Neo-Nuzzi tactics

At Received Opinion, Bolt and the crew consider ethics in candidate sexting!

BOLT UPRIGHT: Good evening, I’m Bolt Upright and this is Received Opinion!

[Hyperattenuated zeptocoulombs of quasi-tonal blight. Opening background screen is recycled from last month: A limited-animation cartoon of crows with donkey heads pecking at a weepy white man wearing a suit with a press-pass in his hatband — caption: ET TU, LIBTARD?]

As my father, Bolt Upright Sr., used to tell me, “Son, we journalists have very tough jobs — that’s why we’re paid so much money!” And it almost makes up for the flak we get from politicians and gadflies. For a long time it was mostly Republicans and riot police who complained —

[Background screen switches to montage of guy wearing a “JOURNALIST. ROPE. TREE” shirt, reporters getting booed at Trump and Vance rallies; reporters getting beaten up at Gaza protests, etc.]

— but we’re used to that, in fact we welcome it in a spirit of fruitful debate. But now some on the left are complaining that the media is too friendly to Donald Trump. Here’s what Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, who has the best Trump access of just about any reporter not working for Fox News, had to say about it on NPR:

[Background screen switches to picture of HABERMAN with Trump’s arm around her and pull quote from her NPR speech, which UPRIGHT reads:]

“I think there is an industry, bluntly, Dave, that is dedicated toward attacking the media, especially as it relates to covering Donald Trump and all coverage of Trump… I don’t see how they think they are a solution by undermining faith in what we do... I’m talking about criticism on the left. “

But before Maggie’s impassioned defense of our profession could gain traction, a whiff of scandal emerged at New York magazine —

[Background screen switches to OLIVIA NUZZI’s head on a fake nude body — tastefully covered — with an inset of the rocking head of RFK JR., eyes widened, looking at an iPhone. Caption: TEMPEST IN A SEXPOT?]

— involving its star Washington reporter Olivia Nuzzi, who allegedly exchanged intimate messages including nude photos of herself with former Biden challenger and current Trump supporter RFK Jr. Based on the harsh-but-fair coverage Nuzzi had given President Biden —

[Background screen switches to banner for Nuzzi’s “The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden” story showing Biden senile and decrepit]

— her editor has suspended her pending independent review. So the question remains: Why are these leftist critics Maggie talks about harassing the independent press? Let’s go to our Decision Desk!

[The sound of Hell’s gate momentarily unseal’d. UPRIGHT visits the Decision Desk, where we see the usual guests: PEONI DOYENNE, wearing a Carolina Herrera white-on-black embroidered wool suiting jacket with white Gabriela Hearst Mabon high-rise silk wide-leg pants and black and white Aquazzura pinot leather ballet flats; CHAFE DRAMATURGY in a Tom Ford wool, silk, and mohair frogman jacket and slim-fit jeans with black Brioni calf leather Chelsea boots; and BUFF TOEHOLD, breaking form in a seafoam linen Model 16A suit from The Armoury, though he wears the jacket buttoned, revealing that the waist is a little clumsily taken out, with a white shirt, red tie, and dark brown Brunello Cucinelli penny loafers. Though we might not notice at first, his fly is open.]

Chafe, you’re as liberal as they come! What’s all this about the media being too favorable to Trump?

DRAMATURGY: Oh, I guess it’s one of those woke type fads, Bolt. But I’m pretty young still myself, or youthful I suppose the term is, and I think I see where they’re coming from. Like Maggie and all the great access reporters say, Trump is an unusual candidate and it’s just very hard to cover him without using words like “lie,” “pogrom,” “Hitler,” and so on which have no place in unbiased journalism.

UPRIGHT: Of course.

DRAMATURGY:  I mean, we don’t call Harris a communist. Well, most of us don’t, right, Buff!

TOEHOLD: [Chortling] Commie bitch!

DRAMATURGY: And that’s despite her support for programs like extension of the ACA subsidies that a lot of people consider communist.

UPRIGHT: What sort of people are we talking about, Chafe?

DRAMATURGY: Well, one of my interns I sent to a Trump rally said a women kept screaming that at her as she beat her over the head with a badminton racket. And of course most of my old Dartmouth classmates. But, you know, I think some of our colleagues are meeting the kids halfway. Did you see the Times yesterday? They said Trump had quote unquote “falsely” claimed he was on Oprah Winfrey’s show in the last week. That’s huge, that “falsely”!

TOEHOLD: Two commie bitches!

DRAMATURGY: And it’s not like the cats and dogs thing — absence of evidence is not evidence of absence! Whereas unless things have really changed at the Times since I took my buyout, I assume they have the old videotapes to prove he wasn’t on the show!

DOYENNE: If I may, Bolt, about Miss Nuzzi: You know, this business is so hard for a woman to break into. You don’t have that old-boy network, the old school tie. When I was a cub reporter, sometimes to gain the trust of a subject you had to play up to their male vanity. I recall sitting with Ronald Reagan, for example, and when Ronnie got comfortable with you, you know he’d sit close, and he did that with me and then one day, it was just the two of us in the Oval, my hand wound up on his thigh and well, from there it was only a short step to the sort of thing that makes a man happy. But that was my left hand, Bolt — I was taking strict dictation with my right.

[Pause.]

DRAMATURGY: Did — did you do that with George Bush?

DOYENNE: [Indignant] What do you take me for — a slut?

TOEHOLD: SLUT!

[A quick and undoubtedly inadvertent medium shot shows TOEHOLD reaching into his pants and stroking excitedly. Other guests groan. Quick cut to UPRIGHT.]

UPRIGHT: I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen —

[Behind UPRIGHT men in white coats rush the stage; thuds and cries are heard.]

— Buff’s therapy is proceeding slower than we thought and we wish him well. Coming up next, Josh Barro, Caitlin Flanagan, and Andrew Rice will conduct a Maori group ritual to expel evil spirits from the life of Olivia Nuzzi, and former Times reporter Judith Miller will deliver a postscript.

[Aural curettage. Instead of, as usual, ascending and surveying the studio, the drone camera flies swiftly straight up through the lights, crashes into the ceiling, and goes to black.]