Fall Out Girl

When former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley announced his 2016 presidential campaign at Baltimore's Inner Harbor in May 2015, one reporter covering the event mocked and ridiculed him for being so self-assured that he could defeat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination and brought up, with a great deal of snark, the protesters who showed up at the event to protest the Baltimore police killing of Freddie Gray because of O'Malley's zero-tolerance policy toward crime when he was mayor of Baltimore - even though he'd left City Hall eight years prior. This reporter pretty much set the tone for mainstream press coverage - what there was of it - of O'Malley's presidential campaign in its entire eight-month lifespan. That tone doomed O'Malley's chances and made Bernie Sanders Hillary's main primary competition, and Sanders was never going to win the nomination because he is not a Democrat. This led to Hillary winning the nomination and losing to Trump, as well as the end of O'Malley's viability as a candidate for elective office. 

The reporter's name was Olivia Nuzzi.

Olivia Nuzzi, only 32 years old as of this writing - her birthday is January 6 - was a wunderkind of political journalism when she began her career as a reporter in 2014 for the Daily Beast.  Her skills, her irreverence, and, let's face it, her good looks (a must for appearing on TV-news panel discussions)  made her a favorite among readers of the latest tidbits coming out of Washington, and she soon joined New York magazine as its Washington correspondent.  For seven years in that position, beginning in 2017, Nuzzi achieved accolades for her sharp, witty writing and seemed destined for Fran Leibowitz-style greatness.

Then the roof caved in.

In September 2024, then-CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy reported in his newsletter  that Nuzzi "engaged in an inappropriate relationship" with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had sought the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination against President Biden and who had been the subject of a profile story Nuzzi herself had written in November 2023.  Although the relationship was apparently platonic and mostly confined to e-mail correspondence - "emotional and digital in nature" was how an unidentified third party described it - Darcy reported that Nuzzi's relationship with Kennedy was a conflict of interest, and subsequent reports on their "digital affair" suggest that Nuzzi had given RFK Jr. advice and pointers on how to pursue his political ambitions - advice and pointers that may have been responsible for Kennedy occupying his current office.

Oliver Darcy didn't exactly stick the knife in Nuzzi the way comedian Hannibal Burris brought down Bill Cosby - it wasn't like Darcy had said, "You know she's a political courtesan, right?"  Darcy's character assassination was more detailed and more to the point of why this affair was a problem.  Nuzzi, he wrote,  was "one of the most high-profile journalists in America, and she arguably wrote one of the most consequential pieces of the 2024 campaign, which was about what she called the conspiracy of silence to protect Joe Biden. And given that readers did not know that this relationship was ongoing with RFK, it raises questions about conflict of interest, because RFK has been an active participant in the 2024 campaign."

New York magazine suspended Nuzzi and reviewed her work, concluding that it had "found no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias" in her published writings, but added that "had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign."  And with that, and an apology to its readers for a violation of trust, New York published a statement that it and Nuzzi had "parted ways."   In other words, she was fired.

Fifteen days later, Donald Trump was returned to power, eventually giving RFK Jr. his current job.

But the show's not over yet, this one's a double feature.  Nuzzi has a new memoir out, "American Canto," a memoir of her relationship with the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, in which she attempts to gain sympathy from readers by, according to all of the reviews, turning the story of her love for Kennedy - a man old enough to be her father - into a tale of untold passion and star-crossed love. Or, as Helen Lewis of The Atlantic put it, "The language seems tortured by Nuzzi's efforts to rewrite her life-upending crush into a mutual whirlwind of passion, to turn herself from Ophelia into Juliet." Ophelia, of course, was the intended bride for Hamlet who drowned herself after the melancholy Dane drove her mad. I don't think I need to explain who Juliet is.

Anyway, weeding a one-acre Shakespeare garden is probably an easy task compared to get to understand Nuzzi's intentions and her perspective, which she attempted to explain in an interview she granted to the Bulwark's Tim Miller.  In the interview, available on YouTube, Nuzzi speaks in a confused, halting cadence.  She sidesteps questions about why she didn't warn people about RFK Jr.'s, uh, personality quirks (like his ketamine addiction), and she tries to act like a victim more like the accomplice she was.  And she goes on and on in this state of confusion for over an hour.   Once upon a time, Olivia Nuzzi was a reporter known for her sharp writing, and here, she comes across as being as sharp as a wet noodle.

You know, they say that beauty and brains are a great combination when you're seeking a relationship with a woman.  Olivia Nuzzi has beauty and brains, all right, but, ironically, her beauty got her in so much trouble that she forgot that she had brains.  Nothing demonstrates that more than her choice in men.  Not just RFK, Jr., but always men who are far too old for her, such as Keith Olbermann, who was 52 when she met the 18-year-old Nuzzi in 2001, and Ryan Lizza, who is the young'un of the trio of her lovers; he got engaged to her in 2022, when he was 48 and she was 29.  Lizza wrote pieces on his Substack about their relationship and their split in 2024.

I still remember Olivia Nuzzi as the woman who condemned Martin O'Malley to permanent also-ran status in the Democratic Party and set the pace for how thoroughly pundits could ridicule him.  I have no sympathy for her.  Period.  Stick a fork in her career; it's done.

Kamala Out of the System

Much like Hillary Clinton released a memoir of her failed presidential campaign against Donald Trump titled "What Happened," former Vice President Kamala Harris has a new memoir of her failed presidential campaign against Donald Trump, titled "107 Days" (after the length of her campaign), though it should be titled, "What Happened?"  Because the added question mark would be highly appropriate.

Harris appeared with Stephen Colbert on his late-night talk show a few days after he - like Harris eight months earlier - had become irrelevant.  She lamented that the system of government in America is broken, and that she plans talk to people about their lives while she tours the United States to promote her book, saying that, by not asking for anyone's vote, she can talk to them in a way that is not transactional.  All of this comes as Harris has announced that she will not run for governor of California in 2026.

"I believe, and I always believed, that as fragile as our democracy is, our systems would be strong enough to defend our most fundamental principles," she told Colbert.  "And I think right now that they’re not as strong as they need to be."

By talking to people on her book tour, Harris is planning to do exactly what she could have done as Vice President if President Biden had made it clear from the start that he would be a one-term President, which, I now believe, is what he should have done all along.  He should have decided privately that he would not run again in 2024 and wait until after the 2022 midterms to make his decision public.  That would have given Harris plenty of time to talk to Americans in a non-transactional way to help her decide whether to run in 2024, as Biden's earlier withdrawal, had it happened, would have allowed other Democrats to run and make the primary/caucus campaign more competitive.

And what does Harris plan to do when her book tour is over?  She plans not to return to government "for now," but that tease may indicate another presidential run in 2028, and many Harris supporters believe she is entitled to try again, since a 107-day campaign was clearly insufficient at defeating Donald Trump.  But let's look at the big picture.  In a live recent podcast he hosted, journalist Ryan Lizza asked listeners to weigh in on whom they thought should be the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee, and they responded with the names of numerous Democrats, but the name of one particular Democrat was never mentioned.  Guess which Democrat.