Olivia Nuzzi and RFK Jr’s Weird Affair
Olivia Nuzzi cheated on her fiancé (Ryan Lizza) and RFK Jr cheated on his wife (Cheryl Hines).
— Jon Cooper 🇺🇸 (@joncoopertweets) September 22, 2024
Who else thinks they’re equally to blame and equally despicable? pic.twitter.com/d8zUrfVwcv
Journalist Olivia Nuzzi’s online affair with former-presidential-third-party-candidate wingnut Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is the news. Someone needs to fix her picker…
***
The exuberant acts of defiance are fun, until someone loses their job. I’m talking about the weird scandal of New York Magazine’s political reporter, Olivia Nuzzi’s online affair thing with conspiracy theory pustule, RFK, Jr.
One and the same. It’s sad for Nuzzi’s fiancé Ryan Lizza, who in 2017 got shit-canned from the New Yorker for his own exuberant acts of defiance (getting handsy with the staff). Apparently, he called off the engagement after the news broke. But, come on, you crazy kids share values! Can’t you understand Olivia’s quest for aliveness, Ryan, after having exuberant quests of your own?
But alas, septuagenerian RFK has turned Nuzzi’s head. He’s more transgressive, he decapitates whales and dumped a dead bear in Central Park. It’s hard to compete with that. How could she not flash her tits at that guy?
So charming.
The secret relationship between New York Magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was exposed because he frequently bragged about it to his friends, the Daily Beast reported Saturday.
The 71-year-old former independent presidential candidate reportedly boasted about the affair — and about nude photos Nuzzi, 31, sent to him — so widely that word reached NY Mag editor-in-chief David Haskell.
According to the Daily Beast, Haskell subsequently confronted Nuzzi about it in a one-on-one meeting held Sept. 13 at the publication’s New York offices. The star Washington correspondent denied the affair several times before, as the outlet put it, Haskell “gave Nuzzi the option to come clean.”
As Haskell explained in an email to NY Mag staff on Friday, after Nuzzi confessed to the relationship, she was taken off of all coverage of the 2024 presidential election and subsequently went on leave. He also revealed that, according to Nuzzi, the relationship began in December of last year after the publication of a cover story she wrote about Kennedy. The relationship ended near the end of August.
Not a solid career move.
I am absolutely baffled how Olivia Nuzzi had a career. I don’t think it’s because she’s a dazzling prose stylist. My cynical old lady take is she looks good in a fitted dress, which seems to be a requirement to appear on CNN, seated, viewed in profile. Her racist tweeting under Obama should’ve disqualified her long ago. But somehow she managed a job at New York Magazine writing laudatory dreck about her online boyfriend and hit pieces on Biden. Now she’s the subject of an internal investigation.
WTF is wrong with Olivia Nuzzi’s picker?
Kennedy has been a lifelong FW. His second wife, Mary Kathleen Richardson, killed herself after she discovered the extent of his double life. A Wiki excerpt of his love life:
During his marriage to Richardson, Kennedy was known among his friends for sending explicit nude photos of women that they presumed he had taken, according to Vanity Fair.[31] He reportedly engaged in multiple affairs during the marriage.[337][31][338] His friends later called him a “lifelong philanderer”.[339][340]
On May 12, 2010, Kennedy filed for divorce from Richardson. On May 16, 2012, Richardson was found dead in a building on the grounds of her home in Bedford, New York. The Westchester County Medical Examiner ruled the death a suicide due to asphyxiation from hanging.[341] Before her death, Richardson had discovered Kennedy’s personal journal from 2001, in which he recorded sexual encounters with 37 different women. According to Kennedy, Richardson passed the journal along “to her sisters with instructions that, if anything happened to her, [it should be] published in the press”.[342][343]
Following her death, Kennedy won a court case against Richardson’s siblings to have her buried alongside fellow Kennedy family members in St. Francis Xavier Cemetery in Centerville, Massachusetts, instead of a location closer to her siblings in New York. Shortly after her burial, Kennedy had her body disinterred and moved to an unmarked grave in an empty area of the cemetery, to allow for more space for future burials closer to the Kennedy family plots.[344]
What a quality individual.
Why would anyone pick me dance for that bastard? Olivia, he’s seen at least 37 other sets of tits. Why would you imagine yours are special? What on earth did you hope to gain, other than ignominy, probable job loss and newly single status? Now, in typical FW fashion, he’s thrown you under the bus. Hey, you came on to him. A crazy fan! What could he do?
Was this guy’s fleeting attention worth it?
(I have the same picker question for his wife Cheryl Hines. I hope you’ve seen an attorney.)
But mostly I’m wondering where Parul Sehgal and Kathryn Jezer-Morton are right now. Where is their defense for the psychological nuance of Olivia Nuzzi’s affair? Where are the scoldings for the black-and-white thinking of those who judge her? Cat got your tongue? Worm got your brain?
It’s all fun and games, Olivia, until you’re a joke. Step away from the cool kids table.
How can you even comment on this story?
It is ghoulish and teeters on being a Halloween tale with disenturning and brain worms and such.
Because people keep sending it to me. Must be the season. Like pumpkin spice.
That explains the orange pumpkin head. Add some jeans, straw, and a floppy hat and it’s a great scarecrow costume. where do they get that orange makeup!
How do people like RFK Jr and Ms Nuzzi do the things that they do and think that it is in any way normal or acceptable? Honestly, the only conclusion that I can draw is that monsters walk amongst us.
LFTT
How else would a mediocre political hack with a horse face and thick ankles get themselves recorded in history as a “femme fatale”? I think that’s every narcissist’s credo “Love me, hate me but don’t ignore me.”
I had no idea who this idiot was until the last year or so when suddenly everybody was making a big deal about another guy spewing anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, but add talk about brain worms and dumping dead bears in Central Park. I thought it was a joke at first and couldn’t believe he was a real person.
Whether he’s right or wrong regarding the causes he’s championed, RFK Jr. has long been a thorn in the side of several global industries so whenever he does the kind of perverse, creepy shit that nearly every entitled ultra-rich douche on earth does (did you see the series Succession?), the usual press shield of silence and “blind eye” reserved for the billionaire class are taken down and he’s left hanging in the wind.
You’d think he would have figured this out a long time ago and cleaned up his act but such is his dense level of entitlement. As I wrote before, it’s really too bad he made himself such an easy target since the attacks on him are probably going to burn his environmental and climate change advocacy efforts and organizations just as the world is teetering on the brink of disaster. You can bet that the big carbon offenders are going to have a party tarring every legitimate cause he ever represented with his controversial reputation in the hopes environmental advocacy is sunk by association.
He’s also exposed other industrial evils. For instance, if you remove the hot button issue of vaccines from RFK Jr.s general activism platform, he hasn’t been fundamentally wrong that the pharmaceutical industry is a corrupt monster with far too much power. The basic “structure” of the corruption in the pharmaceutical industry RFK Jr. was exposing– promoting risky products, silencing whistleblowers, agency capture and buying up science and medical journals and turning them into ghost-writing PR hubs– is actually quite apt if you look at deadly drug scandals like Vioxx, Trovan (which the film The Constant Gardener was roughly based on), the Opioid crisis, and many others. He was arguably barking too close to a dangerous tree. And by dangerous, I mean an industry that came perilously close to ordering Congress to declare war on a country that violated an HIV drug patent.
I think as long as he made himself look like a tinfoil hat-wearing kook by going after vaccine safety, the backlash against him was only middling to moderate and his “punishment” was mostly being ignored. He was doing such a good job of discrediting himself he didn’t need much help. But he quite recently began expanding his drug safety platform to other blockbuster pharmaceutical products which not only have notorious safety records, also don’t have the same sacrosanct status or tort protections that vaccines have. I suspect this is one of the reasons the media ratfucking escalated and, being an egotistical asshole, he’s made it so, so easy.
Upvoted for “ratfucking” 😂🙌🏼
I detect another Watergate history follower. 😉
Yes Hoac 👏
And journalistically speaking — the classic All the President’s Men is also one of my all time fave movies…
I just saw it again and it always strikes me how almost nothing in it– writing, acting, cinematography– seems dated. Of course, like the Watergate hearings, it’s not the full truth of Nixon’s crimes in office because every president before and since has committed the same crimes and we just don’t talk about it. But it was still brave for the time.
I’m generally a big fan of that gritty American fly-on-the-wall version of cinema vérité in the 70s, especially since it was such a huge contrast to an incredibly schlocky era for film and television which I sometimes feel like we’re still in.
shallow people making shallow moves. isn’t that a song from the 70s?
on a serious note, female journalists are in twist about this because they are often slandered by folks who say, “you just sleep with your subjects, don’t you?” it’s rough to be professionally associated with a person like Olivia.
she’ll lose her job, he’ll lose nothing but a marriage that didn’t mean much to him anyway because, shallow. Cheryl will lose her reproductive health but she had to have known what she was getting into with that “patchouli splashed on my armpits because aluminum is bad for me. i’m a natural man.”
he removed his second wife from her burial plot to make ore room. that is fucking callous. i hope Cheryl strikes a match on his rugged forehead and sets his hair on fire, but that’s just me.
I may be misremembering the timeline, but wasn’t Cheryl having an affair with RFK Jr before they got married? How you get them is how you lose them and all that.
I think that was scandal rag buzz that was never backed by evidence other than RFK Jr.’s status as a Lothario. I wonder that any woman ever agreed to shake the guy’s hand considering how contagious his reputation was and the risk of being smeared by association.
Stories like Nuzzi’s baffle and infuriate me.
At my last job, I was doing the work of every guy on my team. Despite constantly blowing deadlines and showing up to meetings hungover, they still got promoted and several of them still had the audacity to accuse me of sleeping my way to the top. Hey asshole, I’m doing your job for you. Also, what advancement are you talking about? I’m underpaid and being passed over for promotions and training.
I work in a different industry from journalism and so do all my girlfriends, but at one point or another we’ve all been told we can’t possibly be smart and hard working, we must’ve gotten where we are through sexual favors or being a pretty face. It’s CRAZY-MAKING.
I worked in a notoriously sleazy industry (overlapped somewhat with journalism) and also got the same charge even though I never, ever, not once, ever, never fucked anyone to advance my career. In fact I prosecuted and sued a few who tried to force the issue. But my attempts to fight back made no difference because that’s the smear any woman who does anything even a tiny bit notable gets subjected to.
I was recently reading some online complaints from women about coworkers falsely bragging about having sex with them. It seems to be a thing and I got that too. It always baffled me since it only gave me the opportunity to elaborately list all the reasons I’d never touch such unattractive, smelly, charmless, micro-dicked morons. But sometimes I regret not playing along with it and just giving them really shitty performance reviews lol.
I’m really sorry you went through that. I’ve had similar experiences and quite frankly, it’s the reason I’m no longer too friendly with men on the job.
I’m cordial but that’s about it, and sometimes even that sometimes hasn’t been enough.
Thank you for the kind thoughts! I’m not sure if the industry you work in promises “fame” to the prominent but, at least in my experience, the stake of “immortality” seems to attract worse psychos than even the draw of power and money.
Speaking of which, have you watched The Morning Show series yet? I thought it was almost euphemizing, especially regarding complicit bystanders who, in my experience, are never as redeemable as the show tries to make some of them out.
Anyway, my experience was some time ago and, by now, it doesn’t keep me up nights. Even the flashbacks I got from watching The Morning Show didn’t make my heart rate go up. It will never be quite “meh” but I credit witnessing and experiencing filth like that up close for making me really, really clear on certain things that typically bamboozle and confuse most people, sometimes to their peril– like how creepy people behave and why, how dark they can get to avoid consequences, how those nasty situations tend to typically play out, how bystanders typically respond, etc.
I could even say that knowing these things is an ingredient in my being basically happy. Though I’d never thank the creeps and enablers I encountered in that industry for wising me up because I think survivors gain wisdom thanks to themselves and their fellow survivors and in spite of trauma, I can think of several times when not being so easily “mindfuckable” and confused about scary and complex situations probably saved the day for me and my kids.
I learned something else after I quit that industry for good when I was pregnant and worked for someone who ended up in headlines a few years later for multiple allegations of rape. I learned that, even when you’re not the direct target of sexual aggression, it’s as if veteran sexual abusers develop a telepathic radar for whistleblowing, cage-rattling survivors– in other words, the kinds of people prone to sniff out and tell on rapey creeps. I swear my boss could see me coming long before I could see what he was and, even if he typically only went after teenage interns and minor children, he made my life a living hell the entire time I worked for that company.
That was the last straw for me. It’s too bad because I think I was good at my job but I’m not the first to bail to avoid premature demise from stress illness. Plus my main motivation had always been about getting certain ideas and messages out and there are other ways to do that.
Since you’re sticking it out, all power to you. I hope that the collective resistance of #MeToo has made things less dangerous in certain fields and less isolating for kick-ass rebels and truth tellers.
I’m very fortunate; I now work at a company that runs on merit (not nepotism) and recognizes women for a job well done. My boss is a woman who champions women and my coworkers are men who respect women and mind their business.
Shocker, we’re also #1 in our field.
If I left this job for any reason, I wouldn’t stay in this industry. I don’t know any competitor who doesn’t still run their business like a frathouse, even in the year 2024.
Not one bit surprised the company is #1. There have been a lot of studies showing that companies with more women on their boards outperform those without by a wide margin, Organizations with greater gender diversity among senior leaders are also supposed to be more profitable.
I’ve noticed a lot of companies try to claim diverse leadership but then it turns they’re just clustering women in HR. And having just a few women in leadership can be as bad as having none since the types of women chosen to play– or who can even tolerate– the role of “token chick” are often big patriarchy-enablers who are no friends to other women (Margaret Thatcher comes to mind).
This is infuriating and what makes it even more ridiculous is… Who is being influenced by the alleged sexual favors? Even if it was true it would be AT LEAST half the fault of the men promoting women for that reason.
For me, the insinuation is that men hoard resources so they can rape women. People start stuttering and backtracking when I bring that up though, or when I say, “So you think women are stupid and incapable of doing their jobs?”
Jeez, is that the new apologism spin– that calling out rape culture is misogynistic because doing so somehow… depicts women as “incompetent”??
I thought I’d heard it all. I would file that under something called “reverse culture jamming,” a term coined by UC Santa Cruz prof Susan Harding to describe when groups or individual pundits attempt to bamboozle lefties by passing off tradcon ideology or policies as “woke” by “appropriating, poaching, channeling, ventriloquism” and “revoicing” the message into a progressive journalistic “pitch.” It’s basically a form of “entryism” and the same principle behind why corporate media typically assign she-shills to front attacks on actually valid feminists (like the New Yorker and NY Mag hit pieces on CL and Sarah Manguso). The tactic of trying to rope progressives into supporting undemocratic, unhumanitarian views and policies by framing and disguising the campaigns as progressive or using progressive-sounding speech goes back to Plato.
Regarding your theory on rape as a motive for amassing resources and power, have you ever read Demonic Males: Apes and the Evolution of Human Violence by former Goodall protege Richard Wrangham? It’s brilliant. An alternate title could have been “Rape is the Core Motive Behind Everything Bad.”
> Jeez, is that the new apologism spin– that calling out rape culture is misogynistic because doing so somehow… depicts women as “incompetent”??
No, I’m saying that the myth that women sleep their way to the top insinuates we’re stupid and incapable of rising on our own merits.
Sorry, I misread the last bit of your comment. I thought you meant this is how people were “stuttering and backtracking” to your assertion that men hoard resources to commit rape. But I’ve heard similar attempts to frame any attempt to discuss rape culture as somehow “misogynistic” so I’ll stand by my spiel lol.
> I thought you meant this is how people were “stuttering and backtracking” to your assertion that men hoard resources to commit rape.
Oh, I absolutely was saying that as well. People get upset for some reason when you point out who the aggressor is.
Gah. I had a few very close, solid allies at work and we used to joke about how, if you so much as mentioned “sexual harassment” or sexual abuse in passing, a lot of people– maybe especially women– would become furtive and nervous and start literally looking over their shoulders as if some rapey douche in power might be listening in, recording responses and, kind of like Madame LaFarge, collecting a list of foes of the Rapey Republic for the guillotine.
Naturally the same people would nervously and reflexively spew some “what-aboutism” or apologia or victim-blaming bs in response.
* ore = more.
monday typing.
And Mr. Lizza’s ex is hopefully in bliss living her best life after this loser dumped her for this POS. 🍿
What’s the story there? It’s impossible to find backstory coverage now since the news is swamped with the Nuzzi scandal.
Writing a supposedly unbiased article about a secret affair partner is a major low and ethics violation for a supposed journalist. She cheated not only on her partner, but also on her employer (lying when questioned multiple times and denying that she was involved with RFK Jr), readers, other writers and readers who cited her articles, and her profession. She also wrote a major smear article about Biden–who her AP was running against– using unnamed “sources” who for all we know were her AP or fabricated. She tried to change the course of a presidential election, which is a betrayal of all of us.
I think this journalist said it well:
“The flaws in her work were on display for all to see. The flaws of her character were plain. The callousness and shallow worldview and meangirling were always there.”
The Olivia Nuzzi Scandal Is an Indictment on Journalism
Jeremy Fassler
As for RFK Jr, it seems he’s trying to erase the wife who filed for divorce and then killed herself after discovering his dozens of affairs. He refused to allow her family to bury her near them, buried her in another state, then had her dug up and reburied in an unmarked grave among 50 vacant plots.
I’m glad to see that what’s being termed an “online affair” is being treated as an affair, period. However, given her multiple denials of any relationship to her employer, it’s possible that admitting to an online affair is just a trickle truth admission to being caught sending nudes. It may turn out that their affair started before, not after, her article was published, and that it was more than online.
In an ideal world, her articles and any references to them would now be tagged with an editor’s disclaimer about the writer’s bias and failure to disclose her relationship with the subject/that she was having an affair with the subject’s opponent. Or retracted altogether.
Just read this after also posting about Jeremy Fassler!
“Upon closer examination, her writing reveals her as a real-life Regina George, less interested in analyzing the mechanisms of power than in palace gossip and snark. ” ~ Jeremy Fassler
Oh what burn.
Nice catch Goodfriend.
The wife who killed herself knew of the affairs for some time before separation. According to her family, that’s what triggered the initial spiral into depression. But it seems the thing that triggered the suicide is when RFK took custody of their minor kids after her reported alcohol addiction led her to allegedly endanger the children with bizarre rages and possible drunk driving. He also began to cut her off financially according to her family. She couldn’t pay her bills.
I think it didn’t help that he was also reportedly squiring her to psychiatrists and encouraging or pressuring her to be medicated (as JFK reportedly did to Jackie to get her to shut up about the cheating– the old “chemical straitjacket” tactic used by the Soviets?). In any event, family and friends said she was taking a cocktail of psych meds. I don’t know the details but there’s always the possibility that some of the drugs didn’t mix well and certainly didn’t mix with alcohol and several of those drugs may have had “suicidal ideation” in the black box warnings. If he did push her to take medications, it would be ironic that RFK Jr. is now warning about drugs with those side effects.
As I wrote before, I think what happened to this woman is especially a warning to all affair partners since that’s how the relationship began– when she got pregnant while he was still married to his first wife. That doesn’t mean she deserved a death sentence but it brings home the point that if they cheat with you, they’ll cheat on you.
I also wonder if being cheated on is even more humiliating for O-spouses since no one knows as well as they do the sneering contempt with which both cheaters and affair partners tend to view chumps.
I also wonder if being cheated on is even more humiliating for O-spouses since no one knows as well as they do the sneering contempt with which both cheaters and affair partners tend to view chumps.
I hadn’t thought of this. One can only hope!
It’s just anecdotal but I’ve seen this play out a few times or heard about the fallout from credible sources. Hell really hath no fury like a mate poacher or OWife scorned. Gory, showy (but mostly carefully unsuccessful) suicide attempts, violence, wrecking of expensive imported cars, threats, burning shit, etc.
Before it sounds like I’ve always hung out in dysfunctional circles for fun, I had a front row seat to some of these dramas because I worked in an industry that has an especially high rate of pervs and cheaters and, as you can imagine, especially high rates of women trying to boost marginal careers or finances by banging married overlords.
No FW is ever worth killing yourself over. They dont care if you do, they are relieved actually, dont have to go through a messy divorce. Can say they are a widower. Oh my Ex killed themselves they suffered from depression, I tried so hard to help them. Better to go through the messy divorce, get half the stuff, go no contact, stick it to them.
This goes beyond weird to scary. Olivia may be a FW par excellence, but the more I hear about RFK Jr, the more I think that it’s good she jumped ship when she did.
How much of Nuzzi’s hit pieces on Biden contributed to his decision to bow out of this election? I hope she never works again.
Truly a bizarre story. I don’t understand what she thought she was winning here.
Here (from linked article) is an excerpt of Nuzzi’s writing on the first assassination attempt. Y’all.
What. the. hell?
Yet an ear had never appeared to have gone through less. Except there, on the tiniest patch of this tiny sculpture of skin, a minor distortion that resembled not a crucifixion wound but the distant aftermath of a sunburn.
I’m bummed out that RFK Jr.’s River Keepers project and climate change activism are likely going to burn in the controversy. Those are extremely important causes even if he’s an inveterate shithead who chumped his first wife and drove his second Owife to suicide. To quote Margaret Atwood (who I learned recently may be somewhat of a hypocrite), “Ideas are not responsible for the people who believe in them.” But nevertheless, causes become associated with their champions.
I think this was always a risk because of the rather novel form of narcissism that certain Kennedys have where, when they try to launder their creepy souls with heroic public virtue signalling, they don’t merely take the safe road or do it halfway like most gutless image managing narcs. They may choose genuinely embattled causes, take on genuinely dangerous enemies and do it at significant risk to themselves.
To quote another hypocrite, Jean Paul Sartre wrote, “Everything is permitted the hero.” Being half Irish, I recognize the rebel and “underdog” defense obsession of some Kennedys even if I hate the crimes the hero posturing is too often meant to compensate for. It’s also galling that the important issues people like this champion may suffer with them, partly because their narcissism seems to make them believe that God loves them more than other upstarts and cage-rattlers and they don’t seem to take the precautions necessary to go after Goliath and actually win– part of which is to keep one’s nose and record absolutely clean.
After all, how much can someone care about a cause if they imperil it by making themselves targets for salacious muckraking or even criminal personal conduct? But there’s no denying the Kennedys have championed and sacrificed for critical causes. Case in point is RFK Jr.s’ father and uncle forming a defense coalition for Rachel Carson in the 60s when her explosive The Silent Spring triggered a fatwa against her by Monsanto and other terrifying chemical giants. Seven years later, all three were dead and most people have no clue what Carson was warning about and no recognition that all of her predictions are increasingly coming true or that a very long list of growing modern disease scourges from cancer to Alzheimer’s show correlation to the type of acquired mitochondrial damage that Carson predicted. And of course Monsanto went on to produce glyphosate (known cause mitochondrial dysfunction), continued to grow into the toxic, whistleblower-crushing, medical journal-corrupting global monster it became until the company (and its power) were absorbed by Bayer AG.
The defense and promotion of Carson by RFK and JFK launched in the sixties was genuinely brave, even foolhardy since Monsanto and Dow were not just chemical giants but also arms manufacturers and deeply entrenched with the military industrial complex. For one, “benevolent” offers of agrotech aid to oil rich poor countries has long been a primary Trojan horse preceding western military meddling and invasion. And both companies produced napalm and Agent Orange (also a recognized cause of the PNET2 cell mitochondrial function that Carson’s book warned about). In any case, according to widely accepted theories that the Kennedy assassinations were “MIC hits,” it’s arguable that the Kennedys attempt to back Carson could have been an added incentive.
It all reminds me of a quote from Gore Vidal (not sure if he was another hypocrite):
“…all the great impatient men who eventually strangle for lack of air in the stratosphere of indulged will. Men who must tumble down and, in the tumbling, smash, if not themselves, the beloved image of their dreaming.”
No one should kid themselves that all the current buzz about the Kennedy legacy of rape and abuse of women isn’t coming out now (when everyone knew about it for ages) for a reason and isn’t tied to an industrial campaign to stamp out that family’s incomodious Irish underdog virtue signalling once and for all and scare back any future generations from going after Goliath. But none of this is a defense of the Kennedys’ negative legacy. In fact it’s an added condemnation that people who deign to champion such life and death causes often do to these causes what Ted did to Mary Jo– bring them down with them and kill them when they crash.
Two wreck-a-thons, for sure. I’ll never get the desire to partner with powerful people regardless of the odds. Even with an “online affair,” RFK Jr. is horrible, horrible person. Olivia is a disaster herself.
Now she’s been placed on leave from New York magazine, and he wants to sue her. Wonderful people, for sure.
Really curious what the result of her “being put on leave” will be, besides getting fired. Are there criminal or civil penalties for this kind of thing?
She may have signed an agreement with certain stipulations when she started writing for New York magazine, but journalists in the U.S. have First- and Fourth-Amendment protections.
Certainly, he can sue her for defamation like Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard. Fun times!
I was thinking more like NY Magazine itself suing her for breach of ethics or professional misconduct, but RFK suing her sounds fun too. Idk what the hell this woman was thinking.
Depends on what she agreed to when she joined them. Sometimes they just fire people versus getting the courts involved, though.
As the stomach turns- I do NOT get it! My XHC had NO PROBLEM admitting his affair(s)to a new woman out of another culture and he was snapped up like a sale at Nordstroms. The warnings from her friends did not matter—then my XHC was accepted by the whole clan and celebrated by her family —40 year old marries my cast off 62 year old. Why would you do that? I know from Tracy— woman will say….He will be different for me… I can tame this wild beast. I am the cure. Sigh—- please let’s learn from these stories and do bettter.
Another Kennedy dropped off a bridge and drowned a young lady in his car. And other stories..Entitled and arrogant from the womb, from the DNA strands. My XHCheater creeper had zero trouble confessing the One affair( but no, multiple massages and others) he had to Another lady and she snapped him.up like a sale at Nordstroms. The vision that she could change him, she had the key to his heart, Only she can make him love her…where I failed. It is these thoughts that my sisters grab at just to have a man. And a man with power and a name? It is sad sad sad…to hear of woman dying INSTEAD of taking the creep to the cleaners !!! No jerk can be worth hanging for. That is just too much centrality. So sorry to hear of another miserable triangle. *Sigh*
Listen serial killers have women writing them in jail, falling in love with them. Multiple women. Not sure if they are allowed conjugal visits in jail. Can you imagine? My mom went to jail to have a conjugal visit with her serial killer lover who she met by writing him letters in jail and he strangled her. Some women have a screw loose themselves. Willing to put themselves in danger.
I’m so sorry! That’s awful.
Oh God, this happened to your mother? So sorry! That must have been horrifyingly traumatic.
The clinical term for it is “hybristophilia”– an attraction to liars, felons, cheats and killers. I always suspected this probably applies to witting side pieces who, quite unlike chumps, start out fully aware their affair partners are betrayers, liars and abusers and yet are undeterred. It apparently has some overlaps with the phenomenon of “criminal apprentices” which theoretically has varying motivations that could also potentially apply to “hybristophiliacs.” I saw an interesting article on this: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shadow-boxing/202206/rethinking-the-murderers-accomplice
Specifically regarding your comment about the Kennedys: JFK cheated relentlessly on Jackie and preyed on teenage interns. There’s something wrong with that family.
JFK also reportedly battered Jackie and Jackie had quipped at one point that she would never let herself be alone with RFK for fear he’d violently rape her. Personally I think the fact that JFK forcibly interned Jackie in a mental asylum after she caught him cheating was a form of violence in a sense and quite clearly a terrifying form of coercive control. It also shows a kind of macabre shift from violence to psychological terror that Evan Stark, one of the spearheads for the criminalization of coercive control, warned about. As Stark’s theory predicted and the consequences for assault increase, as JFK gained more fame, he might have become more worried about fallout from his wife being seen with bruises so he may have resorted to other, less athletic terror tactics to control her. And as he gained resources and power, he likely had less need to take his hands out of his pockets to completely control his victim. He could just snap his fingers and have others do it.
In short, the cheating is probably the tip of the iceberg and the real core of it is family violence, an element of which has always been domestic coercive control. From everything I’ve read and seen, I think the root of most awful human conduct is the generational legacy of domestic violence which tends to echo through families for eternity and may even have shaped evolutionary response. The generational cycle of domestic violence might be particularly stubborn in families that are glued together by a dynasty factor– meaning most members of the family don’t break ties and potentially stop the buck of abuse from impacting the next generation because the family has too much power and resources.
As far as the relationship between cheating and DV, there have been a few recent studies which, if taken together, basically identify the enforcement of one-sided monogamy as a central driving factor in wife assault. It’s no surprise to me since, when I worked as an advocate for DV survivors, I never met one who wasn’t also cheated on in some way. It seems virtually all batterers cheat but, because the studies haven’t been done yet, it remains to be seen if cheaters are statistically more prone to eventually batter or kill just as coercive controllers have been shown to be.
I’d love to see those studies undertaken if just to watch Perel freak out in the face of evidence that being chumped is a strong statistical harbinger of potential violence or even domestic murder (Chris Watts, Scott Peterson, Fotis Dulos, etc.). But mostly I’d like to see those studies done because it could explain why so many chumps seem to be paralyzed by Stockholm syndrome. Since I believe a potential for violence is something that can be subconsciously sensed by individuals in close proximity and can trigger innate fear response even if it doesn’t fully manifest, it would make sense that so many chumps freeze and play possum at first. Maybe wider understanding of that potentiality would eventually lead to victims of this kind of abuse receiving more social support and resources.
, as JFK gained more fame, he might have become more worried about fallout from his wife being seen with bruises so he may have resorted to other, less athletic terror tactics to control her.
Abusers also learn to hit where the bruises won’t show.
“Abusers also learn to hit where the bruises won’t show.” Very true. Practice makes perfect, ugh. But there’s a theory I read from a researcher who studied batterers and wife-killers in prison settings for a few decades which argues that most abusers operate on a “beat-by-need” basis. In other words, if there are less athletic, less legally-risky means to achieve the same ends (basically the total control of victims’ agency, sexuality and psyches), most abusers will opt for the safer, easier route.
Some might really enjoy causing physical pain and injury so I’m sure there are exceptions. But I think that, if the “beat-by-need” theory is true, as abusers gain resources, power and the means to control their prey indirectly or through inferred threat, most are going to opt for that method.
They learned it from Joe Kennedy, who was probably the biggest cheater of them all. He literally instructed his sons to get laid as much as possible. He flaunted his affairs in front of them as well as in front of Rose.
JFK and Joe even shared a couple of conquests. 🤢 He also had Rosemary Kennedy lobotomized (allegedly for mental illness) without consulting Rose. My suspicion is that her alleged illness stemmed from his sexual abuse and he lobotomized her to keep her quiet. He was also a Nazi sympathizer.
Joe Kennedy was an evil man who created evil sons who then created evil sons of their own.
I had no idea about any of this. Holy cow.
According to people close to the family, Joe Kennedy used to sneak into the rooms of teenage female guests of his kids and rape them. Obviously there were never any consequences for this.
Power corrupts, total power corrupts totally..the list of names is endless…Endless.
Was talking at work about this. I said why on earth? He’s so old? They said she probably wants a Kennedy child. So people ask oh wow his last name is Kennedy, any relation? To which she gets to reply in all her glory, Why yes! Their father is a Kennedy. Narcs love to have that status, privilege even if just in the name.
Meanwhile he probably had a vasectomy, unbeknownst to her, but he just keeps trying! Tells her, Im sure my dear if we just keep at it you will get pregnant!
She’s clearly got a major age-gap tolerance since the ex-fiance is fifty. I’ve noticed the crumbly old dude tolerance thing is kind of a refuge for a lot of slightly dumpy, not-so-attractive narcissists who want the frantic adulation and attention that only freakishly gorgeous supermodel types usually get. Older creeps may oblige because they tend to be overly grateful for basic youth in their conquests.
The first wife of Theodor Geisel (Dr. Suess) also killed herself as described in the New York Times obit of the OW/second wife:
There the Dimonds became friends with Mr. Geisel and his first wife, Helen. Mr. Geisel was 17 years older than Ms. Dimond, but they fell in love, and in 1967 Helen Geisel suffered from several illnesses, committed suicide with an overdose of barbiturates.
In a note she left to Mr. Geisel, she wrote in part, “My going will leave quite a rumor, but you can say I was overworked and overwrought,” according to “Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel” (1995), a biography by Judith and Neil Morgan.
She sent photos of her tits to a nutcase known for sharing nude photos of his conquests with friends. Ye Gods.
What a sad an infuriating tale about his late wife. The bastard wasn’t content with chumping her to death, he had to take her body away from her family too. Just so that he could win.
I’d say that may even beat Chappaquiddick for sheer vileness.
What happened to his second wife– the one who killed herself– should be a cautionary tale to all affair partners since she knew perfectly well RFK Jr. was still married to his first wife when she got pregnant by him.
I seem to once again “have bingo.”
-“There are different rules for me because I am special despite being in no way remarkable.”
-“I do what I want because I feel like it. Shit, why don’t I have a job anymore?”
-(Free Space) “It’s a Secret to Everybody! Except To Who I Tell. Which is Everybody.”
-“They were cheaters before. Surely they will be honorable with me”(fucked around, found out)
–“My Teen Angst Has a Body Count. Sucks to be them!”(joins “them”)
As one chumped by a sociopath I can attest, they know how to lovebomb. And lie. Did she maybe believe he’s already separated & getting divorced, all his ex’s were crazy? Or did he actually drug her or something? It’s just hard to believe anyone could be so gullible and self-destructive, ignoring the daddy issues for a moment. Also I’d never heard of her till now and had no idea how depraved this RFK fellow is.
Former Chicago Times editor Mark Jacob recently commented on this story. In his piece he references the term “meangirling”, coined by journalist Jeremy Fassler. My thoughts immediately went to the New Yorker article by Parul Sehgal that meangirled Sarah Manguso’s book Liars. Dismissing and mocking other women “(“A little proportion, please”, Sehgal wrote in her patronizing review,) feels subversive and clever and gets attention, but in truth it’s a pick-me dance for establishment misogynists at their publications — their bosses. These women rose up quickly in journalism, still a pillar of traditionally “male”, hierarchical culture at its core, because of their willingness to say – cleverly — what people uncomfortable with strong women wanted to hear.
https://www.stopthepresses.news/p/nuzzi-haberman-and-becoming-the-story
What an awful story about the second wife.
As I approach my half century on this earth reading about and dealing with a succession of ratbags and fuckwits, I am starting to realise what Rest In Peace actually means. That poor woman she couldn’t even do that.
Rest in Peace Mary.