There are simply so many cringey issues in regards to 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 lately 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.
Other than 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 have 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 resulted in August — Nuzzi continued to carry forth on the presidential race. In March, throughout a discussion with the journalists Frank Bruni and Joe Klein printed by the New York Instances, she castigated the “institution press” for failing to deal with Kennedy as a critical contender in what she known as “a three-man race.” In July, the month earlier than Kennedy dropped out and endorsed former President Trump, she wrote a disparaging article in regards to 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 filled with warning indicators, flashing lights and oncoming visitors. Somebody — forgive the reference to different strange RFK Jr. stories — is sure to finish up as roadkill. And it’s not going to be him.
Bizarrely, many journalists rushed to defend the indefensible.
“If we have been all judged on our worst moments or our greatest errors, how many people would come out trying 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 girls unsettle and disrupt. This isn’t yellow cake uranium.”
“Reporters have all kinds 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 typically been of the #MeToo variety: male boss harasses feminine subordinate. Many acquainted newsmen have 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. Truly, I can consider precisely one: Kimberly Guilfoyle, the previous Mrs. Gavin Newsom and present associate of Donald Trump Jr., who, based on reviews by the New Yorker and others, was pressured out of her job at Fox Information in 2018 after being accused of sexually harassing a feminine assistant.
Whereas girls hardly ever exhibit the predatory habits of males, they’ve actually been identified to behave in sexually inappropriate methods at work. However their transgressions are normally consensual.
Thus far, 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” may imply sexting. And sexting, I might counsel, is intercourse.
In 1992, a couple of years earlier than Invoice Clinton quibbled over the definition of “intercourse” in a deposition, Nicholson Baker wrote a steamy novel, “Vox,” a couple of sexual relationship between a person and a girl that takes place completely 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 wherein he rated his numerous sexual conquests, boasted to buddies that Nuzzi despatched him intimate images. 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 completed her feminine colleagues a disservice by reinforcing probably the most damaging clichés about girls 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, girls reporters have been spunky and good 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 girls journalists — nonetheless spunky however far more unbiased — that we might 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.
