Literally nothing on this earth takes itself as seriously as American journalism. There are rogue-state dictators it’s more permissible to laugh at than the endlessly hilarious pretensions of newsmen and newswomen in the United States. The crucial difference between the British press and US press is that at least we in the British press know we’re in the gutter. The Americans have always imagined – and so loudly – that they are involved in some kind of higher calling. Guys, I love you and stuff, but get over it, because you’re missing one of the great jokes of the century. Yourselves.

I don’t deny that everything’s bigger in America. Our former health secretary had a knee-trembler up against his office door in the pandemic; their current one apparently wrote felching … poetry, is it … felching poetry? … to a superstar journalist who was worrying about his brainworm, yet the story is being written up like it’s Dante, instead of X-rated Italian brainrot.

We are, by the way, talking about the tale of Olivia Nuzzi, Ryan Lizza and Robert F Kennedy. If you’ve missed this one, you have a great treat in store. Olivia and Ryan were hotshot political journalists (and a couple) covering presidential campaigns and writing a joint book about the 2020 one, when Ryan discovered last year that Olivia had had what is primly described as a “digital affair” with wingnut presidential candidate RFK. It all blew up, there was some legal hokey-cokey, they lost their jobs, she fled to LA, RFK became health secretary. He’s got bigger brainworms to fry; the other........

© The Guardian