.

Copyright 2024 Christine Flowers