A Saga in 5,600 Parts
The ZZ Top and ZZ plant of newsletters is surveying the splitscape and posing for a nude double portrait that will appear in next month’s Vanity Fair!
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Welcome back, Spreadlings!
Top of this morning’s Spreaditorial agenda: Should we subject you, our beloved readers, to yet more Nuzzigate? On the side of enough is enough: Our skin is a mess from all the scrubbing it takes to remove the ickiness of 51-year-old reporter, supposed grownup, and father-of-two Ryan Lizza cashing in on his revenge fantasies in paywalled Substack posts parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 and, as of tonight, this supposed backup aka “strategy memo.” Not only has Lizza attracted reporters to his front door (cue his Livvy-lookalike twentysomething girlfriend’s thoroughly staged Starbucks run), but Semafor reports (clearly via Lizza himself) that Part 1 alone got him 724,000 page views.1 (Which is amazing since everyone we know is doing everything they can to pass the story around without having to go to his site because of aforementioned ick factor.) We’re not sure how to feel about the fact that right here on Substack is unequivocally where this story is popping off, specifically because it’s a free-for-all platform, absent all fact-checking or journalistic standards, where you can say whatever the hell you want. Also, apparently, a self-sustaining mediaworld personal-PR backscratching loop: Just picturing the Substack overlords doing ecstatic donkey kicks when Nuzzi’s publisher taps Feed Me for a softball reader-submitted AMA—and then backflips when Lizza chooses the Feed Me chat to tease Part 4—sends us back to the showers for another scrubdown. (We recommend Josie Maran Sugar and Argan Oil Scrub in Bohemian Fig; a great stocking stuffer!)
On the side of let-’er-rip: Over Thanksgiving we did have a whole lot more fun armchair-analyzing the three individuals (one of whose actions, of course, have far-reaching consequences) at the center of this shitstorm than, say, doomscrolling about the demise of the planet, democracy, immigrants, women’s rights, what-have-you. Yesterday, pondering the simultaneous Dec 2 timing of the release of American Canto and the Vanity Fair Hollywood Issue—and whether editor-in-chief Mark Guaducci will simply allow Nuzzi’s VF contract to “lapse” or will have to take more immediate and more strongly worded action to save himself from being sucked down in her wake—was a way cheaper pastime than pressing “buy now” on that red-light mask we desperately need now (this story has aged us considerably—hint, hint loved ones).
Importantly, three weeks into this thing we are finally getting what we asked for. The big brains have come out to play in a series of meditations, each more scathing than the last. Do you need to read Michelle Goldberg in the Times, Molly Fischer in the New Yorker, and Helen Lewis in the Atlantic? Not unless, like us, you’re in deep. All three lament the book’s heavy dose of Didion, its overwrought language about fiery Cali sunsets, and what Goldberg calls its “grandiose postmodern pastiche.” Mostly, though, these rule-abiding journos are mad that this tell-all doesn’t tell all: In it, Nuzzi never takes responsibility for her crimes—not against her ex, but against the institution of Journalism. Not for the first time, we have to call this round for Queen Helen, who as a Brit and as the most wickedly funny writer out there, is poised to give this story what it desperately needs: scorching humor. Among her snort-inducing observations: “Journalists obviously shouldn’t sleep with their sources, although luckily most of us are so hideous, the subject simply doesn’t arise. (Once, an actor made a half-hearted pass at me at the end of an interview, but apart from anything else, it was 3 p.m. on a weekday afternoon, and I’m not an animal.)” Helen, consider this us making a wholehearted pass.
So fine, we indulged in another episode of the Nuzz. But at this point we feel about this story the way we felt about Thanksgiving dinner by 5:20 p.m. last Thursday: Please, for the love of god, no more. If Lizza is planning a Part 5 and beyond, count us out.
Our Master Cleanse (remember the Master Cleanse?!) starts now,
Rachel & Maggie
Stick around, we’re just getting warmed up! In tonight’s issue:
The next chapter in our favorite open-marriage story
Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet birth story
When did “inflammation” become public enemy No.1?
O.G. celebrity Rachel Zoe: She’s baaaack!
#MeToo: Don’t call it a comeback?
🎵“Divorce is divorce, of course, of course…” 🎵 (What? No Mr. Ed fans here?)
Nothing says “It’s the holiday season” like a fresh crop of essays about marriage and whether or not to end one. Since the start of Thanksgiving break, we’ve been treated to several; whether you find them depressing or inspiring is something of a Rorschach test. Here’s the rundown:
In Times Opinion, Spreadpal Cathi Hanauer, the woman responsible for not one but two Bitch in the House anthologies, one-ups Gwyneth and Chris by consciously uncoupling from her husband of 33 years and the father of her children. Now she’s moved back to New York City, where she lives alone! She is sleeping well! She is dating! She is still on her ex’s health insurance! Which, honestly: sexy! Rating: 📚💃🤷♀️✈️
Also in Times Opinion!! (Seriously, we’d read that they were beefing up over there but had no idea the MidLife Desk was so bumpin’!) Lizzy Goodman—another Spread pal, if you can believe it—declares Lily Allen’s post-divorce album West End Girl to be more than the definitive breakup album of the All Fours generation (no, that was us who just declared that—feels accurate, no?) but the definitive midlife crisis soundtrack for all elder millennials. Lizzy writes that Allen captures “the sense of looking back at your old life, knowing it’s gone, and finding this new one full of horrors that your younger self couldn’t even have imagined but that are also sort of mesmerizing and hilarious.” Rating: 🍷💪😜🙃🧀
In the Cut, Monica Corcoran Harel applies a modern workplace coinage to a depressing and age-old marital dynamic: “The Women Quietly Quitting Their Husbands” is just another way to frame the decision to live an emotionally separate life from one’s husband while staying married. We emerged from the piece feeling sad for our peers who are stuck, and especially for our grandmothers’ and mothers’ generations ahead of us, who felt really stuck. Rating: 💔😭🧟♀️
Must We Hate On Madeline?
The Spread equivalent of Dickens serializing Oliver Twist in Bentley’s Miscellany? Jean Garnett, popping up every now and then to drop a few more breadcrumbs about her open marriage-cum-divorce-cum-dating life. The latest installment is inspired by Lily Allen, whose relationship flame-out has attracted only slightly fewer column inches than Ms. Nuzzi’s. (See aforementioned Lizzy Goodman piece. Also, last week, one loyal Spreader sweated it out with a bunch of elder millennials at a SoulCycle class devoted to Allen’s breakup album, West End Girl.) This time, Garnett is challenging “the idea of straight open marriage as a thing done by men to women” as portrayed in Allen’s song “Madeline.” We take her point, but must confess: You can count us among the “alarming number of readers” of Garnett’s initial story—in which, as we recall, her then-husband needed sex so badly after the birth of their child that they decided to open the relationship—who were “determined to apprehend it as a story about the domesticity-destroying capacities of the male sex drive.” Yeah, that largely seemed like a thing done to her by him. Was that our bias talking, or the way it actually read?
Read “Postscript to an Open Marriage: On Lily Allen’s West End Girl” here.
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