It could be said that, in the year of our lord 2025, we have overused the term “cringe” to the point that it no longer has any meaning. That, in the last few years, it has gone from verb to adjective to a nonsense word that everyone is tired of.

But there is just no other term that fully captures the mental and physical feeling, the full stomach lurch, of reading the New York Times’ swooning, overwrought profile of political writer Olivia Nuzzi, who worked at New York magazine until September 2024, when it was revealed that she had been having a sextual relationship with none other than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — which appears to be a major plot-point in her soon to be released book, American Canto.

And isn’t that something you are just dying to know more about? Of course you are. So please, join me as we delve into the hate-read masterpiece that is Jacob Bernstein’s Olivia Nuzzi Did It All For Love — which, yes, is the actual title of this piece.

It begins!

Olivia Nuzzi loved him. She loved the politician, even though she was a political reporter and he was then a presidential candidate she had written about. She loved his eyes, “blue as the flame.” She loved that “the sight of something as trivial as a rose” could move him to tears. She loved his insatiable appetites and his “particular complications and particular darkness.”

But she said “I love you” only after he said it first. He called her “Livvy” and wrote her poems. He said he wanted her to have his baby. He promised to take a bullet for her.

Look, I try not to judge other people’s romantic inclinations (not that I succeed), but all of that sounds terrible. RFK Jr. walking through the grocery store, openly weeping by the flower stand; RFK Jr. writing poems about you; RFK Jr. coming up with a saccharine nickname for you; 71-year-old RFK Jr. telling you he wants you to have his baby, despite the fact that older paternal age is something that, unlike vaccines or circumcision or Tylenol, is actually known to be associated with a higher risk of autism; any Kennedy at all bringing up the concept of taking a bullet, when you think about it …

. . .