There’s a reason that women like Olivia Nuzzi used to be shunned by polite society in more orderly times.
Any woman who sets her sights on a married man is making a deliberate, selfish choice to cause pain to another woman. This is not a sisterly act.
Through history, women who make enemies of other women are seen as lethal to the tribe’s cohesion and cast out. That’s the way it was when shame existed, and genteel social norms had replaced stoning or drowning or other horrors the medieval world bestowed on women.
But social punishment still exists and is no less brutal than in the days of the crucible.
In a form of reverse shunning, Nuzzi is granted the spotlight she craves for a million cold eyes to watch as she preens and gyrates in the special place in hell reserved for women who steal another woman’s husband.
Cheryl Hines, Bobby Kennedy Jr.’s wife, obviously is the victim of this tawdry tale, but she has played the crappy cards her cheating husband gave her about as perfectly as any woman could.
She has been plucky and honest, but also classy in what she doesn’t say when asked about the affair.
Nuzzi’s dalliance with Cheryl’s husband was devastating, Hines wrote in her just-published memoir, “Unscripted.” She was rocked and thought of leaving the 10-year marriage last year.
But Kennedy swore things weren’t physical with Nuzzi, who he claimed was just a stalker who sent him nude pictures, so he patched things up with his wife and emerged stronger than ever, Hines wrote.
“Through these soul-searching days, we tightened our ties that bind,” she wrote.
At this point, Nuzzi could have put the affair behind her and regained her dignity.
One last chance
She could even have pitched herself as the victim of Kennedy lust. She had one last chance to resuscitate her career after being ousted from New York magazine, with a plum posting as Vanity Fair’s West Coast correspondent.
Instead she wrote a book, 320 pages detailing every intimacy with Kennedy, claiming he told her that he loved her, wrote her X-rated love poems and wanted her to have his baby. She fantasized about breaking up his marriage. It was a dagger aimed straight at the heart of the older woman.
Nuzzi’s purple prose account of the affair, “American Canto,” was published this week to scathing reviews and a lackluster Amazon ranking of 6,100.
Now she’s on a book tour, doing a Meghan Markle for the paparazzi while pretending she wants her privacy, boasting on Instagram and in texts to acquaintances about all the famous people who have reached out to her, including Monica Lewinsky, who empathized with her plight.
Nuzzi is appearing in gauzy interviews with her new, tightly plucked brows and acid-washed tresses, playing the role of irresistible siren with vocal fry, as ever more ghastly details of her scandal swirl.
Nuzzi’s ex-fiancé, journalist Ryan Lizza, 51, cashed in with a four-part revenge soap opera complete with cliff-hangers on his Substack, dishing on his side of the affair. With titles like “How I Found Out,” and “She Did it Again,” he revealed his role as a double cuckold. In Part 4, he claimed “Bobby and Olivia . . . planned to consummate their relationship” after a Trump rally in Phoenix in 2024, at which Kennedy was crowned a MAGA prince.
They chose the moment because “Cheryl wouldn’t be around.” Lizza claims the deed was never done.
Lizza further stuck in the shiv by revealing it wasn’t the first time Nuzzi had unforgivably breached journalistic ethics by seducing a much older, married then-presidential candidate she was profiling.
He alleged that Nuzzi became “infatuated” with former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, 65, after interviewing him, sexting him, writing him love letters, and secretly following him on the 2020 campaign trail, before sleeping with him. Neither Nuzzi nor Sanford has confirmed the tale.
Olbermann hookup
Lizza also revealed that Nuzzi had embarked on a relationship with far left former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, 34 years her senior, when she was 17.
Lizza is a louse, but his juicy betrayals catapulted him to the top of Substack’s subscription charts last week, with more than 700,000 views, according to Semafor.
Olbermann has since confirmed on his own podcast that the young Nuzzi moved in with him and he paid for her tuition at Fordham University while lavishing her with thousands of dollars in Tom Ford and Hervé Léger outfits and Cartier jewelry.
He claimed the relationship with the lusty Lolita was “wholesome” and they would spend Christmases together at her parents’ place in New Jersey.
“We had dogs and tattoos and rings, and like all relationships it was very nice at the start, then things happened.”
Clearly, her exes don’t respect Nuzzi enough to keep quiet about her sex life. Like her, they don’t care how much more pain is inflicted on Hines.
But Cheryl is a better actress than Nuzzi. Hines, who dragged herself up from a trailer in Tallahassee, Fla., to become the beloved Emmy-nominated comedic star of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is no pushover.
In an exclusive interview with Page Six last month to promote her memoir, Hines said “people ask me why do I stay married to him.
“There’s extremes on both sides to Bobby . . . And I thought it was important for me to say: this is why I love him.”
Cheryl explains in her memoir they are kindred spirits: “I was thunderstruck from the moment we started talking. I don’t know how I missed before how blue his eyes are. I felt his magnetic energy. He has since told me he felt the same way.”
She lost friends and was reviled by Hollywood because she loved her husband and was generous enough to put aside her liberal politics to support him on his MAGA journey. She is warm and open with everyone she meets and has even appeared on liberal TV shows to sing the praises of MAGA folk who have been kind to her.
Whatever she is going through, Hines wore an inscrutable smile Monday as she appeared at an event with First Lady Melania Trump and Second Lady Usha Vance. It was an unmistakable show of sisterly solidarity for Cheryl from the two most powerful wives in politics on the eve of Nuzzi’s book launch.
Whatever happens with her marriage, Hines has won the public relations battle. The wronged wife will always have the public’s sympathy, but Cheryl has turned that into an art form.
Nuzzi doesn’t know it yet, but her career as a journalist is over. No woman will ever trust her as a friend, and at 32 her potential marital value to some future conquest has collapsed.
As for Kennedy, nothing more needs to be said about his betrayals. He’s a 71-year old punchline. Character is destiny.
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