PanThe InterceptThere’s real insight to be gleaned about how the former New York magazine journalist allowed herself to be used by a political project working to turn back the clock on scientific progress by decades and result in more dead children, but that’s not why Nuzzi is apologizing, or even writing this book. The greatest failing of American Canto is its inability to look too far outside itself ... Crucially, all this thinking about our messed-up country is only of interest because it has forcefully and publicly intersected with the author’s personal life. In this way, it is perhaps the purest version of a Washington memoir yet, one that pretends to be about America and about politics and our twisted state of play but is really an exercise in the writer gesturing at these things with no appreciation for the real stakes of every policy decision made by this administration for real people ... The author goes to great pains to remind us that, for all its flaws, such as electing an authoritarian with fascist ambitions not once but twice, she loves this country ... There is plentiful red, white, and blue. Mentions of the flag are so numerous that I had to switch pens while underlining them.
