Climate disaster is not ambiance

I’ve had my head down in a few long-term stories this week, but every time I come up for air, the internet is talking about Olivia Nuzzi, the former political reporter and newly-minted “West Coast editor” of Vanity Fair who had an “emotional affair” with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. while she was covering his presidential campaign.

Vanity Fair just dropped an exclusive excerpt of Nuzzi’s memoir, American Canto, detailing her relationship with the man who is now Secretary of Health and Human Services. There’s a lot to chew on: the brazen violation of basic journalistic ethics; the fact that Vanity Fair rewarded that violation by creating a new position for Nuzzi; and the funnier discourse over Nuzzi’s self-mythologizing prose.

But as I read through Nuzzi’s excerpt, I realized there was another aspect bothering me that I hadn’t yet seen discussed.

Throughout the excerpt, Nuzzi structures her narration around the Palisades fire, which devastated Pacific Palisades in January after the driest nine-month period on record. The fire was fueled by powerful Santa Ana winds and drought conditions that scientists say were made more likely and severe by climate change.

Nuzzi doesn’t mention that the fire killed 12 people, destroyed nearly 7,000 homes and other structures, or place over 180,000 people under evacuation order. Even when she brushes up against the human and economic toll, the fire ultimately serves mainly as a backdrop for her own relationship. With RFK Jr.

That’s what really turned my stomach: Nuzzi’s repeated use of climate-fueled wildfire as atmospheric mood lighting for her emotional affair with a man who helped bring a climate-denying administration into power.

The excerpt begins with Nuzzi standing near the Pacific Coast Highway, watching the blaze. “You cannot outrun your life on fire,” she says, pivoting straight into Kennedy’s repeated promise to “take a bullet” for her. Later, as “the wildfire is over my shoulder now,” Kennedy is across the country at an event with his wife. The relationship is rendered in fire language: “The spark, the flame, the rumor fulfilled. The labyrinth on fire. The Palisades fire.” The wildfire becomes a symbol for their relationship—its danger, its intensity, its eventual explosion.

Gross.

The crumbling of Nuzzi’s life and relationship is increasingly interspersed with