Ryan Lizza

Even by Washington’s sordid standards, this has been a particularly grubby week. Things kicked off with the departure of vacation queen and Josh sauvi B enthusiast Lori Chaves-DeRemer from the Department of Labor; they continued with a tell-all from the ex-girlfriend of former ICE deputy director Madison Sheahan. Don’t get Cockburn started on Congress (Juliegrace Brufke’s “Case Study in Congressional Smut” is worth a peruse.) There is no shortage of salacity, yet Cockburn can’t put his finger on why he’s so entranced by the stories from the Daily Mail and the New York Post regarding DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism Julia Varvaro and her much older ex-boyfriend, Robert Bianchi.

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.