I’m embarrassed to have to write about this crap.
Earlier this week former New York Times editor Adam Rubenstein published a tell-all about his experiences at the paper in “The Atlantic.” His theme: the oppressive progressive bias that made him feel like an outsider.
Rubenstein related a minor incident when he was criticized for saying that Chick-fil-A’s spicy chicken sandwich was his favorite after being asked about his sandwich preferences at his orientation. Rubenstein wrote that an HR rep replied, “We don’t do that here. They hate gay people,” and the other Times employees signified their approval of the rebuke by snapping their fingers.
So the Times hires Beatniks now! Good to know.
Immediately, the Guardians of the Flame of Wokeness denied that the incident happened, essentially calling Rubenstein a liar. Never happened,” tweeted Nikole Hannah-Jones, the impeccably reliable author of the fanciful “1619 Project.” Other leftist pundits and journalists piled on, but one of them, Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple, actually did some investigation into the Great Sandwich Controvery and said that his reporting confirmed that Rubenstein was telling the truth.
(And that the Times staff is infested with assholes.) He wrote,
A note about the Chick-fil-A controversy of earlier this week: Former New York Times opinions staffer Adam Rubenstein wrote in the Atlantic that he was scolded in a 2019 orientation session for citing the chain’s crispy chicken sando as his fave. An HR rep said, “We don’t do that here. They hate gay people.” To which, attendees “started snapping their fingers in acclamation,” wrote Rubenstein. The incident was the lede of a feature titled, “I Was a Heretic at The New York Times.” Folks on X picked up on the colorful incident and…declared that it didn’t happen… But some of Rubenstein’s former colleagues have tweeted that he shared the same story with them at the time. And there’s more corroboration, too. According to several sources, Rubenstein’s encounter with the HR official itself became an HR issue in the weeks following the incident. Rubenstein told some colleagues about it, including longtime columnist David Brooks, who was his supervisor. After hearing about the matter, Brooks apprised then-opinions chief James Bennet, who then discussed it with Rubenstein in his office – and concluded that this sort of treatment shouldn’t persist at the Times. Bennet discussed it with HR. In a coffee-shop discussion requested by an HR rep, Rubenstein casually mentioned the incident. Throughout the affair, Rubenstein made clear that he did not want to file a complaint or receive an apology. I asked my sources whether there were ever any concerns expressed about the factual accuracy of the anecdote, and none of them remembers any such thing.
(“Sando”?)
Before The Great Stupid spread its dark wings over the land, a business owner who opposed same sex marriage wouldn’t be characterized as “hating gay people.” Before that awful moment, no one would advocate boycotting a business’s product because the owner’s positions on social issues weren’t sufficiently in line with progressive cant. Prior to the Great Stupid’s disastrous infection, no one would dream of mocking a fellow employee because of what he said was his favorite sandwich. Before the Great Stupid was swallowed whole by our rotten journalism establishment, not only would this ridiculous episode not have occurred, it also wouldn’t have been worth writing about.
And yet, here we are.
Note: WordPress’s AI bot wants me to tag this post “Baltimore Orioles.”
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Ethics Alarms 
Whenever I read stories such as these I visualize the censoring person as a child putting his hands on his ears, closing his eyes tight and screaming nah nah nah over and over so as not to hear something he does not wish to hear.
btw – whatever pronoun reference applicable.
Ten years ago, maybe less, I would have called the reported scene of sandwich-shaming and finger-snapping as the product of a comedy satirist or the fever-dream of some right-wing conspiracy theorist. No longer. I have no trouble at all accepting that such a thing happened. I can even imagine the group of sandwich scolds pointing at their offending coworker and screeching like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Left parodies itself so often these days that there is very little too outlandish to believe.
I too thought about using the Invasion of the Body Snatchers example as well as the three monkeys who could hear, see or speak but instead decided on the most childish behavior I could think of,
That is no sandwich, it is a bun or perhaps a roll. A sandwich as such follows the specifications given by the Earl of Sandwich to allow him to eat conveniently while playing cards. The object illustrated is not fit for that purpose.
See, THAT would have been acceptable criticism of his answer!
That was a delicious rejoinder. Nicely done.
For the record, I can’t eat it Chick-fil-a. Their food lays like a lump in my belly. Popeye’s spicy chicken sandwich (Earl of Sandwich notwithstanding . .) is frickin’ superb.
jvb
Never mind the chicken sandwich, what this exemplifies is the radical leftists absolute intolerance and unmitigated hatred for any thought, word, or deed that deviates however slightly from their woke dogma.
Gimme the number 4, pepper jack, and a peach shake! I have tasted the First Amendment and it tastes like spicy chicken. This story is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. however, I think it goes to further illustrate what I’ve been saying for years now, that the left wants a monopoly on everything. They want to control not just what you say and do but what you think, what you eat, what you are allowed to like and allowed to dislike or must like and must dislike.
(“Sando”?)
From Japanese, sandoicchi, the katakana transliteration of sandwich. All hiragana and katakana (except the five vowels and ‘n’) are paired-ka, ki,ku, ke, ko, sa, shi, su.se,so etc so when writing foreign language words it adds extra letters. Golf is ‘gorufu’, baseball is ‘besuboru’ etc and so we have sandoicchi, shortened to ‘sando’. It’s become popular lately.
(“Sando”?)
From Japanese, sandoicchi, the katakana transliteration of sandwich. All hiragana and katakana (except the five vowels and ‘n’) are paired-ka, ki,ku, ke, ko, sa, shi, su.se,so etc so when writing foreign language words it adds extra letters. Golf is ‘gorufu’, baseball is ‘besuboru’ etc and so we have sandoicchi, shortened to ‘sando’. It’s become popular lately.
This comment got duplicated, but it’s worth having up twice….
Clearly, and to his detriment, Rubenstein (bold added) never had a Reuben prepared by my Dear late Mother or wife, or the latter’s BLT with Organic (raised by yours truly) fresh picked Sheboygan Heirloom, Lemon Boy, Greenbush Italian, & Pink Magic Tomatoes (assembly required):
PWS
The creepiest thing is the finger snapping. Sounds like part of a Chi-com “struggle session”/”denunciation rally”, or cultish behavior scripted into a Children of the Corn type horror film.
Yes, it is the Maoist thing. That tells you who runs the New York Times.
One of the best comments I saw on a news article this week was ‘…and then, for no reason, they elected Hitler”. This was on an article about state preschools in Berlin. The plans leaked to the public and they showed that education ‘experts’ had recommended private sex rooms. In these rooms children could masturbate privately or be ‘guided’ in masturbation by a teacher. After the plan leaked, Berlin abandoned the plans for ‘sex rooms’. The article mentioned that 2 other major cities had implemented the plan already. These preschools are for children aged 3-6.
When the government becomes this corrupt and the media as well, you will get politicians who take advantage of the situation.
My question remains, though, “Where did all these pedophiles come from?” We have states passing laws to take children away from parents who don’t want their kids to be permanently sterilized or castrated, and Colorado rejected minimum sentences for child sex slavery because most of the people involved in buying and selling child sex slaves are from a ‘victim class’.