23 Comments

"I’m guessing that, for a lot of us, the desire to be loved physically is really about the desire to be loved deeply. " I think this is true for many women as well. It was certainly the case for me in my younger years (when waking up next to a 23-year-old Michael Ian Black would have been my highest aspiration in life, regardless if he wanted me gone or not 😉).

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dear michael,

another thoughtful piece!

i like this chunk a lot:

"Intimacy isn’t necessarily radical honesty. There are things Martha doesn’t know about me and things, I suspect, I will never know about her. I don’t think those things matter very much. What matters isn’t radical honesty, but acceptance. To really accept somebody is less a decision, and more of a process. It’s also a matter of faith. It’s a faith that the person to whom I have dedicated so much of myself will continue to love me even after she gets to know me, and I her. It’s also a faith that, as we change through time, that intimacy will survive."

thank you for sharing!

love

myq

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You are a great foil for what Joe Rogan offers. There should more helpful content for rudderless men.

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that's a great blurb for michael!

"more helpful content for rudderless men"!

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Thank you so much for sharing this. It gives me hope.

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Great insights. So glad I'm following you.

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Good piece. Have to admit that I’ve missed the Gaetz story, so thanks for that too

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"Not because I disliked her, but because, in that moment, I disliked myself."

Ooof. That one hit home. 23 year old me is nodding her head and probably crying.

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It sounds like you have a profound understanding of what intimacy means. It’s so refreshing to read the thoughts of a critical thinker. Keep writing, the world needs it.

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Why would a “sexting affair” “cost Nuzzi her reputation”? Listen to yourself. You sound puritanical. If a good friend of yours sent a sexy picture to someone other than her husband would you also shame her? Of course you wouldn’t. This is you sitting at the cool kids table and tripping a less cool girl as she walks by. Purely because she doesn’t fall in line with everything the cool kids believe.

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Because the Public is an ass, and judgement is not based on logic. Women are generally presumed to have better judgement, and sending nude photos of yourself to a man of questionable integrity makes all of your future decisions suspect. And people love to destroy what they envy.

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author

It's not her reputation as a woman that will be ruined, but her journalistic reputation. She broke a cardinal rule of the profession and it's going to be tough sledding for her going forward. I'm sure she'll land on her feet eventually but she'll always have this hanging over her.

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Nuzzi published one interview with RFK jr that was neither biased nor inaccurate. It was actually pretty adversarial. RFK jr wasn’t a source for Nuzzi. She never pushed an agenda for him or planted misinformation. I think the reason that everyone in your milieu is overreacting is because RFK jr is gross and Nuzzi is unpredictable. I also think RFK jr sucks. But the mild mistake of sexting him after one article shouldn’t affect her reputation as a journalist. Especially considering all the more pernicious examples of journalistic bias that would be more interesting to explore. So many journalists are gleefully kicking her out of the club and it’s disgusting.

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JFK JR is married, and even more importantly, a nut job. A reporter having an emotional affair with him shows profoundly bad judgement on her part and people are going to judge her accordingly. I certainly won't be trusting her bylines anytime soon.

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I agree that *RFK JR is a nutcase. I also believe that a woman’s reputation is not ruined because she was sexting with one.

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Sep 22·edited Sep 22

Her professional reputation is damaged. And it should be.

Man or woman, if a reporter did what she did, they deserve to lose credibility professionally.

As an editor I would have a hard time ever trusting a story (or the reliability of a source) from her again.

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What’s your evidence that RFK jr was a source for Nuzzi? She wrote up one interview with him that was adversarial. You should read it.

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Good article!

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Good sex is just one of the stops. But I like what you said about the intimacy of peers. Spot on, bruh.

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Well done!

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So good.

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