On Predatory Women

Reflections on Jessica Reed Kraus's essay, "The Talented Ms. Nuzzi"

I read Jessica Reed Kraus’s essay—The Talented Ms. Nuzzi: Exclusive Insight into the Sexting Scandal Between RFK Jr. and Olivia Nuzzi—with great interest. We are all familiar with the lamentably common predatory behavior of men, but nowadays we hear little talk in the public forum about predatory women.

Before Hollywood became infected with politically correct nonsense, some of the most fascinating characters in cinema were the femme fatales of film noir. As I reflected in my recent book, The Meaning of Malice: On the Trail of the Black Widow of Highland Park:

Noir often features a femme fatale—usually a married one—who seduces a man and persuades him to knock off her husband for the life insurance. The husband is usually portrayed (or represented by the femme fatale) as boorish and tyrannical, which evokes the white knight instincts of the paramour, who, at some point, realizes that maybe the husband wasn’t so terrible after all. A brilliant twist of this convention was presented in To Die For (1995) in which a femme fatale (marvelously played by Nicole Kidman) seduces a couple of dopey high school kids and coaxes them into murdering her husband, whom she portrays as a monster. When they go to his house and hold him at gunpoint as though they are robbers, he is disarmingly affable, and beseeches them not to take his wedding band because “My wife will kill me if she sees me not wearing it.”

My favorite noir film is Double Indemnity (1944) in which the insurance salesman, Walter Neff (played by Fred MacMurray) is seduced by the housewife, Phyllis Dietrichson (played by Barbara Stanwyck). While Phyllis drives her husband to the Burbank station to catch a night train to Palo Alto, Walter lies on the backseat floorboard. On a dark street near the station, he springs up and strangles her husband, whom he then impersonates and boards the train. As it heads north, he steps out onto the rear observation platform to smoke a cigarette and “accidentally” falls off. Phyllis drives her husband’s body to the designated place by the railroad, and they put it on the tracks at the spot where investigators will deduce that he fell off the train.

Later Walter discovers that Phyllis has killed before and that she has another boyfriend who is probably planning to kill him. Her apparent desire and love for Walter was just an act. In fact, she isn’t capable of feeling love or even empathy. Double Indemnity was the inspiration of Body Heat (1981) starring Kathleen Turner and William Hurt. Whenever Walter approaches Phyllis’s house, he smells honeysuckle in the air, which he associates with his intense longing for her. In Body Heat it’s the wind chimes hanging around the girl’s house, gentling swaying in the sultry, south Florida breeze, that seem to goad the young man to his fate.

The message is clear. Because men are so compelled by sexual desire, there is no hope for them as they are drawn to the femme fatale. They are doomed.

The title of Kraus’s essay—”The Talented Ms. Nuzzi”—is an allusion to The Talented Mr. Ripley, a 1955 novel written by Patricia Highsmith about a predatory psychopath named Tom Ripley. I believe the title is apt, as it seems to me that Ms. Nuzzi’s conduct with Robert F. Kennedy does indeed express a personality with predatory features.

I don’t want to let Mr. Kennedy off the hook altogether, as he is certainly old, experienced, and smart enough to have quickly recognized this about her. On the other hand, because he has been so relentlessly blacklisted and maligned by the mainstream media, it is understandable that he welcomed contact with a journalist who was billed as a star reporter for New York Magazine. I have reason to believe that what is presented in the following passage of Kraus’s essay is true:

Friends of Kennedy believe Nuzzi set him up. They recount that just two weeks after New York Magazine published her article, she made a flirtatious remark during a phone conversation. In response, Kennedy blocked her number. A few weeks later, Nuzzi emailed him, asking to be unblocked, claiming she had urgent information about a hit piece being prepared against him. He unblocked her for that conversation, but later that night, she sent him a provocative picture, prompting him to block her again.

For most of the next 8 months, Kennedy kept her blocked, except for a few occasions when Nuzzi contacted him from different emails and phone numbers, insisting he unblock her for urgent discussions about an imminent hit piece. Once unblocked, she bombarded him with increasingly pornographic photos and videos that he found difficult to resist. After brief exchanges, he would block her again.

Security expert Gavin de Becker is currently investigating the situation for civil litigation that Kennedy intends to file, as well as for potential criminal referrals. “This had nothing to do with romance,” said de Becker. “He was being chased by porn.” de Becker added that Kennedy had repeatedly declined multiple invitations from Nuzzi for personal meetings.

In conducting research for The Meaning of Malice, I studied most of the literature on predatory women and the popular films that feature them. Probably the most fascinating in history was Lou Andreas-Salomé, who really did have the surname of the most famous femme fatale in the Bible.

Salome with head of John the Baptist by Titian

Rilke, Freud, Nietzsche and countless other writers and artists were enthralled by her. Nietzsche was instantly smitten by her and apparently never got over her. His sister later claimed that his unrequited love for Salome was the genesis of his eventual mental breakdown.

Watching Olivia Nuzzi’s interview with Mark Cuban, I can say confidently that she is no Lou Andreas-Salomé. On the contrary, she strikes me as somewhat daft. That said, it’s fun to watch Cuban’s titillated reaction to her. Note especially how he smiles at her with his jaw slightly gaping open—always a pretty good sign that a man’s critical thinking circuit has been switched off by a beguiling female.