{"id":593042,"date":"2025-11-25T15:08:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T15:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/593042\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T15:08:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T15:08:12","slug":"what-can-we-learn-from-rfks-erotic-poetry-that-americans-need-to-get-better-at-enjoying-a-scandal-marina-hyde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/593042\/","title":{"rendered":"What can we learn from RFK\u2019s \u2018erotic poetry\u2019? That Americans need to get better at enjoying a scandal | Marina Hyde"},"content":{"rendered":"

Literally nothing on this earth takes itself as seriously as American journalism. There are rogue-state dictators it\u2019s more permissible to laugh at than the endlessly hilarious pretensions of newsmen and newswomen in the United States. The crucial difference between the British press and US press is that at least we in the British press know we\u2019re in the gutter. The Americans have always imagined \u2013 and so loudly \u2013 that they are involved in some kind of higher calling. Guys, I love you and stuff, but get over it, because you\u2019re missing one of the great jokes of the century. Yourselves.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t deny that everything\u2019s bigger in America. Our former health secretary had a knee-trembler up against his office door in the pandemic<\/a>; their current one apparently<\/a> wrote felching \u2026 poetry, is it \u2026 felching poetry? \u2026 to a superstar journalist who was worrying about his brainworm, yet the story is being written up like it\u2019s Dante, instead of X-rated Italian brainrot.<\/p>\n

We are, by the way, talking about the tale of Olivia Nuzzi, Ryan Lizza and Robert F Kennedy. If you\u2019ve missed this one, you have a great treat in store<\/a>. Olivia and Ryan were hotshot political journalists (and a couple) covering presidential campaigns and writing a joint book about the 2020 one, when Ryan discovered last year that Olivia had had what is primly described as a \u201cdigital affair\u201d with wingnut presidential candidate RFK. It all blew up, there was some legal hokey-cokey, they lost their jobs, she fled to LA, RFK became health secretary. He\u2019s got bigger brainworms<\/a> to fry; the other two are now \u201cbreaking their silence<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

And everything \u2013 everything \u2013 about it is darkly hysterical. It should obviously be being written as comedy. Instead, the story is being chronicled with maximum portentousness by its own protagonists. Firstly, in Nuzzi\u2019s forthcoming memoir\/state-of-the-nation something-or-other, which is actually entitled<\/a> American Canto. And secondly in Lizza\u2019s Substack, which is genuinely called<\/a> Telos. I can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

No, hang on \u2013 I can. Like so many of the self-regarding big-hitters of the US fourth estate, this sundered pair very much need you to know that serious prose is occurring. Both of them adore a sledgehammer metaphor. With Lizza, it\u2019s bamboo. The bamboo in the couple\u2019s apartment courtyard \u201chad become a metaphor for our decade-long entanglement\u201d. Righto. \u201cIf not tamed, [it] would march through the entire courtyard and kill everything.\u201d Thanks for flagging, mate. \u201cI spent hours hacking at the sprouts to keep the bamboo at bay, just as I had with all the secrets that Olivia and I shared.\u201d Is there much more of this? Yes, would seem to be the answer. \u201cI should have known that it was futile and that, at some point, the bamboo would take over the garden, and that\u2019s all anyone would see.\u201d Come on Ryan, batter me round the head with the bamboo analogy one more time \u2013 I\u2019m so close to getting the point.<\/p>\n

With Nuzzi, it\u2019s wildfires<\/a>. She flees to LA after the RFK story breaks, staking down seemingly dozens of signposts to where we are going as the burning takes hold. \u201c10:30 a.m., 10 acres burning. 10:50 a.m., 20 acres burning \u2026 2 p.m., 700 acres burning. 3 p.m., 1,300 acres burning \u2026 12:30 a.m., 3,000 acres burning. 9 a.m., 5,000 acres burning. 11:45 a.m., 12,000 acres burning. 1:30 p.m., 16,000 acres burning \u2026 9 p.m., 20,000 acres burning. 8 a.m., 22,000 acres burning. 4 p.m., 24,000 acres burning.\u201d OK GOT IT. Luckily, because we\u2019re literary dumbos, Nuzzi has already explained: \u201cYou cannot outrun your life on fire.\u201d Makes u think. Could we have some crossover metaphor event where the bamboo catches fire? Maybe for Black Friday.<\/p>\n

With heavy heart, apparently, the wider US media must cover the tale<\/a>, yet not even America\u2019s dainty journalese can rob the story of its full-spectrum trash merriment. In fact, in some cases it adds to it. Nuzzi\u2019s lawyer told the New York Times<\/a> his client would \u201cnot dignify efforts to impugn her character with any future response\u201d. Dialling in from an Edith Wharton novel, there. I believe the felching poetry dropped a couple of days later<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s so sad that, across American newsrooms, hankies must be overtly pressed to noses about all this, while refresh keys can only be covertly pressed to see if any more has dropped. Pretty much the only splashy thing Vanity Fair has done under its new editorship was hire Nuzzi as West Coast editor and run her book extract, so it should be absolutely zero surprise to learn that, as a result of something they read in Telos \u2013 again, \u201cTelos\u201d!!! \u2013 the magazine is reviewing the appointment. \u201cWe were taken by surprise,\u201d intoned a Vanity Fair spokeswoman, \u201cand we are looking at all the facts.\u201d For heaven\u2019s sake, buck up and stop being so absolutely wet. This sort of thing is why you hired her. Just own it and allow yourself a bit of fun.<\/p>\n

Alas, they seem bent on playing it like they\u2019re in the midst of some boring ethics crisis, when you can\u2019t help feeling that ship has sailed. May we humble outsiders offer a word of advice? Guys, you just need to stop being so American and serious about it all. And, indeed, about America. God knows we lesser countries have put some ghastly people in charge ourselves, but you do have to allow your international underlings the occasional cackle at the fact that in your great nation, Donald Trump has now become president, twice. When you lot shit the bed, the whole world has to lie in it \u2013 so do at least have the delicacy to realise that once dignity has gone, a good laugh is how the rest of us get by. Come along and join us: you\u2019ll like it if you try it.<\/p>\n

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