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?

"I am dismayed that The New Yorker has decided to characterize a respectful relationship with a woman I dated as somehow inappropriate."

"The New Yorker was unable to cite any company policy that was violated," said Ryan Lizza, saying The New Yorker's decision to fire him "was made hastily and without a full investigation of the relevant facts" and "a terrible mistake."

Quoted in the NYT.

The unnamed accuser is represented by Douglas H. Wigdor, "who has filed at least 11 lawsuits against Fox News this year for defamation, sexual harassment and racial discrimination." Wilder said that “in no way did Mr. Lizza’s misconduct constitute a ‘respectful relationship’ as he has now tried to characterize it.”

I wish I had a clue what Lizza was accused of doing. He was disrespectful to a woman he was in a relationship with? Are we really going down that road now? As long as one party to a relationship wants to submit that relationship to public inspection, we're going to deem the other party to be the bad person his sexual partner deemed him to be? That seems crazy! But maybe Lizza did something truly horrendous. And yet, if he did, wouldn't he take advantage of the opportunity to slink away into the dark? Why would he beg for a full investigation into the facts? If there is no full investigation, if firing happens instantly when the woman steps into the light, then light is darkness.

Will a man in an abusive relationship ever step forward and blindside a woman? Would The New Yorker fire the woman if he did?

Scaramucci, we hardly knew ye.

"President Trump has decided to remove Anthony Scaramucci from his position as communications director, three people close to the decision said Monday, relieving him just days after Mr. Scaramucci unloaded a crude verbal tirade against other senior members of the president’s senior staff," the NYT reports.

The decision to remove Mr. Scaramucci, who had boasted about reporting directly to the president not the chief of staff, John F. Kelly, came at Mr. Kelly’s request, the people said. Mr. Kelly made clear to members of the White House staff at a meeting Monday morning that he is in charge.

ADDED: Let's see if Ryan Lizza has anything to say. Oh, yeah, he does:

The sacking of Scaramucci signals that Kelly, a retired marine general, may actually be empowered to be a true chief of staff. There was no bigger test for Kelly than the fate of Scaramucci, who, in his Wednesday phone call, demanded that I reveal my sources for a trivial tweet about who the President had dinner with that night, threatened to fire his entire staff if I didn’t, alleged that he had called the F.B.I. to investigate his White House rivals, attacked Reince Priebus as a “paranoid schizophrenic,” and described Steve Bannon as engaging in auto-fellatio.

After the interview was published, several people asked me if I believed Scaramucci would be fired. My understanding at the time was that Scaramucci was already on thin ice with the President after a series of high-profile appearances.... But Kelly, apparently, as his first move as chief of staff, told Trump that he wanted Scaramucci out of the White House....

Read the whole thing. It also reveals that it seems that Kelly, before taking the new job, convinced Trump that it is unnecessary to build an actual physical wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and that Kelly may believe he "might be able to tame Trump and get him to back off some of his most cartoonish policy ideas, even the ones that were core campaign promises."

"'Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,' Scaramucci said."

"He channelled Priebus as he spoke: '"Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months."'"

From "Anthony Scaramucci Called Me to Unload About White House Leakers, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon/He started by threatening to fire the entire White House communications staff. It escalated from there," by Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker.

Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said, speaking of Trump’s chief strategist. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.”...

Unlike other Trump advisers, I’ve never heard [Scaramucci] say a bad word about the President. “What I want to do is I want to fucking kill all the leakers and I want to get the President’s agenda on track so we can succeed for the American people,” he told me.

ADDED: Scaramucci responds via Twitter:

I sometimes use colorful language. I will refrain in this arena but not give up the passionate fight for @realDonaldTrump's agenda. #MAGA

And:

I made a mistake in trusting in a reporter. It won't happen again.

PBS's "Frontline" showed "An examination of the key moments that shaped President-elect Donald Trump."

"Interviews drawn from The Choice 2016 with advisors, business associates and biographers reveal how Trump transformed himself from real estate developer to reality TV star to president."

You can watch the whole thing at the link. We watched it. It's sort of like 2 documentaries edited together, one made by a someone who wanted a glossy, neutralish story of how Trump became President and another by someone with some edge who wanted to bring out the ominous dark side. Almost as if the show is based on sort of an "alternative facts" concept.

Here's the NYT review of the show.

As the program runs through Mr. Trump’s greatest hits — “They’re rapists,” “He’s a war hero because he was captured,” “Blood coming out of her wherever,” “I moved on her like a bitch” — his strategists recall how they believed that each new gaffe would be the one that finally ended his campaign. They do not, however, express any disagreement with his statements, and they describe approvingly how Mr. Trump would “double down” each time he seemed to have crossed another inviolable line.

There is also a Greek chorus of reporters and writers, who recount the fear and surprises of the campaign trail and discuss how Mr. Trump manipulated the news media without getting into how the media allowed itself to be manipulated. Most of them project an air of getting on with it, except for Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker, whose agony in discussing Mr. Trump’s rise is palpable.

"Most scholars seem to agree that if the President-elect doesn’t take the prophylactic approach to his conflicts, impeachment may be the only other remedy."

This is the level of analysis we get at The New Yorker now? It's on-its-face ludicrous to suggest that "most scholars" could possibly have an opinion on such a specific issue. Who are the "scholars" in Ryan Lizza's world? They don't sound like scholars to me. It sounds political, not scholarly.

And I do note Lizza's use of the weasel word "seem." Even so, the front-page teaser is so dispiritingly political. I would like to read some serious analysis of this subject, and I am a New Yorker subscriber.

Why are these articles presented in a form that is so off-putting to anyone who's not tripping on Trump hate?

Gary Johnson "tells Sanders supporters to take an ideological quiz at the Web site ISideWith.com."

"'You get paired up with a Presidential candidate most in line with your views,' he said. 'I side with myself the most, and then, amazingly, I side with Bernie next closest.' Polls so far show that Johnson actually takes more voters from Clinton than from Trump. 'It’s about everything but economics,' Johnson said, ticking off the issues on which he and Sanders agree: 'on legalizing marijuana, on "Let’s stop dropping bombs," crony capitalism.'... Johnson’s theory of politics is highly rational. He assumes that voters don’t need to know much more than his positions to make up their minds. In his stump speech, he goes through a long list of his stances on issues in the areas of fiscal matters, social concerns, and foreign policy. It’s the live equivalent of the ISideWith.com quiz."

From "THE LIBERTARIANS’ SECRET WEAPON/The third-party candidacy of Gary Johnson might make the most unpredictable election in modern times even weirder," by Ryan Lizza (in The New Yorker).

The New Yorker really forefronted the stuff about marijuana. In the "history" tab in my browser, the article shows up as having the title "Flying High," and it begins: "Not long ago, Gary Johnson..., put a halt to his considerable consumption of marijuana. 'The last time I indulged is about two months ago, with some edibles,' Johnson..." The edibles, we're told, were "Cheeba Chews, a Colorado brand that High Times has called 'America’s favorite edible.'" And while we're on the subject of edible marijuana, Johnson, until recently, was C.E.O. of Cannabis Sativa, Inc., "a marijuana-branding company that hopes to benefit as legalization spreads":

At the company, Johnson told me, he hired the person who developed the branding for a product line called hi. “Small ‘H,’ small ‘I’—really cool logo,” he said. He also contributed to the development of a strain-specific edible lozenge that he said “is as good a marijuana high that exists on the planet.” How did he know? “As C.E.O., I did some testing,” he said. “Nothing was better.”

“So, if someone wanted to try that strain, how would they acquire it?” I asked.

“Legally, they couldn’t,” Johnson said.

“What about illegally?”

“Well, I’d probably be able to connect you up illegally.”

Seems like good branding. Why not a lozenge? It seems to suggest an anti-smoking message, soothing rather than irritating.

Why is "Sympathy for the Devil" played at Donald Trump rallies?!

From "The Duel/The Trump and Cruz campaigns embody opposite views of politics and the future of the G.O.P." by Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker:

Donald Trump has a rule at his rallies: for the fifty minutes before he takes the stage, the only music that can be played is from a set list that he put together. The list shows a sensitive side, mixing in Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” and music from “Cats” and “The Phantom of the Opera.” But it’s heavy on the Rolling Stones—“Sympathy for the Devil,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and the famously impolitic “Brown Sugar.” The young volunteer in charge of music for one rally sent me the full Trump-curated playlist and asked for requests. “Remember,” he said, “the more inappropriate for a political event, the better.”

And don't miss the great Barry Blitt cover ("My biggest challenge was to alter the Presidents’ expressions to make them reflect attitudes of consternation... Teddy Roosevelt generally looks angry and somewhat appalled, so he was the easiest."):



ADDED: What does the song "Sympathy for the Devil" mean? Mick Jagger has said that it's not about the mythological figure Satan but about the evil within human beings. The lyrics support that interpretation as they call attention to war and assassination. But the "I" singing the words is Satan. Still, no ordinary politician would want to allow any room for speculation that he's the Devil. The line I find most interestingly connected to Trump is: "But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game."

Ryan Lizza talks to 2 witnesses to the notorious Aqua Buddha incident that's been dogging Rand Paul.

From the long — read the whole thing — piece in The New Yorker titled "The Revenge of Rand Paul/The Senator has fought to go mainstream with the ideology that he shares with his father. How far can that strategy take him?":

[During] the 2010 Senate race... GQ.com posted a report in which an anonymous source said that Paul and another NoZe brother had taken her from her apartment, encouraged her to smoke pot, and asked her to pray to something called Aqua Buddha.

The NoZe Brotherhood was a group at Baylor University that "was founded in the nineteen-twenties mostly to mock Baylor’s clubs and fraternities and to satirize its earnest religiosity." Lizza uncovers GQs source, Kristy Ditzler, and talks to her, and he also talks to Paul's confederate, George Paul (who doesn't seem to be related to Rand, despite the last name).

Ditzler is a Democrat who told Lizza she's "speaking up" because she "was a little bit irked by him making himself out to be all about God and country and all about conservative values, because he was clearly not promoting that when I knew him." Nevertheless, she was "appalled" (Rizza's word) at the way the Aqua Buddha story was distorted. She says: “They did pretend they were abducting me, but it wasn’t a forced sort of thing... It was weird, with all of these tents with bongs inside and piles of clothing. Completely bizarro."

Ditzler said that George and Rand asked her to go into one of the tents and smoke pot, but when she declined they drove to a creek in Elm Mott, north of Waco, and told her to wade into the water and worship Aqua Buddha. “They never explained what was going on, but that’s the way they were about everything—vague and mysterious.”

George Paul says that "they took her to a dark pub, where they had an easel set up and pretended to sketch a portrait of her while reading Kant — but he insisted that no drugs were involved...."

He also said that the Aqua Buddha incident took place on another night, when he and Paul blindfolded Ditzler and several other members of their swim team by putting cotton in their goggles, and then loaded them into the back of a pickup and drove to the creek, where they were asked to “pay homage to the Aqua Buddha, and then we all went swimming.” He explained that Aqua Buddha was an inside joke on the swim team. During practice, George, Rand, and others would descend to the bottom of the pool and strike a Buddha pose, creating an amusing sight for swimmers at the surface. “It broke the monotony and helped us get through the workout,” he told me.

That's practically wholesome. What are the lingering questions here? Drug use? After Obama, are we even going to talk about politicians using drugs in their distant past? The insincerity of Rand Paul's religion? He was in a college group that was founded to (Lizza's words) "satirize" the "earnest religiosity" they saw around them. I guess I should do my own research into the NoZe Brotherhood, but I'll just end this here by saying that satirizing earnest religiosity is what Jesus did.

"State of Deception: Why won’t the President rein in the intelligence community?"

Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker. Excerpt:

In recent years, Americans have become accustomed to the idea of advertisers gathering wide swaths of information about their private transactions. The N.S.A.’s collecting of data looks a lot like what Facebook does, but it is fundamentally different. It inverts the crucial legal principle of probable cause: the government may not seize or inspect private property or information without evidence of a crime. The N.S.A. contends that it needs haystacks in order to find the terrorist needle. Its definition of a haystack is expanding; there are indications that, under the auspices of the “business records” provision of the Patriot Act, the intelligence community is now trying to assemble databases of financial transactions and cell-phone location information. [Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Senate Select Committee on Intelligence] maintains that data collection is not surveillance. But it is no longer clear if there is a distinction.

"The Obama Administration fought to keep a search warrant for James Rosen’s private e-mail account secret..."

"... arguing to a federal judge that the government might need to monitor the account for a lengthy period of time," writes Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker.

The new details indicate that the government wanted the option to search Rosen’s e-mails repeatedly if the F.B.I. found further evidence implicating the reporter in what prosecutors argued was a conspiracy to commit espionage.

"Obama doesn’t really like very many people."

"And he likes to talk about sports. But other than that he just doesn’t like very many people. Unfortunately, it extends to people who used to have his job."

Ryan Lizza, quoting a "Democrat deeply familiar with the relationship" between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who was refuting the common belief that mutual dislike originated with Clinton's unhappiness over the 2008 primary.

Now, Obama needs Clinton:

Jim Messina, the deputy chief of staff, moved to Chicago to manage the campaign, and he took charge of the Clinton account.... Clinton, Messina told me, is one of the few people who can make the case for Obama among voters who still haven’t made up their minds....

But does Clinton need Obama?

His associates take it as a given that he would like nothing more than to see his wife become President. Hillary Clinton will step down as Secretary of State after the campaign and begin the process of deciding whether she will run in 2016. By some measures, a defeat for Obama in November would leave Hillary the undisputed leader of her party and propel her toward the Oval Office that much faster. 

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton will take the stage in prime time at the convention, claiming the spot that would traditionally go to the vice presidential candidate, with Biden shunted elsewhere. 

Now, liking is a key concept in connection with Obama. He's always told he's so likeable. And we remember Hillary, back in '08, being needled about being less likeable than Obama and Obama stealing the spotlight to say "You're likeable enough" right after she'd done a nice delivery of the quip "That hurts my feelings." He's just so likeable.

Ah... but who does he like?

When Paul Ryan was 16.

From a New Yorker article written by Ryan Lizza:

But the summer of 1986 brought a life-changing event. One night in August, he came home from work well past midnight, and he slept late the following morning. His mother was in Colorado visiting his sister, and his brother, who had a summer job with the Janesville parks department, had left early. Paul answered a frantic phone call from his father’s secretary. “Your dad’s got clients in here,” she said. “Where is he?” Paul walked into his parents’ bedroom and thought his father was sleeping. “I went to wake him up,” he told me, “and he was dead.”