Lately a few friends have asked me how the move to North Carolina turned out for me. I’ve been here for three years now and it’s hard to capture all of the changes in my life, but I think the menu from Cookout sums it all up pretty nicely. For example, you can get a Jr. Tray with a small burger with two sides and a shake for $6.39. Let’s look more closely at those sides.

You might imagine that you’re hallucinating now, but this is reality: You can get white cheddar cheese bites and hushpuppies. These are sides. You can get a quesadilla and a corn dog. Also sides. I know, it’s pretty confusing. Let me slow down a little. You can get a hamburger, a quesadilla, a corn dog, and a shake and you’re not being gross at all. That’s a combo meal, it’s right there on the menu and it will only cost you $6.39. Now let’s review the shake options:

Do you know how it feels to sit in the drive-thru line at Cookout and the guy asks what kind of shake you want and you stare at this list and you just don’t know? Peach, Oreo, Caramel Cheesecake, Eggnog? How could you possibly pick one?

Pick one! And that’s all you get, game over? It’s downright inhumane! You just got to choose two different sides. Shouldn’t you get two shakes, too?

Pick one, the guy says, please just pick a shake.

You are mortal.

You will die some day.

You want two shakes. Not just one.

This is how you end up sending a demure nude.

***

A person is not their worst day.

Olivia Nuzzi clearly violated journalistic ethics by continuing to cover RFK Jr. after her relationship with him entered intimate territory. That part is so obvious that I’d be surprised if Nuzzi herself didn’t agree. If she had disclosed this conflict of interest to New York, letting David Haskell know that her relationship had become more familiar and she needed to be taken off the campaign beat, she might’ve dodged this scandal.

When a high-profile reporter blurs these lines, that makes it much harder for all journalists to do their jobs. These days, people already doubt journalists, even when their ethical standards are impeccable. As someone with access to so much power, Nuzzi should’ve had some concept of this. Even if she delayed disclosing the relationship, as soon as a single person (let’s say, Ryan Lizza!) knew about her communications with RFK Jr., she needed to protect her reputation and her employer’s reputation by recusing herself.

Big mistakes were made, against the backdrop of a crucial election and a world on fire. Of course onlookers are going to take issue with such recklessness at such a crucial time in the media cycle.

I don’t disagree with New York’s decision to put Nuzzi on leave, not that anyone cares what I think on that front. What bothers me about her situation, and the reactions to it, is our shared lack of compassion for human foibles and for messy young women in particular. As a currently messy woman, I feel a constant urge to defend women who swerve outside of the narrow lines of what our culture believes is acceptable. The current assumption that defending a person means that you’re also aligned with them politically, you embrace anyone they’ve ever associated with, and you support every action they’ve ever taken over the course of their lives isn’t just ludicrous, but it feeds a ferocious self-righteousness that doesn’t serve any of us.

I just can’t figure out why more people aren’t questioning RFK Jr.’s behavior. He’s allegedly been bragging that he had intimate photos of Nuzzi, and he’s spoken (see also: bragged) about “being a slave to his ‘wild impulses.’”

I don’t understand how Lizza, who got dismissed from The New Yorker for alleged sexual improprieties, wouldn’t take this opportunity to voice his compassion for being caught in workplace foibles that arguably crossed the line.

Can we admit that Nuzzi made a big mistake without falling into the trap of slut-shaming her alongside the two men who had to be somewhat receptive to her feminine wiles back when it wasn’t costly and embarrassing for them to do so? RFK Jr. has said that “there is some part of me that is discontented if I’m not looking for trouble.” Are women allowed to talk this way openly? Are we allowed to have “powerful demons” of our own?

Not as far as I can tell. In my experience, almost every scandal involving a successful woman quickly transforms into a chorus of voices repeating the talking points of unprincipled men, who lavish attention on a beautiful, smart woman when times are good and then treat her like a leper when she falls out of public favor.

It doesn’t have to be that way. We can choose two sides. Olivia Nuzzi is very talented and has also shown herself to be a little reckless. She has made a big professional mistake. She is very young. A person is not their worst day.

***

How did Nuzzi land here?

In some ways, recklessness is baked into the recipe of access journalism. Most of the talented and respected journalists you can think of made names for themselves in part by pushing boundaries. Fucking around and finding out is practically in their job description. You can say that it shouldn’t be that way, or it doesn’t have to be that way, and I don’t disagree. But until you’ve had three or four bosses in a row say the words “Try to go to his house,” and “Get her to say something outrageous,” and “You have to get a comment on the cheating thing or it’s not worth running this,” you aren’t familiar with the pressures of high-profile feature writing.

It’s not a job for the faint-hearted. As a true wimp, I know this. I’ve said no to these kinds of pieces for years now because I hate trying to get people to talk about things that it isn’t in their best interest to reveal. Even encouraging celebrities to say crazy shit feels uncomfortable to me. People who can do that job well are rare.

Is everyone who works in the media creepy? There are a lot of angry, broken people in most industries, but yeah, I think there’s a certain kind of intellectualizing, self-aggrandizing, passive-aggressive type who’s drawn to journalism. But that’s all the more reason that when you meet a passionate journalist and you discover that they’re curious and smart and open, and that’s why they do the job they do? It transforms your understanding of the craft itself.

And let’s not forget the craft part. You can’t write great features without getting obsessed, full stop. Every single feature you write is an exercise in obsession. You might even say that writing this stuff trains you to become increasingly obsessive as a human being.

This is not a think piece or an op ed or a thorough analysis of ethics in journalism, by the way. Those are other genres I usually avoid. One of the common side effects of this career is that the longer you do it, the more you find yourself looking in the mirror and saying, “No more op eds, ever,” or “You’re never writing another celebrity profile.” Your lane gets smaller and smaller until you have no lane at all.

If you want to widen your lane, you have to be brave. I am not very brave at all anymore. Moreover, so much of writing these days feels like restating the obvious to me. But the world requires it. You have to anticipate every critical angle and address it ahead of time. So I’ll just repeat the most obvious fact again: It’s bad for every journalist when one journalist crosses clear ethical lines.

Lots of people are writing about this and have written about this and will write about it as long as we have a free press, which might not be that long at all. What I want, instead, is to talk about compassion, which is my current beat.

Imagine that you’ve been rising to the top of your field for years now, but you’re only 31 years old. You are beautiful and talented and people pay attention to you wherever you go. Part of your job is to follow Donald Trump around and listen to him say absolutely repellent shit while you pretend it’s fine just long enough to get every word down in writing. Another part of your job is obsessively fine-tuning your language, all alone in your office. Another part of your job, promotionally, includes talking to people on camera and taking romantic selfies with your high-profile journalist boyfriend and writing lighthearted captions to go with those selfies.

In other words, you have a tough persona and you also have a high-wire act and you also have a hermetic, neurotic, obsessive craft. You have ways you need to appear, to seem, to sound. Some of these demands probably trigger your deepest fears and insecurities. You have a dreamy love story you’ve sold to your followers on Instagram. Others might scoff at this, but it’s common and not even a professional hazard. It just is.

As a fellow journalist who swans around DC on your arm, feeling like the luckiest boy in the whole world, your partner also probably cares a lot about how he seems. He probably overthinks everything, just like you do. (These are guesses. I met Olivia once but I don’t know her well. I’ve never met her ex-fiancé. I’m using my powers of imagination for the sake of compassion, and fun, and because I’m a little obsessive, too.)

Even though you might seem like a smooth operator who chases power at any cost, the truth is that you took this job in order to feel free, to express your curiosity and openness. And now you’re in a kind of professional and romantic straightjacket. There is no longer any fresh air in your life. You can’t catch your breath. Your career in seeming has overtaken your ability to actually live.

And then you meet a guy who throws dead bears into his trunk just for kicks.

***

I know less than nothing about Nuzzi and I have read exactly one of her profiles in my life. I think RFK Jr. seems like an outright lunatic. I have no opinion of Ryan Lizza at all outside of a few truly cringe-inducing videos of him that Nuzzi posted on Instagram. The strongest opinion I hold on Lizza is that he should be defending his ex-fiancé right now, publicly, instead of primly distancing himself.

Yes, that’s a lot to ask. Even if her relationship with RFK Jr. wasn’t physical, Nuzzi was allegedly emotionally cheating on Lizza by many people’s standards. But Lizza has loved Nuzzi for years and was set to marry her. He divorced his first wife. The New Yorker dismissed him for alleged “improper sexual conduct.” He knows exactly how it feels to have your career upended by a very public scandal. Who in the world should have more compassion for her than Lizza?

Not many men could do what I’m asking of him, I guess. But while we’re talking about the ideal ways for a reporter to behave under dicey and heated circumstances, I think it makes sense to discuss How a Romantic Relationship Should Be, Even When You’re Breaking Up. Getting engaged to someone or even marrying them doesn’t mean sticking with them no matter what they do. But cultivating empathy for your partner on their worst day is right there in your job description. Part of being good to someone you’ve loved for years includes having their back even when they disappoint and anger and confuse you.

Because people are going to disappoint you no matter what. They’re going to confuse you. Maybe they won’t allegedly send alleged demure alleged nudes to a 70-year-old with an alleged worm in his alleged brain. But they will, for sure, let you down now and then.

A person is not their worst day.

***

Even though my distaste for RFK Jr. couldn’t be stronger, and clear lines were obviously crossed, and I’d also argue that sharing carefully selected images and details of your romantic relationships online (OR IN A BOOK, AHEM) is almost always a gigantic mistake, I can’t stop thinking about obsession and power and living in the spotlight and how it often leaves you no space to move, no air to breathe, nothing to discover, no passion, no improvisation, no spontaneity.

That’s a rarefied story. But there’s also a much simpler one. You’ve been ordering the same peach shake for years on end. And then you roll up to Cookout and you see that there’s a PEANUT BUTTER FUDGE SHAKE. I mean, holy shit. What now?

It sounds pretty disgusting at first. But it’s just so different from peach, you know? You have peach and peach and peach every day for years, and all your peach milkshake ever talks about is how unfair it was that he got fired by The New Yorker. Suddenly one day, you want more than one thing. You want two things that are completely different from each other.

So you order another shake.

You’re probably never even going to drink the motherfucker. You just want the illusion that you could if you wanted to. You want to hold two shakes in your hands, taking a tiny sip of the first one (PEACH) but not the second one (PEANUT BUTTER FUDGE). You’ll save the second one for later.

Okay, probably never. But it feels good to know that it’s right there in your freezer, waiting for you.

It’s reassuring to think of it there. Life seems vibrant and weird again.

But no one wants you to have two milkshakes! Somehow they’ll let you eat some chicken nuggets and a corn dog with your hamburger — no big deal, no problem! — but they still want you to choose one milkshake and drink that bitch until you’re dead in the ground.

***

Life is crazy. We want things that we don’t understand sometimes. We want things that surprise us, that embarrass us, that make us act out in ways that we never could’ve predicted.

I mean, read this menu, really read the thing. Think about what you’d do if you were asked to make these kinds of impossible choices.

You can get two hot dogs with two corn dogs on the side and a Coke float to drink. That’s one meal. You can get a BBQ sandwich, chili, chicken nuggets, and a pineapple banana shake. Still one meal.

Everyone is different. Not everyone wants a hamburger and fries. Some people want a spicy chicken sandwich with a double serving of hushpuppies and a HUGE TEA. Some people crave two quesadillas with two more quesadillas on the side with a walnut shake to wash it down. These people are total pervs, for sure.

That’s okay. Normalize four quesadillas.

Normalize fucking up occasionally. Normalize ordering two milkshakes even though that’s excessive and there is no Two Milkshake Combo on the menu. Normalize never ordering two milkshakes, but thinking obsessively about doing so. Normalize forgiving yourself for having these thoughts and feelings. You are a human. You are flawed. We are all flawed. Normalize compassion.

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