"Nuzzi’s book compares in first week sales to those like John Fetterman's 'Unfettered' (2,600 copies in its first week) and Michael Wolff's 'All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America' (3,000 copies)..."

"... both of which were largely considered busts. Experts theorized 'Canto' was an example of the disconnect between media elites and consumers, and that scandal-filled headlines preceding its release exhausted the public interest before the book even hit the shelves...."

From "Olivia Nuzzi’s 'Canto' Sells Just 1,200 Print Copies In First Week" (Forbes).

"I thought the audiobook was the move, but hearing this in her own voice is so much worse than reading it. I couldn’t even make it through the intro."

Said Instapundit's friend, who bought the Olivia Nuzzi book.

Ha ha. I was going to listen to the audiobook (commission earned), but I clicked the "Audible sample" button and as soon as Nuzzi's voice began, I clicked it off and exclaimed "Oh, no!"

She was able to get out exactly 6 words: "For the women who have mothered me...."

I was reacting to the voice alone, but the meaning lingered — For the women who have mothered me.... No no no no! I don't know who she's talking about or what they did that constituted "mothering" in her world view and I don't want to know. 

CORRECTION: 7 words.

"I hesitate to take at face value Lizza’s account of Nuzzi’s behavior, but a specific detail sticks in my mind..."

"... he recounts finding a 'tabloid-style news story' she wrote in which she describes herself as a 'blonde beauty' and 'one of the most famous political reporters in America.' It is easy to imagine the narrator of 'American Canto' producing fan fiction about herself, because, in many cases, the book reads as if that’s what she’s doing. 'He threw himself onto the bed, his pink shirt unbuttoned, revealing my favorite parts of his chest,' Nuzzi writes, of a conversation with Kennedy."

Writes Molly Fischer, in "Does Olivia Nuzzi Make Good Copy? Across social media, definitely. In her new memoir, 'American Canto,' not so much" (The New Yorker).

Michelle Goldberg calls Olivia Nuzzi's book "a grandiose postmodern pastiche that attempts to situate her personal catastrophe in the context of our collective one."

"Interspersed with Nuzzi’s stream-of-consciousness musings are facts about drone strikes, gun deaths and wild fires; long chunks of Q&A dialogue, including with Donald Trump; a court document detailing the assault on Nancy Pelosi’s husband; an F.B.I. report on the man who wrote the children’s book 'Harold and the Purple Crayon'; and quotes from figures including Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jung and Jane Birkin. It’s a pretentious mess, but an audacious one. It seems less an attempt to justify herself to the Beltway world she once inhabited than to catapult over it, into the more congenial realms of art and literary celebrity."

Here's the whole column: "A Serious Journalism Scandal Hiding Inside a Frivolous Sexual One."

I read the excerpt from Nuzzi's book when Vanity Fair published it a couple weeks ago, and I too made fun of the florid, pretentious writing. But "grandiose postmodern pastiche" — in the New York Times — makes me feel a twinge of empathy. What if Nuzzi is genuinely literary? What she did is perhaps what I would have done in the same circumstances — tossed out of my ongoing career with nothing but raw material, raw emotion, a publisher's advance enough to cover living expenses, and whatever true writing gift I could find inside myself. They thought I was a journalist, that I would write a fast-moving, funny, fact-filled account of my interaction with RFK Jr., but they don't know, they don't know what I am....

Here's the book, "American Canto" (commission earned).

"Meanwhile, during the car-T treatment, a method developed over many decades with millions of dollars of government funding, my cousin, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr...."

"... was in the process of being nominated and confirmed as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.... My mother wrote a letter to the Senate, to try and stop his confirmation; my brother had been speaking out against his lies for months. I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed for the position, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government. Suddenly, the health-care system on which I relied felt strained, shaky.... As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers... I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research... slashed billions in funding.... Hundreds of N.I.H. grants and clinical trials were cancelled.... I worried about funding for leukemia and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission...."

Writes Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, in "A Battle with My Blood/When I was diagnosed with leukemia, my first thought was that this couldn’t be happening to me, to my family," published in The New Yorker today, the anniversary of the assassination of her grandfather, President Kennedy.

Schlossberg, who has 2 very young children, tells us she has a terminal diagnosis. This is terribly sad.

Meanwhile, in other RFK Jr. news:

"From the start, everyone recognized that the purpose of Texas’s redistricting effort was Republican political advantage."

"The district court erred by inferring bad faith and racial intent because the Texas Legislature’s map did not (through some hypothetical means) transform the only Democratic district in Austin — an exceptionally Democratic city — into a Republican stronghold."

Wrote Texas Solicitor General William Peterson, quoted in "Alito lets Texas reinstate gerrymandered House map that could give GOP 5 more seats/Alito’s move allowing Texas officials to continue to prepare for primary elections under the new map came just after the state asked the Supreme Court for an urgent ruling" (Politico).

This is one of the "certain topics" I was talking about yesterday in "I feel as though unseen readers are leaning on me to write about certain topics that I see out there." Today is a new day, with Alito's stay of the lower court's order. But if you want to engage with the very lengthy and emotional lower court opinions, I recommend the discussion on the podcast "Advisory Opinions," here. Excerpt: 

Prompts that occurred to me the morning after I read the Vanity Fair excerpt of Olivia Nuzzi's "American Canto."

I am protecting you from A.I. writing. Every word below was written by me except “hex memoir” and “cursed-dick lit." Grok came up with those 2 terms. 

Here's my blog post from yesterday quoting the book and mocking the prose style. And here are Grok's answers to my prompts. I'm just sharing my prompts:

1. Olivia Nuzzi's "American Canto" belongs in a literary genre with E. Jean Carroll's "Hideous Men" [actual title: "What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal"].

2. It's a style of writing that is exaggerated and beset with literary pretension — used by a woman who had a brush with a powerful man. It's related to memoirs by women (the "Bell Jar" genre) but it's deployed against political characters that are of great importance to people who wouldn't otherwise read florid subjective verbiage.

3. “hex memoir” or “cursed-dick lit” — these are established terms? Quote sources.

4. I'm a woman myself, 74 years old, but I just want to say that American women read some godawful trash.

5. What's the feminist argument that it is NOT feminist to immerse oneself in this kind of reading?

"I did not like to think about it just as later I would not like to think about the worm in his brain that other people found so funny."

"I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein. Others thought he was a madman; he was not quite mad the way they thought, but I loved the private ways that he was mad. I loved that he was insatiable in all ways, as if he would swallow up the whole world just to know it better if he could. He made me laugh, but I winced when he joked about the worm. 'Baby, don’t worry,' he said. 'It’s not a worm.'... I worry about evil.... Was it ever a question, that where there was a cloak there would be a dagger? A friend told me once, 'Never trust anyone wearing a lapel pin.' This politician did not wear one of those.... I mean to tell you that, as it relates to monsters, little can be assured beyond their ceaseless want.... I mean to tell you that as I studied them, I was sometimes fooled.... I mean to tell you that this is more meaningful and more meaningless than you might think. I mean to tell you that, before I was consumed by it, I could not have told you what it was.... I am talking, of course, about how it happened between me and the Politician. I am talking, of course, about how it happened between the country and the president... I mean to tell you now as best I can."

Writes Olivia Nuzzi, in "Olivia Nuzzi's American Canto: Read the Exclusive Excerpt/She flamed out and she faded away. Vanity Fair’s West Coast Editor returns to the written word to survey scorched earth" (Vanity Fair).

If you are a connoisseur of purple prose, don't miss this one. There are also some lovely pictures of Ms. Nuzzi, who seems to be quite beautiful.

Oh, A.I., make a charming argument for why purple prose should be celebrated when it is written by a beautiful woman. Answer: "A beautiful woman’s purple prose should be celebrated because her extravagant words are merely the audible shimmer of her own radiance spilling onto the page, and only a fool would demand a diamond dim its fire to spare the darkness."

AND: I had another prompt for A.I.: What do you think of the title "American Canto" for a purple prose account of a beautiful woman's love affair with a politician (specifically Olivia Nuzzi's book about RFK Jr., a married man)? I'll just give the conventional warning,  "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here."

"Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brags to friends that star reporter Olivia Nuzzi had sent him intimate photos was what led the scandal to explode into the open..."

The Daily Beast reveals, in "Married RFK Jr., 70, Bragged He Had ‘Intimate’ Photos of Reporter Olivia Nuzzi, 31" (Daily Beast).

The 70-year-old scion’s boasts became known to the 31-year-old New York magazine correspondent’s boss—who confronted her over the photos.... Nuzzi repeatedly denied an affair to David Haskell, New York’s editor in chief....

Haskell told Nuzzi, 31, that he was informed by a source of his that Kennedy had bragged about his relationship with Nuzzi to others, including possessing photographs of her and that they were in a romantic relationship....

We're told only Haskell and Nuzzi were in this meeting, so either Haskell or Nuzzi (or both) decided to talk to the press. Why talk to the press other than to hurt RFK Jr. (and to drain him of the power to help Trump)?

Why are we suddenly hearing about the New York Magazine editor who says she engaged in "sexting" with RFK Jr.?

I've been reading reports in various newspapers, and I'm going to select the one in the London Times to link to and quote: "Reporter put on leave after admitting personal relationship with RFK Jr/Olivia Nuzzi allegedly exchanged sexual messages with Robert F Kennedy Jr while covering his campaign."

The magazine said a review of Nuzzi’s work had found no evidence of bias but described the relationship as a “violation of our readers’ trust” and its own standards. “Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign,” it added.

Although Nuzzi did not identify the other person in the relationship, it has been widely reported that it was Kennedy....

It's a "relationship"? I'm only seeing that there were text messages and that they were "sexual." What are we talking about? Photos of naked body parts? Written invitations to have sex? Prompts to masturbate? Sexual words, such as saying that someone can go fuck himself? I don't know what we are talking about, and I suspect New York Magazine of wanting to hurt RFK Jr. and making sex-and-politics theater out of nothing.

According to the New York Post, Nuzzi had been “sexting” with Kennedy, who is married to Cheryl Hines, the Curb Your Enthusiasm actress, when Nuzzi was engaged to Ryan Lizza, the chief Washington correspondent for the Politico website. The couple called off the wedding a few weeks ago, said the newspaper.

Was Ryan Lizza involved in revealing these "sexts"? What's going on there? Here are Ryan and Olivia in happier times:

What nonsense! The photo, I mean. Who can look at that and not laugh? Can someone please tear off the veneer of middle-class respectability and tell us what the hell really happened?

"The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden/The president’s mental decline was like a dark family secret for many elite supporters."

That's the headline at New York Magazine. This is exactly the subject I've been wanting to see developed. 

The piece is by Olivia Nuzzi. Excerpts (boldface added):

In January, I began hearing... stories from Democratic officials, activists, and donors. All people who supported the president and were working to help reelect him to a second term in office. Following encounters with the president, they had arrived at the same concern: Could he really do this for another four years? Could he even make it to Election Day?

Uniformly, these people were of a similar social strata. They lived and socialized in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles. They did not wish to come forward with their stories.

"Most of the prominent Democrats with whom I speak have been concerned to the point of panic about how inept they’ve found [Biden's] campaign."

Said Frank Bruni in a "Round Table" discussion at the NYT, "Trump Is Blocking Out the Sun: Three Writers on the Political Impact of the Guilty Verdict."

And there's this gem from Olivia Nuzzi: "The eternal problem for candidates running against Donald Trump is that he sort of photosynthesizes any and all attention to grow bigger and stronger and block out the sun for everyone else around. He manages to define the terms of the conversation, and because he lives in his own reality, these things do not matter as they would for any other candidate."

Why face up to the smallness of Joe Biden when confronted with the ludicrous hugeness of Donald Trump?

"After the Hamas attack, Kennedy... praised efforts to penalize anti-Israel demonstrators on college campuses. He argued that Israel was within its rights..."

"... to defend itself by whatever means it saw fit. In sharp contrast to his views on American involvement in almost all other foreign conflicts, including the war in Ukraine, he said the U.S. should help: 'We must provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself — now.' 'Listen, nobody likes children dying,' he said recently. 'When we went into Germany after the war, and then into Japan, a lot of civilians died because we had to get Hitler.'..."

Writes Olivia Nuzzi, in "The Mind-Bending Politics of RFK Jr.’s Spoiler Campaign/He’s a conservative. He’s a liberal. And he could turn the presidential race upside down" (NY Magazine).

"Everybody’s strength is their weakness, in politics as in life... [Biden's] strength is he’s always spoken his mind. There’s a genuineness to that."

"There’s also a danger. In politics as in sports, you want to maximize your principal’s strengths and minimize his weaknesses. They’ve effectively maximized his earnestness and decency. They’ve not allowed him to be in situations where he can stray.... I was frustrated [not being able to book Biden for an interview]. But stepping back from my own selfish interests, I understood and admired their discipline. They were going to control his interactions. Their job is not to serve us. Their job is to serve him.

Said David Axelrod, quoted in "How the White House Polices Language in Washington" by Olivia Nuzzi (NY Magazine). After that quote, Nuzzi adds:

This reminded me of something William Safire once wrote describing how the administration of George H.W. Bush had screwed him over to neuter a damaging story: “What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.” 

Another quote from Nuzzi: 

During the Trump years, it was amusing how often it was possible to report with a straight face that the president said one thing while the White House said another, as though he was just some guy who happened to hang around there. But this odd dynamic persists into the Biden era.

That's terribly funny, the idea of the President as just some guy who happens to hang around in the White House. What if it's always been like that and the odd thing is that it took Trump to make us see?

"If an American president loses more Americans over the course of six weeks than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War, does he deserve to be reelected?"

That was the last question at yesterday's Task Force press briefing. Transcript. The reporter was Olivia Nuzzi of New York Magazine.

Here's the response it provoked from Trump:

So yeah, we’ve lost a lot of people, but if you look at what original projections were, 2.2 million, we’re probably heading to 60 thousand, 70 thousand. It’s far too many. One person is too many for this. And I think we’ve made a lot of really good decisions. The big decision was closing the border or doing the ban, people coming in from China. Obviously other than American citizens which had to come in. Can’t say you can’t come back to your country. I think we’ve made a lot of good decisions. I think that Mike Pence and the task force have done a fantastic job. I think that everybody working on the ventilators, you see what we’ve done there, have done unbelievable. The press doesn’t talk about ventilators anymore. They just don’t want to talk about them and that’s okay. But the reason they don’t want to talk… That was a subject that nobody would get off of. They don’t want to talk about them. We’re in the same position on testing. We are lapping the world on testing and the world is coming to us. As I said, they’re coming to us saying, “What are you doing? How do you do it?” We’re helping them. So, no, I think we’ve done a great job and one person, I will say this, one person is too many. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you.

That was a good, moderate answer, never mentioning the election, only taking the cue to discuss the basis for thinking that he is deserving. Importantly, he resisted the temptation to speculate about whether his opponent would have done better. Who knows what Joe Biden would have done in the same circumstances?

But that's the comparison. That's what I think about when I hear the question, and I'm going to assume that President Biden also would have lost more Americans over the course of six weeks than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War. If losses to a sudden contagious disease are the test of whether a candidate deserves our vote, then we'd just be voting based on which person happened actually to be President at the time the disease hit.

I suppose many people like to think a different President would have done better. Theoretically, things could have been done better. Our dream President would have done better. But would Joe Biden have done better? Anyone who answers yes is, I suspect, someone who was already going to vote for Biden for some other reason.

Anyway, Trump got the question he got, and he didn't get bogged down in the kind of speculation that I'm blogging about here. He just made the pitch that he's done a good enough job — which is, in Trumpspeak, "a fantastic job."

"It’s simply true that governments attempt to conceal all kinds of things. Even things partially visible to the naked eye."

"But it’s also true that the human body is a complex machine given to all sorts of odd behaviors. As Dan Savage wrote, 'Only Andrew Cuomo knows for sure, of course, and he’s not telling.' But, Savage said, 'I’ve spent a lot of time around gay guys with tit rings, and it’s my considered opinion that those are tit rings. Almost certainly.'... I decided the only thing left to do was call Barney Frank. Back in 2011, the former congressman stepped onto the House floor wearing a light-blue sweater through which his nipples were visible to anybody watching C-Span. Future president Donald Trump was apparently doing just that. 'Barney Frank looked disgusting — nipples protruding — in his blue shirt before Congress. Very very disrespectful,' he said on Twitter.... In general, Frank said, being a politician whose nipples become a subject of mockery or scrutiny isn’t as negative an experience as you might think. 'In some ways, it makes you feel good because it means you have people who are trying to attack you and they can’t find anything substantive.'... ...  Of Cuomo’s critics, he said, 'It reflects badly on them.' With all of that out of the way, I asked Frank if he’d be surprised if it turned out that Cuomo does, in fact, have pierced nipples. 'I’m gonna act as if you didn’t ask me that,' he said."

Since she asks, I guess it "reflects badly" — per Barney Frank — on Olivia Nuzzi, the author of the article I'm quoting "What’s the Deal With Andrew Cuomo’s Nipples? An Investigation" (NY Magazine).

Just to balance things out — though, as you know, with breasts, there's never perfect symmetry — I saw this in The Daily Mail a few days ago: "Experts warn that not wearing a bra during lockdown could damage the Cooper's ligament and cause breasts to sag - as women reveal they're ditching underwear for comfort while working at home."

Experts! Last I looked the expert opinion was that wearing a bra causes breasts to sag.

Imagine staying at home during the coronawar and worrying that your comfortable loungewear stylings were endangering what's left of your breastal perkiness! We've got bigger things to worry about, like the imaginary nipple piercings of the New York Governor.

Trump toys with the notion that Congressman John Dingell — who died recently — is in Hell!

At the end of this clip, Trump jokes about Rep. John Dingell being in hell after his wife, Rep. Debbie Dingell, voted for impeachment pic.twitter.com/i72Qnn49GM

— Brandon Squall (@Walldo) December 19, 2019

"Everything! I gave him everything. That’s okay. I don’t want anything for it. I don’t need anything for anything. [His widow] calls me up, 'It’s the nicest thing that’s ever happened, thank you so much, John would be so thrilled, he’s looking down, he’d be so thrilled. Thank you so much, sir.' I said that’s okay, don’t worry about it. Maybe he’s looking up, I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe."

Up. Down. Who knows which way Heaven is? Maybe Heaven is down and Hell is up, and Trump was toying with the directional mysteries of the afterlife. But no sense denying it. He was goofing around with the idea that a dead person may be watching not from Heaven but from Hell.

The widow is Debbie Dingell, who now occupies her late husband's seat in Congress. Olivia Nuzzi writes in NY Magazine:

Sloppy Steve.

I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist. Look at this guy’s past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018

Trump nicknames, ranked (best to worst):
Lyin' Ted
Rocket Man
Little Rocket Man
Little Marco
Sloppy Steve
Crooked Hillary
Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd
Cryin' Chuck Schumer
Low Energy Jeb
Failing New York Times
Psycho Joe
Liddle Bob Corker
Pocahontas

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) January 5, 2018

BREAKING: Bannon gets his Forever Name: Sloppy Steve https://t.co/CnULrpiaxQ

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) January 5, 2018

ADDED:

Wait! @realDonaldTrump - On Oct 28 you gave ME the nickname “Sloppy Michael Moore” in one of your crazed tweets. Using the same nickname for TWO people...another sign of dementia! Unfit to serve!

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) January 5, 2018

AND: "Sloppy" is good because Bannon looks extremely sloppy and there's also the idea that it was sloppy to leak so much (ick, bodily fluids) and to be so inattentive to what is true and what it means to be loyal.

The main problem is that Trump already used "sloppy" for Michael Moore.

With 2 data points on "sloppy," I get the impression that he feels disgust toward men who are fat and don't discreetly encapsulate the fat in a standard business suit (as he himself does).

Dickmanship, Part 2: Women in politics.

This blog has been heavy on the Weiner coverage. 3 of yesterday's 14 posts had substantial Weiner content. But I passed on the Olivia Nuzzi story in yesterday's Daily News: "Anthony Weiner intern reveals why she, fellows joined New York mayoral campaign." It just looked like another woman trying to horn in on the Weiner action. Who is she? Who does she think she is? Yeah, campaigns have interns. She asserts that Weiner interns are hot to get to Huma and through Huma to Hillary, but that's not surprising or disturbing. Ambitious people seek to network and climb. Why is this even in the newspaper?

To my eye, it looked like Nuzzi's selling point was her ability to look somewhat pretty posing with tilted head; long, flowy, bleached-blonde hair; lips pursed just short of duck face; and a tight, sleeveless navy blue dress. Navy blue, for comparison purposes to a  picture of Huma looking less pretty in a more frumpy navy blue dress. Navy blue, because Monica Lewinsky, the ultimate intern, historically wore, stained, and retained a navy blue dress. In case the subliminal hint isn't enough, the article has the name "Monica" inserted in an anecdote in which Weiner attempts to demonstrate his ability to remember the names of his 20 interns and incorrectly calls one Monica, then tries Monica a second time with the author. Not told whether any of the interns were really named Monica, we are left free to imagine that the lecherous Weiner intended to convey the message that he was looking for Lewinskyesque services from his interns.

I'd kicked the sext-crazed man around enough, and Nuzzi was such an unsubtle attention whore, so the best thing to blog is nothing. But that was yesterday. Why am I writing about Nuzzi today? Because there's another woman stepping out onto the stage of The Anthony Weiner Clown Show, and her I find amusing, and she's not an attention whore. She didn't realize she was on stage. She thought/claims she was giving an off-the-record interview. It's Weiner’s communications director Barbara Morgan:

“I’m dealing with like stupid fucking interns who make it on to the cover of the Daily News even though they signed NDAs and/or they proceeded to trash me... And by the way, I tried to fire her, but she begged to come back and I gave her a second chance.... Fucking slutbag. Nice fucking glamour shot on the cover of the Daily News. Man, see if you ever get a job in this town again,” said Morgan.

“It’s all bullshit,” she said. “I mean, it’s such bullshit. She could fucking — fucking twat.”...

“She sucked. She like wasn’t good at setting up events. She was clearly there because she wanted to be seen. Like it was, like, terrible and I had to like - she would like, she would just not show up for work... And then like she had the fucking balls to like trash me in the paper. And be like, ‘His communications director was last the press secretary of the Department of Education in New Jersey.'... You know what? Fuck you, you little cunt. I’m not joking, I am going to sue her.”

Key word: balls. Paging Tina Brown, who — in "End the Damn Dickmanship!" — longed for a testosterone test to screen excessively masculine individuals out of the political arena. Brown acted like she thought her dreamed-of test would only exclude dickish men like Weiner, but I suspected — in my first Weiner post of yesterday — that Brown herself would score high on the test. And now we've got more ladies waving their hands around. Give me the test!

There have long been soppy dreams that women in politics would mean kindness and cooperation. "My idea has always been that if we could bring the mothers of the various nations together, then there would be no more war." I wish I could find video of Vanessa Redgrave delivering that line in "Howards End." Her silliness is vividly apparent, in a story set at the beginning of the 20th century. It's absurd to hear the same idea recirculated, as ambitious women tear into men — like Nuzzi into Weiner — and into other women — like Morgan into Nuzzi. To quote Morgan: It’s all bullshit. I mean, it’s such bullshit.

I guess I'm supposed to denounce Morgan for calling Nuzzi a "slutbag," a "twat," and a "cunt." Those female-specific insults. But didn't Tina Brown call Weiner a "dick"? And, if so, shouldn't we give equality to women and get our share of gender-based insults? But Tina Brown didn't call Anthony Weiner a "dick." She referred to his "dickmanship." He's not a dick but a Person of Dickmanship. The equivalent would be to refer to a woman's twattishness. But that kind of distancing in the insults is for the official print version. How does Tina Brown speak off the record? Seriously, why do you think Barbara Morgan thought she could talk like that? Such a string of epithets can't come out of nowhere. There must be a culture.

And yet, if that were the culture, wouldn't there be thousands of ambitious interns like Nuzzi, whose climbing hit a ceiling, dishing out a million "Fuck you, you little cunt" quotes?