The Mob comes for Olivia Nuzzi

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that Olivia Nuzzi, a star reporter¹ at New York Magazine, is involved in a journalism mini-scandal. Laying my biases on the table, I’m writing this because I feel Nuzzi has getting undeserved grief, much of it stemming from the eternal insanity of social media mobs.

This whole kerfuffle broke when a story came out (first reported by Oliver Darcy at CNN) that Nuzzi had engaged in inappropriate texting (nothing physical) with a politician, which might not have been big news if the politician wasn’t the infamous Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

On Thursday, Sept 19, New York Magazine issued the following statement:

Recently our Washington Correspondent Olivia Nuzzi acknowledged to the magazine's editors that she had engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign while she was reporting on the campaign, a violation of the magazine's standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures. Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign. An internal review of her published work has found no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias. She is currently on leave from the magazine, and the magazine is conducting a more thorough third-party review. We regret this violation of our readers' trust.

This “former subject” was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Also on Thursday, Nuzzi responded to a New York Times inquiry to say

Some communication between myself and a former reporting subject turned personal…

…During that time, I did not directly report on the subject nor use them as a source…

The relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict. I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I’ve disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York.

A Kennedy representative told the Times

Mr. Kennedy only met Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece

A more salacious Daily Beast article reported that the story originally leaked because Nuzzi had sent Kennedy “intimate” photos, and that Kennedy had been privately boasting about them (if true, this confirms my opinion that he’s a complete jerk). The Beast described a relationship that involved inappropriate texts, but, again, no physical contact. How much of this is true, is, of course, impossible to say. Note that New York Magazine and The New York Times gave more bland stories than did the tabloid-like Daily Beast.

Now what about all this is unfair?

Nuzzi being put on leave by her bosses at New York Magazine was entirely reasonable. Reporters should never get involved with subjects, particularly ones of such stature. It’s now New York’s call as to whether she continues at the magazine. The third party review they mentioned may uncover how much of the story is true.

If that’s all that happened—a reporter crossed professional boundaries and her employer responded—I wouldn’t be writing this.

What gets me to type a bunch of words is the dark delight with which a wide swathe of Twitter, including some of her fellow journalists, have piled onto Nuzzi. I won’t quote from most of the tweets, but they’ve brutally ridiculed her and her actions, seemingly taking pleasure at her situation. And, notably, they said far less about RFK Jr.’s behavior.

Why did so many show so much glee?

Yes, she crossed a journalistic line. That should be, and was, reported on. And, again, her bosses need to make a call, which might include firing her. But none of that required people to gloat over the chaos. There are real people involved here who are suffering real pain. Not just Nuzzi and Kennedy, but also Kennedy’s long-suffering wife, actress Cheryl Hines, and Nuzzi’s former fiancé, Politico writer Ryan Lizza (word that their engagement had ended came after the story broke).

Beyond the usual schadenfreude, there’s probably some political revenge involved. Nuzzi as a writer hadn’t fit neatly into either left or right ecosystems. This made partisans suspicious. She had also written a big piece on President Biden’s fitness for office—The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden—that inspired anger on both left and right.

Some Democrats felt the criticism of Biden, particularly of his appearance, was unfair; while Republicans complained that the article had been too long in the making and was only being released because of Biden’s bad June 27 debate performance (a nonsensical accusation; articles take time to write and their release isn’t planned to advance one party’s interest).

It’s possible (despite New York Magazine’s denials) that Nuzzi’s texting with Kennedy might have affected her July 2024 story about Biden, but this seems unlikely. I read the story when it came out, and, while it was well-written, it didn’t break any bombshells beyond “old guy looks really old.” Did it add to the pressure on Biden to resign? Probably. But there were a million other pressure points on Biden, including top Democratic Party leaders. Moreover, most Democratic partisans are happy he resigned! A weak candidate has been replaced with a substantially stronger one. But anger at Biden’s ouster, even if it was smart for the party, lingered among his hard-core supporters.

More bizarrely, the Nuzzi-Kennedy story reopened the door to progressives who have long claimed that Nuzzi was a racist because of snarky tweets from her past, like this one:

Her 2016 tweet was obviously satirizing all the crazy “birther” conspiracy nonsense that Obama had to face while president. It simply doesn’t make sense as anything else. I’ll bet Obama himself would laugh at it. The full exchange makes it even clearer:

Graham and Nuzzi are joking. And not at Obama’s expense, but at the expense of anyone who could believe such foolishness (“Kenyan Muslim lizard person,” c’mon!). But haters are bad at humor and if there’s no blinking neon sign screaming “SATIRE,” they assume it has to be racism.

Other tweets were just as obviously jokes trolling the right, but, again, went over the heads of angry progressives. The “Kenyan Anti-Colonial” line in the tweet below is making fun of Republican Newt Gingrich, who used that label to describe Obama back in 2010. That it’s an anti-Republican joke is made especially obvious by Nuzzi choosing a photo of Obama looking adorable with a small child. She’s deliberately contrasting nice guy Obama with the crazy words Republicans were using to describe him. “The real intruder” is also making fun of the way conservatives characterized Obama. The hashtag “#tcot” stood for “top conservatives on Twitter.” Again, she’s showing that the abuse Obama received from conservatives was ridiculous.

Beyond the politics and the perverse accusations of racism, I think a lot of the Nuzzi hate stems from people’s strange (to me) inability to feel any empathy for her. In the eyes of many, she’d done something ludicrous, and this somehow erased empathy. Flirting with a man almost 40 years her senior. How easily ridiculed! And, yes, that she’s young, attractive, and successful (all things that feed jealousy), probably fueled some of the nastiness.

I still find the callousness upsetting.

How can people have no empathy for Nuzzi? Yes, you probably aren’t texting with RFK Jr., but haven’t you ever done foolish things? Forget your knee-jerk denial. Think back to when you were young and stupid. Think of the risks you took. The awful choices. Especially when your brain was under the influence of alcohol or hormones (far worse than cocaine for triggering insane behavior).

You wouldn’t ever text a sexy picture? Not even to a major crush? Not even tipsy?

I’ve never texted a nude photo (and the Internet thanks me), but I’ve said things via text that I’d NEVER want to see the light of day. And before texting existed, I’ve done things that make me incredibly grateful digital cameras weren’t a thing when I was sowing the insanity of youth. I’m not spilling my worst moments—let’s not discuss what went on in certain apartment building stairwells—but they would not do my reputation any good.

Post-divorce, I’ve even received an unsolicited photo from a date! And when my sender sobered up, and asked me to delete that image from my phone, I immediately did so because my name is not Kennedy.

I shared my anecdotes not to blow my own horn, but to make the point that even a boring guy like me has stories. Most of us have stories. Attraction makes people break the rules. They’ve written ten thousand novels and plays about this!

Maybe you’re so boring that you’ve never danced along the precipice of disaster. Fine. But can’t you at least imagine it? Not even for a moment? I can think of a few late night talks where a friend told me, “and if I’d had one more drink, I don’t know what would have happened!” Most of us have faced those forks in our roads.

I’m not saying all this because I think New York Magazine should forgive Nuzzi. That’s not my call or my point. What I wish we saw with the Nuzzi story is a little more humanity, humility, and mercy. Humanity to recognize, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Humility to admit that we still don’t know the whole story. Reading one-sided takes in The Daily Beast or The New York Post is not getting the full picture of what went down between all the various characters.

And mercy? The willingness to remember that we all make mistakes and that not every mistake should be career destroying.

The eagerness of Twitter mobs to be judge, jury, and executioner never ceases to disturb me. Mob justice is never justice. Online mobs are the heart of cancel culture. And no, I’m not saying Nuzzi doesn’t deserve some sort of penalty. I’m saying that it should not be your or my or any mob’s call to decide that penalty. Cancel culture is a mob of strangers arrogantly thinking they have the right to decide someone else’s fate, and, like all mobs, taking unholy pleasure in their sense that the pain they are inflicting is equivalent to justice.

Leave judgments to those directly concerned. I’m not saying she’s a saint. How would I know? She may be an awful person (although she doesn’t seem that way to me). Worse stories may leak. But I don’t know enough to judge her and neither does any other outsider.² Leave it to her bosses to decide her future.

1. In 2018, at age 25, she was named one of Forbes Magazine’s “30 under 30.”

2. We do happen to be Twitter mutuals. I have no idea why she follows me!