Chloe Ross

The House of Medici patronized Michelangelo, Botticelli and da Vinci. The House of Obama patronized Nicola Green: the artist wife of David Lammy, who served as deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom until Monday. From August 2008 to January 2009, Green was offered, according to her website, “unprecedented artistic access to President Obama’s monumental campaign,” the fruit of which was In Seven Days…, a portfolio of seven abstract paintings of the new president, released in 2010. Cockburn’s favorite is “Day Six, Sacrifice/Embrace,” which shows the head and hands of the 44th president, splayed on a sky-blue field.

Well, that was odd. Cockburn spent Saturday evening at the Substack party, hosted at the Renwick Gallery next door to the White House. He was handed what he was assured was a non-alcoholic cocktail were handed out upon arrival. Great. Leading lights of the “alternative” (read: once mainstream) media were dotted throughout the room. Cockburn spotted Jim Acosta and Michael Tracey before their now infamous clash over Tracey’s haranguing of investigative Epstein journalist Julie K. Brown. Things appeared to be shaping up for a salient White House Correspondents’ Dinner, with President Trump in attendance across town at the Washington Hilton with 2,600 journalists. A gunman had other ideas.

We all know far too much about Olivia Nuzzi. The first excerpts from American Canto, her unwelcome addition to the “spliterature” genre about her affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have been unavoidable for the past few days. Cockburn can’t decide what’s worse: the revelations themselves or the windy prose in which Nuzzi’s editors have allowed her to inflict them on us. Her ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza’s addition to “the Discourse” last night didn’t help matters. Rather than envisioning who sent pictures of what to whom, or getting jealous of a brainworm, Cockburn has found himself nostalgic. He’s casting his mind back to 2009, back when Nuzzi sought attention in a more innocent fashion: as an aspiring teen-pop starlet.