While many of you spent the day on Monday gazing up at the heavens, blinded and amazed by the eerie wonder of the solar eclipse, others were pondering a far more terrestrial, but no less pressing, mystery. We were—yes, I was among those people who forgot to get eclipse glasses and so were left to focus on other things, the sky darkening above us, un-gazed upon—trying to figure out if supermodel Karlie Kloss and her beau, Josh “The Better One” Kushner, are still dating. It’s a big question!
One of the people looking into this matter is Page Six’s junior shaman Richard Johnson (someday his elder, Cindy Adams, will ascend to the great cocktail party in the sky and Johnson will assume her mantle), and thank God for it. Because he has heard a new rumor that Kloss and Kushner are vacationing upstate together. Which is a relief. There was concern that the two had split up after Kushner was a no-show at Kloss’s recent 25th birthday party in Los Angeles. But now Johnson says that he hears they’re upstate together, or were this weekend, or something, so maybe everything is O.K.!
Should we care, though? Are we wrong to even wonder? After all, Kushner is from a family known for its malfeasance. At the moment, Josh’s brother, Jared, is putting his legacy-acceptance smarts to good use in the White House braintrust. So shouldn’t we be suspicious of Josh, even if he is thought to have slightly better politics than his brother evidently does? It’s hard to say! That’s a decision that everyone needs to make for themselves. At the moment, we are, perhaps foolishly, deciding to craft a narrative in our heads that Josh Kushner is a noble black sheep working against his brother’s bad boss, and perhaps Karlie Kloss, with her big social reach and coding skills, would be an ideal partner in that endeavor.
Perhaps as we write this they are upstate—if they are indeed even upstate—in some rambling country mansion, a subtly renovated and expanded farmhouse in the green valley between two low and rolling Catskill Mountains, planning their resistance. Maybe they are sitting outside with expensive sunglasses on, enjoying iced coffees in Adirondack chairs on the flagstone patio, taking in the bucolic view and figuring out how to undermine all that Jared and his cohort are trying to do in Washington. Can’t we allow them a little monied pleasure if they are using that relaxation time to make an action plan that will help the nation?
Of course, this is probably only naive delusion. Things don’t tend to work like that. Kushners don’t tend to work like that. So, oh well. Maybe we should just turn away from this couple—real or not—and spend our last few months before the sweet kiss of nuclear fire brushes us off the Earth like so much dust thinking about more deserving celebrity pairs. Like watching Tom Daley’s YouTube videos in which he bakes things with his husband. Or looking at those recent photos of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio on vacation together and wondering when Leo is finally going to realize it’s been her the whole time and she’ll have to tell him, quite bittersweetly, that it’s too late. Go write some fanfic about Taron Egerton kissing Hugh Jackman. Do whatever you want! As long as it’s not obsessing over the love lives of the Kushner family. Because it’s entirely possible that that way lies ruin.
Though, sheepishly, we do still hope our sad little fantasy is true. That somewhere in the Hudson Valley, Josh Kushner and Karlie Kloss are taking a sunlit jog, the birds and insects cheering them on as they hatch a plot to save us all.
