The VP of Marketing at MacMillian, in a fit of post-election exuberance, posted that she was in favor of Trump:
On November 6, in response to president-elect Donald Trump’s win on Election Day, Mariel Dawson, VP of marketing at Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, posted a pro-Trump graphic on her personal Facebook account. The collage image pictured X owner Elon Musk and Trump walking side by side, with an American flag background and the words “It’s a Great Day to be an American.” Fellow book business veterans and authors quickly raised their concerns online
This has, given the racist and bigoted tone of Trump’s campaign and President-elect Musk’s (we all agree that we should spend all of the next four years driving Trump insane by calling Space Karen President Musk at every opportunity, right? Good.) twitter, this has BIPOC and LGTBT+ authors and their allies concerned. And it raises some interesting questions about when opinions should bleed into work considerations.
I am not generally in favor of firing people for their political opinions. I think that should generally be protected. Having said that, however, there have to be reasonable limits on that protection. You don’t want your company to have to employ someone who argues for genocide, for example, especially in a public facing or public influencing position. But you also don’t want companies to fire anyone who votes for a union supported proposition or expresses support for a given political party outside work hours if that speech does not directly their work. That seems a decent compromise, but it also seems, if you are trying to write actual rules, difficult to put on paper.
In a normal world, we could generally try and have commonsense rules, including honoring the paradox of tolerance, and deal with the edge cases as they come. In this world, when a significant portion of one arty openly mocks the idea of the paradox of tolerance, commonsense is not much of a guide.
However, I don’t think the case of the marketing VP is especially difficult. Authors are upset by her words. As one author said ““if she’s lost the trust of her colleagues and the people she serves, those are the consequences of speech.” more, it looks as if her opinions may have affected her work. At least one author quoted claim that the marketing for lead titles from diverse authors as not up to snuff. And that is the problem with the head of a department expressing views. No one can now trust that the marketing work, the public facing work of the company, is fair and the company’s best efforts. Even in the perfect world of protections for employees, she is an easy case. Firing her, or reassigning her, would be perfectly justifiable.
Not all cases will be easy in this theoretical world. But it’s worth thinking about, in my opinion, because I don’t think we want to force people in a democracy to be quite about their political opinions absent good cause.
Weekly Word Count
Hey, I did some writing! Actually, I did some editing. I rewrote a story based on some edits from an incredibly generous friend of the newsletter, and I have rewritten the Clockmaker script twice. I doubt that script in particular will lead to anything, but it is a good learning exercise, in my opinion.
Have a great weekend, everyone.