RFK and Olivia Nuzzi: the news story I cannot get out of my head
Why, why, why do people risk everything for TEXTS?
Guys, there is only one nugget of news emerging from the usual maelstrom this week worth considering and that is the frankly mind-bending romance between luminous journalist and leading magazine reporter (a dying breed), Olivia Nuzzi, 31, and the oddball of the presidential race (which really is saying something), RFK Jr, scion of the famed Kennedy family, who admitted to once planting a dead bear cub in Central Park and happens to be 70 (and married).
It apparently kicked off when Nuzzi, who looks as gorgeous as she is successful, interviewed RFK Jr in November for a profile in New York Magazine (which I have obviously combed for any signs of sparks - and let me tell you, it's not exactly a sexy read. In fact she tells us his car "smells so bad I thought I might pass out after about 15 second riding shotgun". Seductive stuff.)
This week the magazine announced she had been put on leave after bosses became aware of a relationship she had with "a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign". It didn't take much sleuthing for reporters/gossips to name RFK Jr as the "former subject".
And that's when the head-scratching began. Nuzzi is an uber successful reporter, sickeningly young, engaged to a fellow uber successful and sickeningly young reporter, with seemingly the world at her feet. RFK Jr is.... well, listen, he has, I suppose, been uber successful in his own right and certainly had an interesting life. He's a Kennedy to start with (undeniably hot), he was at one point a heroin addict, somehow pulled himself together and became a leading environmental lawyer, but now he's known for his rather barmy beliefs about vaccines and claiming that doctors found a worm in his brain and admitting to dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park as a joke (which, listen, is actually kinda funny - he didn't kill the bear cub himself! but is also oddball territory). It's just difficult to understand what Nuzzi, a woman with the world at her feet, could have seen in the much older, rather craggy, conspiracy theory-espousing Kennedy.
But wait, it gets even more head-scratch-y. A source went on to say: "the relationship was emotional and digital in nature, not physical". And a spokesman for RFK Jr confirmed they had only actually met once in person, for the interview.
Firstly, "digital in nature" is a superb way to describe the hellscape of much of modern dating and I suspect will be an enduring entry in our lexicon. But far more importantly, this means that Nuzzi risked it all - her engagement, her plum of a role at one of the best magazines in America, her goddamn inner peace - for a few TEXTS?!
It's fascinating. And not without precedent. Anthony Weiner, once a leading light of the Democrat party, married to Huma Abedin, Hilary Clinton's right-hand woman, who seemed to have a glittering career in politics ahead of him, risked and duly lost it all to sext with strangers he met on Twitter. I remember reading about his fall from grace and the thing that stuck with me was that there was absolutely no suggestion that he had actually met up with any of these women and committed a physical act of adultery. It was all - to borrow from the parlance of today - "digital in nature".
I thought at the time how strange it was to risk everything for a few dirty Twitter DMs but perhaps it's not all that strange. Nuzzi and RFK did the same. Perhaps this is the modern way. After all, for all my spluttering, I have certainly experienced the excitement of a relationship carried out mainly through digital communication - in my defence, he lived a long way away, ok?! And I've known friends go absolutely cuckoo for paramours where the affair was mainly conducted through electronic communication. How sexy that sounds.
But still, it seems such a sad, paltry, bloodless way to go about an affair. Surely if you are gonna risk it all for an extramarital thrill that may well upend your entire life, why not go all in and, hey, meet your lover in person?
Recommendations
Ok, now that I've got that rant off my chest, I only have one rec for this week..
Educated by Tara Westover
Oh. My. God. This book. Ok, so I'm about five years late to this one - raved about by all and sundry, a favourite of Barack Obama and Bill Gates and Stephen Fry - surely the only literary critic trifecta worth acknowledging.
Listen, it's brilliant. It's a memoir by a woman who was brought up by Mormon survivalists in rural Idaho. The kind of people who thought the government was out to get them so didn't bother to send their children to school or get them birth certificates. They were also not that keen on the medical establishment so when one or other of them suffered a horrendous injury (happens disturbingly often if you are a Mormon survivalist) they make do with herbs and ointments and tinctures.
Tara is a wonderful narrator, you root for her every step of the way, and the book is about her journey from a childhood where not only is she not sent to school, but there's no real effort made to educate her at home either, to landing a place at Cambridge University. She writes about the way you can both love your family and also need to get the hell away from them, and how education changes us - it gives you a new understanding and outlook on the world but it takes something away too.
I'm really not doing justice to this book and all I can say is: read it, you won't regret it.
That's all for now! I hope you have a wonderful week and thank you, as always, for reading xxx