Is Cheryl Hines an innocent bystander in husband RFK Jr.’s sexting scandal?

Cheryl Hines is one of the nicest stars in Hollywood.
But the actor best known for playing Larry David’s wife on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” now finds herself in a dark comedy involving her real husband. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the presidential flame-out, is embroiled in two words no wife wants to hear: “sexting scandal.”
The other woman is Olivia Nuzzi. She is a political correspondent with New York magazine who was placed on leave last week after failing to inform editors she was in a “relationship” with RFK Jr. Ms. Nuzzi interviewed him last year as the two went hiking. Odd. I’ve interviewed many newsmakers over the years but never in the woods. 

Hiking does not violate journalistic ethics. Sexting does. While details of this digital foreplay are mercifully fuzzy, I’m guessing it went something like this:
She texted him a sultry lingerie snap. He replied with an MRI of his brain worm. She sent him a half-dressed pic in which she’s suggestively licking an ice cream cone. He sent her a pic of a dead bear cub he planned to eat. She asked for his favourite position. He said his favourite position is that mRNA vaccines pose a grave threat to everyone’s naughty bits.
What two consenting adults do is their business. But you know who didn’t sign up for this tawdry sideshow? Cheryl Hines. She wasn’t sexting with ABC’s David Muir, although no one could blame her. Man alive, he is ridiculously handsome.
September was supposed to be a fantastic month for Hines. The Emmys. Milan Fashion Week. Saturday was her birthday. But all of this got overshadowed when her 70-year-old husband was exposed for making like a lascivious frat boy with a 31-year-old reporter.
Now Hines is in the media glare as paparazzo stalk to see if her face will betray any heartbreak. Some recent headlines: “Friends Are Baffled That Actress Cheryl Hines Chose to Marry RFK Jr. Amid Latest Cheating Scandal.” “Cheryl Hines Appears To Ditch Wedding Ring After RFK Jr.’s Alleged Relationship with Journalist.” “RFK Jr. Once Had 43 ‘Mistresses’ In His Cellphone — Including Now-Wife Cheryl Hines.”
How do you even keep track of 43 mistresses? I would need an Excel spreadsheet and five full-time assistants to maintain my cheating calendar. This guy has a screw loose and that screw is labelled “screwing.”
But that’s on him, not his wonderful wife.
You know the loudmouths in the manosphere are already blaming Cheryl for her husband’s indiscretion. Well, maybe if she sexted, Bobby wouldn’t need to step out. Enough already. I don’t know one woman in a long-term marriage who is inclined to sext. They’d rather darn socks. If I sent my wife a photo of my junk, she’d gasp, throw down her phone, go to the linen closet to retrieve the thermometer and then check to see if I had a fever before driving me to the nearest psychiatrist.
We have to do our taxes and this is what you’re sending me?
Sexting is for two people at the starting line of lust. Once you’re already in a relationship past the tin anniversary, sexting is creepy. The only way my wife would ever send me a boobies shot is if she was forced to scrawl my grocery list on them.
But those observations only apply to normies. RFK Jr. has Kennedy genes and the womanizing DNA is more dominant than the political ambition DNA. Honestly, I don’t know what to make of this weirdo. I’ll read his books and be impressed with the reportage and citations, even if I never get around to fact-checking the passages I don’t understand. I’ll hear him on a long-form podcast and be dazzled by his instant recall and ability to make forceful arguments, even if his leap from thesis to conclusion sidesteps a few blind spots.
Then I’ll hear he decapitated a whale and think this jacked dude is messed up.
I have no idea how this “sexting scandal” started. A story in the New York Post, citing unnamed sources, said Nuzzi was the aggressor and remains smitten. There was a “Fatal Attraction” subtext, as if she was about to show up at his Brentwood home with a boiled bunny, which he’d probably turn into a delightful starter to go with his roadkill entree.
Her camp says the sexting was mutual. Kindred horny spirits and all that.
Either way, the media spotlight should not be on Cheryl Hines. She has already received enough Hollywood side-eye after her husband endorsed Donald Trump. Again, she wasn’t sexting with Wolf Blitzer, though that would make for a memorable “Curb” episode.
She simply married a man with bad judgment and a lack of impulse control.
As Larry David might say, “It’s pretty, pretty, pretty common.”
Correction — Sept. 25, 2024
This column has been updated. A previous version incorrectly stated Olivia Nuzzi interviewed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at his home and then went hiking. The interview took place as they went hiking.