Nuzzi-Lizza farce exposes Washington’s cesspool of vanity

We regret to inform you that the journos are at it again, doing their best to focus the national conversation on where all beltway scribblers and CNN hosts agree it belongs: themselves.

It was the grande dame of Washington socialites, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who popularized the invitation: “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.”

In the capital city today, that sentiment abounds regarding the all-consuming narcissism of Olivia Nuzzi and Ryan Lizza, journalist-cum-socialites who make Tom and Daisy Buchanan look like Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver.

Christmas came early for Washington gossips these last two weeks, when they received a scandalous gift to liven up their frightfully dull holiday shindigs: the running saga of Nuzzi and Lizza, two accomplished political writers who just can’t shut up about themselves.

The members of the Washington press corps love nothing more than to wrap themselves in the flag, proclaiming their essential role in a free democracy and comparing themselves to firefighters rushing into a fire.

But a more accurate portrayal would depict them standing nose to phone in a ball of enclosed plastic, demonstrating their bubble-headed self-absorption and abiding determination to ignore the real world around them.

No one better holds a mirror up to Washington’s undefeated self-obsession than Nuzzi and Lizza. 

The recriminative details of the pair’s breakup are being updated daily across a slew of tearful podcasts, vindictive Substacks, and lore-focused X threads. 

In their telling, her text-based liaison with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sparked anonymous Reddit attacks and bouts of bamboo-focused acrimony surrounding what might be the most sexless of DC sex scandals.

All the attention has done little to elevate “American Canto,” Nuzzi’s cash-grab book, which teases more than it illuminates and is ranking decidedly low on the Amazon charts.

Who really wants that lump of coal in their stocking?

The abundance-agenda of gossip on offer here doesn’t require buying, much less reading, Nuzzi’s TEMU Joan Didion act — or the newsletter of Lizza, her jilted lover, who strings out his readers more than Geraldo did on the way into Al Capone’s vault.

Nuzzi’s author’s note describes her memoir as being “about the nature of our reality, and about character . . . It is also a book about love, because everything is about love.”

Love of self counts, apparently.

The four-z couple have worked at the height of journalism at major publications — New York magazine, the New Yorker, Politico, Vanity Fair, the whole gamut. 

It turns out working at interesting places isn’t enough to make you interesting.

Americans once trusted publications like these to tell them the truth about what was going on in politics.

No more, and for good reason.

Even in the absence of these unfettered narcissists, such outlets now have plenty of their own problems. 

But it certainly doesn’t help for us to learn that their top reporters are more focused on doodling hearts around the faces of their profile subjects than doing their jobs.

Nonetheless, the pair are intent on making Washington gossip fly via a stream of unreserved fan fiction about themselves.

Lizza even details coming across Nuzzi’s fantastical draft of a “tabloid-style news story” in which she imagined her peccadillos attracting national attention.

In it, she exercised restraint in describing herself as “one of the most famous political reporters in America,” a “blonde beauty” who “gained critical acclaim.”

She left out the part about being a former would-be pop star, the teenage singer of a once-forgotten banger titled “Jailbait.”

Given that she’s bounced between broad-age-gap relationships with the likes of Keith Olbermann and Mark “Appalachian Trail” Sanford, Nuzzi is at least self-aware.

“Deny your attraction — but I’ve got no shame,” she sang.

Well, to thine own self be true.

Yet the almost entirely online nature of this very 21st century scandal is enough to make you long for the Nineties heyday of Bill Clinton’s peak.

At least then the philanderers got to be in the room where it happened.

The banality of the whole affair creates a picture of two people who desperately want the world to know how proximate to power they are, while displaying how little actual talent it took to get there.

This isn’t “Fifty Shades.”

It’s not even a Lifetime special.

But the hubris runs so hot that Nuzzi unabashedly compares her post-affair career downfall to this year’s deadly Los Angeles wildfires.

You’ll find more modesty and restraint on OnlyFans.

The only actual victim in this whole scrum is Kennedy’s wife Cheryl Hines, who like Alice Longworth before her takes a dim view of the pathetic nature of DC.

“They’re all trying to get you to pay attention to them,” Hines wrote of the capital’s swamp creatures.

None more so than this pair.

Ben Domenech is editor at large of The Spectator and a Fox News contributor.