Olivia Nuzzi’s new memoir, American Canto, rips the scab off a scandal that conservative readers have watched unfold for more than a year: what she calls a “digital” romantic entanglement with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a relationship she insists was never physical but says involved declarations of love and even a request from him that she bear his child. The excerpts published ahead of the book drip with intimacy and self-justification, the kind of confessional theater the coastal media elite adore while ordinary Americans shake their heads.
An excerpt that Vanity Fair ran reads less like reporting than a literaryized diary — vivid metaphors, feverish interiority, and a clear attempt to recast a scandal as a national parable about power and vulnerability. Conservatives should note the irony: the same outlets that lecture the country about morals and standards are now giving front-row seats to the very kind of behavior they used to condemn.
Let’s be blunt: Nuzzi paid a real price for this, losing her role at New York magazine after editors determined she violated conflict-of-interest rules by not disclosing a personal relationship with a reporting subject. Yet instead of a quiet exit from public life, she’s been recycled into prestige platforms, illustrating the media ecosystem’s revolving door for the favored few. That double standard fuels the suspicion that there are two rules in America now — one for the elite and another for everyone else.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has denied an improper relationship, and the revelations have predictably dredged up private pain for his family — with reports that his wife, Cheryl Hines, was furious over the book’s claims. Conservatives aren’t obliged to cheer or boo here, but we are obliged to point out how celebrity and politics now mingle in ways that erode trust in institutions and in the people who run them.
Beyond the gossip, this episode should force a national conversation about journalistic ethics. When a reporter romances a subject — or even allows the appearance of impropriety — the public loses confidence in the press’s neutrality, and yet the New York Times and other legacy outlets have been criticized for soft-pedaling this story rather than treating it as the ethical breach it is. That reaction tells you everything about who the press protects and who they punish.
Americans who still believe in accountability and common-sense standards deserve better than literary rationalizations and celebrity indulgence. If the media wants to lecture the country on virtue and honesty, it should start by enforcing the same standards it demands of politicians and private citizens — no special treatment, no performance art of contrition, and certainly no reward for behavior that undercuts public trust.
Conservative commentators will rightly watch how this plays out: will the cultural elites circle the wagons and monetize the spectacle, or will the institutions that mattered at least pretend to care about consistency and truth? Our side should use this moment to press for real reform in journalistic ethics and to keep insisting that American institutions answer to the public, not to the celebrity class.
