An amusing if tough-minded 11.24 Washingtonian piece by Sylvie McNamara, based on a chat with a pair of married-but-anonymous crisis p.r. professionals, pretty much spells out the Olivia Nuzzi career–option situation, and it isn’t good.
This drama could potentially end tragically for her. I hope it doesn’t, of course, but man, right now it seems quite bad.
Especially if “American Canto”, Nuzzi’s autobiographical book that’s mostly about the RFK “digital affair” mishegoss (it pops on Tuesday, 12.2) doesn’t mention her other alleged (according to ex-boyfriend Ryan Lizza) sexual affair with a big-time politician, former South Carolina governor and onetime presidential contender Mark Sanford.
If the book ignores Sanford, “Nuzzi’s credibility is shot,” one of the p.r. sources flat-out states.
I recently noted that the difference between Nuzzi’s glancing “digital affair” with RFK, Jr. (which may or may not have included oral pleasuring) and the curiously close relationship between President Lyndon Johnson and NBC and CBS TV correspondent Nancy Dickerson in the ‘60s may not have been all that different in this or that way, but who knows?
I doubt that Johnson and Dickerson were ever as decisive (much less athletic) as was Nuzzi in her reported 2020 tryst with Sanford.
Either way Nuzzi’s unfortunate infamy has resulted in an impressionist Isabelle Brourman painting of a mostly nude Nuzzi in a forthcoming Vanity Fair issue (i.e., also next Tuesday).
To me, this seems kinda cruel if not voracious, but when there’s blood in the water, the sharks tend to go crazy.
Update: Ryan Lizza‘s latest Telos chapter just dropped (just before 4 pm eastern), and it nails Nuzzi hard for questionable journalistic ethics and behavior. The finale mentions Olivia’s portraitist, the above-mentioned Isabella (aka “Izzy”) Brourman, whom Olivia asked to surreptitiously record an encounter with 2024 candidate Donald Trump.
Here’s how the piece ends:
