There are simply so many cringey issues concerning the New York journal journalist Olivia Nuzzi‘s inappropriate relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
To start with, he’s married. (The political scion’s spouse is the actor Cheryl Hines.) Second, Nuzzi is 31, and Kennedy, straying into Hugh Hefner territory, is 70. Third, she was till not too long ago engaged to the political journalist Ryan Lizza, who was “MeToo’d” in 2017, when the New Yorker dismissed him for what it described as improper sexual conduct.
Aside from prurient curiosity, why ought to any of us actually care?
It’s a stain on Nuzzi’s journalistic integrity because the journal’s Washington correspondent and, worse, a stain on New York, whose editors had been blindsided by the information.
New York suspended her for violating its requirements on “conflicts of curiosity and disclosures,” based on an unsigned note to readers on the journal’s web site. “Had the journal been conscious of this relationship, she wouldn’t have continued to cowl the presidential marketing campaign. We remorse this violation of our readers’ belief,” it stated.
Whereas engaged within the relationship with Kennedy — which she stated started late final 12 months, after she wrote a profile of him, and led to August — Nuzzi continued to carry forth on the presidential race. In March, throughout a discussion with the journalists Frank Bruni and Joe Klein revealed by the New York Occasions, she castigated the “institution press” for failing to deal with Kennedy as a severe contender in what she referred to as “a three-man race.” In July, the month earlier than Kennedy dropped out and endorsed former President Trump, she wrote a disparaging article concerning the “conspiracy of silence” to guard Trump’s then-rival, President Biden.
Nuzzi’s behavior didn’t merely cross an moral line. It ran full-steam throughout a freeway stuffed with warning indicators, flashing lights and oncoming site visitors. Somebody — forgive the reference to different strange RFK Jr. stories — is certain to finish up as roadkill. And it’s not going to be him.
Bizarrely, many journalists rushed to defend the indefensible.
“If we had been all judged on our worst moments or our greatest errors, how many people would come out wanting something apart from terrible?” the journalist Chris Cilizza wrote on X.
“ ‘I’m mad at Olivia Nuzzi’ is that this Friday’s ‘I hate Taylor Swift,’ ” the Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan wrote on X, referring to Trump’s remark after Swift endorsed Kamala Harris. “Stunning ladies unsettle and disrupt. This isn’t yellow cake uranium.”
“Reporters have all types of compromising relationships with sources,” Ben Smith wrote in Semafor. “Probably the most compromising of all, and the commonest, is a reporter’s fealty to somebody who provides them data. That’s the true coin of this realm. Intercourse barely charges.”
Oh, the world-weariness of all of it.
The journalism intercourse scandals we’ve had over the previous few years have usually been of the #MeToo variety: male boss harasses feminine subordinate. Many acquainted newsmen had been pushed out of their jobs and disgraced for behaving badly — Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Mark Halperin, Invoice O’Reilly, Roger Ailes and so forth.
I can’t consider a single high-profile feminine journalist who misplaced her profession for sexually harassing or assaulting a subordinate. Really, I can consider precisely one: Kimberly Guilfoyle, the previous Mrs. Gavin Newsom and present companion of Donald Trump Jr., who, based on stories by the New Yorker and others, was compelled out of her job at Fox Information in 2018 after being accused of sexually harassing a feminine assistant.
Whereas ladies not often exhibit the predatory habits of males, they’ve definitely been recognized to behave in sexually inappropriate methods at work. However their transgressions are often consensual.
To date, it’s not clear whether or not Nuzzi has inflicted a deadly wound on her profession.
“The connection was by no means bodily,” Nuzzi told the media reporter Oliver Darcy, “however ought to have been disclosed to stop the looks of a battle.”
An inappropriate relationship that’s “not bodily” would possibly imply sexting. And sexting, I’d counsel, is intercourse.
In 1992, just a few years earlier than Invoice Clinton quibbled over the definition of “intercourse” in a deposition, Nicholson Baker wrote a steamy novel, “Vox,” a few sexual relationship between a person and a girl that takes place solely over the telephone. Throughout their affair, Monica Lewinsky, then a White Home intern, bought a copy for Clinton.
The relationship between Nuzzi and Kennedy was an open secret in certain media spheres, according to Business Insider. Kennedy, a one-time heroin addict whose second spouse as soon as discovered a diary through which he rated his numerous sexual conquests, boasted to associates that Nuzzi despatched him intimate photographs. Phrase acquired again to New York‘s editor in chief, David Haskell, who confronted his star reporter.
I’m sorry that Nuzzi exhibited such poor judgment. She’s an entertaining stylist and simply plain enjoyable to learn. However she has accomplished her feminine colleagues a disservice by reinforcing probably the most damaging clichés about ladies utilizing their sexuality to get forward.
In 2015, Nuzzi’s New York journal colleague Marin Cogan wrote a smart piece utilizing the Netflix collection “Home of Playing cards” to critique Hollywood’s portrayal of girls journalists.
“In cinema’s first few a long time, ladies reporters had been spunky and sensible romantic foils — Hildy Johnson in ‘His Lady Friday’; Lois Lane within the Superman franchise,” Cogan wrote. “Then, within the ’70s and ’80s, tv gave us two ladies journalists — nonetheless spunky however far more impartial — that we may root for: Mary Tyler Moore and Murphy Brown. However someday within the final 20 years, we turned slutty ambition monsters.”
Nuzzi tweeted the piece out, asking, “Why does Hollywood assume feminine reporters sleep with their sources?”
Sigh. The jokes actually do write themselves.