I Care A Lot About Comfort

In the last eight years, I’ve thought a lot about comfort in many different settings in my life. I’ve thought about comfort because I find it’s a word I don’t lie about. I tell a lot of people I’m good when I’m far from good. But if I say I’m comfortable, I legitimately am comfortable.

And in the last couple years I’ve been hearing more and more about people who aren’t comfortable doing basic things I feel comfortable doing. That might be something like trying to buy an expensive item in a store without getting the third degree from a clerk that doesn’t think you have the money because of your race, or because of the way you dress. That might be something like me correctly being referred to as a “he” because I look to a great percentage of the world as a he. I think feeling comfortable leads to being able to be a more productive member of society. So I care.

At some point I realized that the comfort of the people around me is a paramount concern. Is my friend having a good time at this event? Does my friend wish another friend would stop using the word “bitches” all the time about women? It’s my hope to make people comfortable. Mainly this shit is simple, if you’re doing something that makes someone uncomfortable and it’s not a central tenet of your life, just stop it. If it’s a central tenet to your life, you gotta fight for it. If it’s a truly defensible position, I think that makes sense. If the main goal of your action is to create discomfort for people, you’re an honest to goodness asshole.

I really like listening to a podcaster named Mike Pesca and his podcast “The Gist”. He is one of those commentators I disagree with all the way to the bank. I disagree with a lot of his views. I disagree with a lot of his tone. I think he’s an incredible broadcaster and thinker and I value listening to him. For many years he was with Slate. He got fired. One of the primary reasons for his firings was he that he came to the theoretical defense of the science editor Donald McNeil who got fired from The New York Times for saying the n-word in a conversation with a teenager on a NY Times sanctioned trip. Pesca didn’t type the “n word” in the company Slack, he was questioning whether it was reasonable for Donald McNeil to get fired. Ultimately Slack and Pesca parted ways. I don’t think it was exclusively about Pesca’s communication on Slack, but I think it was the clarifying moment. I can’t really know if it was the exclusive reason Pesca got fired, because neither side will share all of the juice. Having been around some high profile firings in the last couple years, the “big event” is usually the last straw not the first occasion for worry.

I am in general glad that Pesca got fired. At the time of his firing I read almost everything I could about Pesca and he seemed like someone who liked to ask all the right, needling insightful questions on most topics and couldn’t deal with the third rail that is the N word. I believe that needling curiosity makes him great on his podcast, but I find it harder to accept that spirit in a Slack channel at work. Some topics are profoundly asymmetrical in the potential trauma they can pose. That doesn’t mean they can’t be talked about, but I think we can safely recognize they are asymmetrical. Joel Anderson, a great sports and beyond writer/podcaster and Slate employee was quoted as saying: “For Black employees, it’s an extremely small ask to not hear that particular slur and not have debate about whether it’s OK for white employees to use that particular slur,” he said. I find this to be a reasonable position. Slate is trying to provide a rewarding, challenging work environment and I don’t think it’s some sort of paternalism to do what it takes to keep that word and the defense of that word out of the work Slack. Do I think it is a reasonable argument position to say that Donald McNeil shouldn’t have been fired if his sole offense was saying the n-word in a clarifying sentence once? Yes. Do I feel like this is an okay thing to discuss in a newsroom Slack? No, I don’t. And I’m not going to jump to the defense of someone who did think that. That’s a scary tip of the iceberg. And I do believe that is one of the reasons why people don’t come to the defense of the Pescas of the world. I honestly think that going hard on being able to use the n-word is a really bad indicator of what else you are in support of.

So back to comfort. Not having come up as a journalist, not having sharpened those skills, I don’t have this same knee jerk defense of the idea that “all ideas are open, nothing is forbidden”. I understand the value of this as the default but I don’t believe that carve outs within private companies are unreasonable. Again, I think I’ve experienced pretty fantastic levels of comfort in my life and it’s given me the space and support to share my music, my feelings and myself with the world. Why not try to extend that comfort to as many humans as possible? There’s an obvious counterpoint here: who am I to decide what makes other people comfortable? I think this is a reasonable concern. I know that John McWhorter and other thinkers are arguing, often convincingly, that the mandate to police certain words is infantilizing for the groups it claims to be policing on behalf of. I think this is a gray line issue. I think it is possible for overly enthusiastic ally folks to go too far, to create an environment where pins and needles are required for every sentence uttered. But I don’t think it’s reality. I don’t think we are there. I also don’t think we’ll get there because generally, being able to speak freely is what makes most of us comfortable. So, the couple limits that private organizations put on speech won’t balloon beyond reason. Or at least, the stakes of controlled speech that will balloon won’t be on the level of a fireable offense.

Again, if Pesca had some angle where he thought he could advance the culture or his work if he got the green light to say the n word that’d be one thing. But I think he just did it cause he wanted to keep his brain sharp. It’s just so asymmetrical when one person is arguing for sport and the other party is arguing for safety or comfort. I’ll never know everything about Pesca’s situation, neither Slate nor Pesca seem keen to talk in formal ways about it. Pesca talked about it a bunch here. But really, I think Pesca wanted to poke around cause he wanted to poke around. I don’t necessarily think Donald McNeil shoulda been fired, but I also don’t think I’ll ever know the whole story. It’s also not the biggest deal if someone gets fired. It’s not the worst thing on Earth. Don McNeil and Pesca have been introduced to new guard rails, to new concerns and how to navigate them. They’ll survive, they’ll be comfortable, and I think they’ll be more attuned to others’ comfort. And that’s a good thing.