Perhaps not since Michael Douglas's selfish role in Fatal Attraction saw an unfaithful husband try so doggedly to persuade others – including, apparently, his wife – that he deserved sympathy for being the article of a lady's supposed sexual obsession.

But that's exactly what surrogates for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. try to do for the married 70-year-old former presidential candidate, who’s already embroiled in one other sex scandal – this time over his allegedly inappropriate “sexting” relationship with star political reporter Olivia Nuzzi.

Kennedy's friends told the New York Post over the weekend that Nuzzi, 31, was “obsessed” with the Trump-supporting Kennedy member of the family, who’s married for the third time to television actress Cheryl Hines. Nuzzi tried to “set a trap for Kennedy” by repeatedly sending him pornographic photos of herself, even after her number was blocked.

“She came at him aggressively,” a source told the New York Post. “She targeted him pretty hard. Bobby kept blocking her. It was a little scary. She was obsessed with him. I think she still is.”

Another friend, journalist Jessica Reed Kraus, wrote on Substack that Kennedy met Nuzzi just once, when she visited his home within the Los Angeles area and went climbing with him for a portrait published in New York Magazine in November 2023. Puck News reported that the 2 began “sexting” and Nuzzi sent Kennedy “modest” nude photos.

However, Kraus said Kennedy blocked Nuzzi two weeks after the profile was published because she allegedly made “a flirtatious remark” to him in a text message. Over the following eight months, Kennedy blocked her with few exceptions, Kraus said.

“After unblocking him, she bombarded him with increasingly pornographic photos and videos that he found difficult to resist,” Kraus wrote. “After a brief exchange, he blocked her again.”

“It had nothing to do with romance,” Gavin de Becker, a security expert hired by Kennedy to handle the Nuzzi case, told Kraus. “He was being chased by porn.”

Nuzzi has vehemently rejected the concept she made Kennedy the victim of a “fatal attraction” scenario – wherein she is the “obsessed” other woman who relentlessly pursues the environmental lawyer turned anti-vaccine activist. because the New York Post reported. People near Nuzzi deny that she single-handedly initiated her “digital relationship,” but admit that the connection can have been turbulent at times.

“It is absolutely untrue that she was the aggressor, but both parties were aware of the high pressure and high risk of the circumstances and because of that, their communication was very erratic,” an individual aware of the situation told The Post.

“In Olivia's opinion, it is completely inaccurate to speak of a relationship or affair. At most it was a flirtation,” said one other source near Nuzzi.

Meanwhile, Kennedy's cheating wife spent the weekend leading the world to consider that she was not upset by last week's revelations that her husband of 10 years had a “personal relationship” with a reporter covering the 2024 presidential election.

Hines celebrated her 59th birthday during Milan Fashion Week. Photos on social media show her and her daughter Catherine Young within the audience on the Gucci show. People magazine reported. Notably, Kennedy's daughter Kyra Kennedy walked the runway on the show.

But The Daily Mail also reported that the “Drop It, Larry!” actress was photographed in Milan without wearing her wedding ring. Other reports quoted her friends as saying that they had warned her against becoming Kennedy's third wife, given his repute as a womanizer and his controversial views. The Daily Beast said.

Kennedy also reportedly kept a sex diary in 2001 wherein he recorded his affairs with dozens of other women during his marriage to his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. because the New York Post originally reported in 2013.

Kennedy's latest scandal – after a string of scandals in his life that include the sex diary, his anti-vaccination stance, his infection with brain worms and his recent boast about disposing of the body of a bear cub in Central Park – erupted last Thursday when his alleged “personal relationship” with Nuzzi made headlines after New York Magazine sent a note to readers saying she had been placed on leave due to it.

The magazine's note said Nuzzi was placed on leave after she “entered into a personal relationship with a former individual relevant to the 2024 campaign,” with a source confirming to CNN that Nuzzi's “personal relationship” involved Kennedy.

The memo also said the connection was “a violation of the magazine's standards regarding conflicts of interest and disclosures” and that if the magazine had known about it, Nuzzi “would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign.”

Nuzzi issued her own statement to the media, confirming that “the nature of the communication” between her and “a former reporting subject had become personal.” She added, nonetheless, that in that point she “neither reported directly on the subject nor used it as a source.”

“The relationship was never physical, but it should have been disclosed to avoid the appearance of a conflict,” she said. “I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I have disappointed, especially my colleagues in New York.”

But now Nuzzi will not be only a reporter under fire for violating skilled ethics, but, in response to Kraus, she can be facing a civil suit from Kennedy. Meanwhile, Kraus and other sources at Kennedy try to essentially equate her with Glenn Close's crazy, ugly Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction.

But Daily Beast author Lily Mae Lazarus had an issue with this portrait of an obsessed Nuzzi and a beleaguered Kennedy. She said the statements about his apparent inability to withstand the seduction of Nuzzi's “pornographic” photos reflected the self-critical rhetoric he employed in his alleged sex diary.

In the thick red diary, which the New York Post has obtained, the son of Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of John F. Kennedy recorded his sexual encounters throughout the seventh 12 months of his marriage to Mary Richardson Kennedy, the mother of 4 of his six children. Kennedy recently denied to the New York Post that he had kept such a diary.

However, the Post claimed that the diary was found sometime before Mary Richardson Kennedy's death. Vanity Fair also reported in July that Kennedy was known to send nude photos of girls to his friends throughout the marriage, and that his friends consider Kennedy took the photos himself.

In his diary, Kennedy assigned each woman he slept with a number between 1 and 10 that referred to sexual intercourse. The number “10” meant that he and the girl had sexual activity.

But in his diary, Kennedy also portrayed himself as a victim of seductresses, the Daily Beast's Lazarus said. He used the term “ambushed” when he felt seduced and was, from his perspective, an innocent, unwilling participant.

“I narrowly escaped being attacked by two women,” he wrote in a single entry, the New York Post reported. “It was tempting, but I prayed and God gave me the strength to say no.”

Kennedy would rejoice a “victory” if he didn’t succumb to women’s temptations or survived a day without sexual temptation, a source near Richardson told the New York Post in 2013.

Kennedy's diary ended up within the hands of the New York Post after Richardson committed suicide in 2012. She and Kennedy had separated in 2010, and he or she was distraught over her husband's repeated infidelities and impending divorce before her death, the New York Post reported.

Originally published: September 23, 2024 at 16:14

For greater than 30 years, Ken Wayne was a well-recognized face in Bay Area television news. The longtime news anchor, who retired this spring, is not any longer on the air, but he plans to spend much of his free time within the air, rescuing abused and abandoned animals, one small planeload at a time.

Wayne, 63, founded Flying Tails six years ago and has flown across the state to rescue dozens of dogs, bear cubs, raccoons and even a bald eagle. The animals he transports are either injured, abandoned or in a kill shelter when rescue groups contact Wayne to ask if he can fly them to their eternally homes or rescue ranches.

“We take in dogs from all over the state of California and it's much easier for the dogs to be able to fly here rather than having to drive,” said Alice Mayn, founder and CEO of Lily's Legacy Senior Dog Sanctuary in Sonoma County. “To have a pilot donate his time and his plane to transport a creature in need is just extraordinary. What a gift he is to dogs and people alike.”

Wayne, a Navy veteran who earned his pilot's license 25 years ago, said animals and flying are two of his favorite things, so combining those passions was a natural fit. And the animals seem to reply well within the air.

“There's something about the calming effect of flying,” says Wayne, a Marin County native. “Even a distressed animal that's been through God knows what will inevitably calm down and even fall asleep. Maybe it's the gentle hum of the engine or the vibrations of the plane, but it's soothing. … And when I'm in the air, floating in an almost zen-like state, knowing the animal will soon be better, it's a tremendous satisfaction.”

Wayne, who lives in Petaluma, recently founded Flying Tails as a nonprofit organization that enables him to move more animals longer distances in his Cessna 182 Skylane, because of funding from donors.

On a transparent, warm day last week, Wayne and co-pilot Lou Rivas flew from Livermore Airport to Santa Monica Airport to select up an injured Chihuahua that had been rescued in Harbin, China, by the American-led organization Slaughterhouse Survivors.

Cupcake, a dog, had each of her hind legs chopped off by a person who was indignant with the dog's owner, said Odessa Gunn, founding father of Little Trooper Ranch in Sonoma County, which rescued the dog. Cupcake and King George, a mixed breed also rescued from China, spent 15 days in quarantine in Los Angeles before Wayne picked them up and brought them north.

“He's really wonderful because it's really hard to get flights for these animals and often there are no other options. He really saves lives,” Gunn said of Wayne.

Also on board the flight was Gemma, a Golden Retriever-Labrador mix who was rescued from a kill shelter by a Southern California rescue group.

“They said she was aggressive and dangerous, but she is the most loving dog ever,” said Brett Herman, an animal rescue volunteer who brought Gemma to Wayne at Santa Monica Airport.

The four-seater plane was cramped with 4 adults, two puppies in cages, and 65-pound Gemma wandering across the cabin demanding ear scratches. After wiggling around, she calmed down, curled up on the ground, and took a peaceful two-hour nap on the way in which back to the Bay Area.

Gemma is now at Lily's Legacy awaiting adoption.

Wayne hasn't just rescued dogs through the years. When the mother of two bear cubs was hit by a automotive in Mariposa County within the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada, the cubs were taken to Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care but were too young to survive on their very own. So Wayne and his wife Carol removed the back seats of the plane, put the steel crate inside and flew away.

“I was pressed against the dashboard of the plane, but we made it,” Wayne said.

The couple flew the cubs to the Ramona Wildlife Center in San Diego County, where they spent a warm winter before being released back into the wild once they were sufficiently old to fend for themselves, Wayne said.

And when a bald eagle was injured fighting with an osprey over fish in northern Plumas County, Wayne was called to release the eventually recovered bird back into the wild.

“It took a second as the bird tried to figure out what was going on, but then it just flew away,” Wayne said. “It was a great sight and well worth the effort.”

Wayne doesn't have a set rescue schedule, but he normally flies a number of times a month. When he's not flying rescue animals, he's working on his industrial pilot's license and volunteering with Rotary. He also uses his broadcasting skills to film and write stories for the Flying Tails website and YouTube.

“When I go to bed at night, I sleep better after a rescue flight,” he said. “I didn't change the world, but I made it a little bit better for an innocent little animal that somehow got into a bad situation. In the grand scheme of things, it's not much. But it's important for this little creature that just needed a chance. Selfishly, it makes me feel better.”

Caitlin Clark was introduced to Indiana for the primary time as a member of the Fever on Wednesday when the No. 1 draft pick joined general manager Lin Dunn and coach Christie Sides for a media meeting at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. The reception that awaited Clark dwarfed any audience that has covered the Fever in recent memory, as can be the case for many of their debuts within the WNBA.

Distinguished media in attendance included Gregg Doyel, an award-winning columnist for the Indianapolis Star. When it was his turn to ask Clark a matter, Doyel made a heart gesture together with his hands toward her, which Clark recognized because the sign she gave her family after every game. This gesture became related to Clark and was featured in certainly one of her State Farm commercials. When Clark made the association, Doyel replied, “Start doing it with me and we'll get along just fine.”

Reporter:

Caitlin Clark: “Do you like that?”

Reporter: “I like that you’re here.”

Caitlin: “Yes, I do that after every game with my family.”

Reporter: “Start doing it to me and we’ll get along just fine.”

Caitlin:

(above @IndianaFever / YT)pic.twitter.com/BBjU881K7a

— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) April 17, 2024

The response to Doyle's comments was swift and unfavorable. There was near universal agreement that what Doyel said was inappropriate, disrespectful to Clark and customarily unpleasant. The uproar was so overwhelming that Doyel was forced to precise remorse for his comments. Write to X“My comment afterwards was clumsy and awkward. I sincerely apologize. Please know that my heart was well-intentioned (literally and figuratively). I'll do higher.”

Doyel too wrote a column in the Indianapolis Star apologizing to Clark for the interaction.

As Clark's star moves to the WNBA, she inadvertently shines a light on a press corps that has been fairly sparse due to relatively little media investment in women's basketball. As a result, reporters who have no experience covering women's sports are parachuting in to become part of the Clark phenomenon, which will lead to growing pains as they learn about women's basketball. But that doesn't excuse a lack of tact when dealing with WNBA athletes. The league and its teams need to develop a more robust system for certifying reporters as interest in the game increases. However, the media itself has a responsibility to treat players with respect and professionalism. This bar was not hit Wednesday in Indianapolis.

Required reading