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February 26, 2024, 7:31 AM ET
On one of my first days at The New York Times, I went to an orientation with more than a dozen other new hires. We had to do an icebreaker: Pick a Starburst out of a jar and then answer a question. My Starburst was pink, I believe, and so I had to answer the pink prompt, which had me respond with my favorite sandwich. Russ & Daughters’ Super Heebster came to mind, but I figured mentioning a $19 sandwich wasn’t a great way to win new friends. So I blurted out, “The spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A,” and considered the ice broken.
The HR representative leading the orientation chided me: “We don’t do that here. They hate gay people.” People started snapping their fingers in acclamation. I hadn’t been thinking about the fact that Chick-fil-A was transgressive in liberal circles for its chairman’s opposition to gay marriage. “Not the politics, the chicken,” I quickly said, but it was too late. I sat down, ashamed.
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link to (paywalled) source: I Was a Heretic at The New York Times
“I got owned because I reflexively lied” is a great way to start an article. Builds a lot of confidence in the narrator.
Definitely did not shrink into a corncob, not a loser
picture of man who found the author
Even if this was real, which it wasn’t, mentioning a fancy and expensive sandwich is probably not gonna be a problem just as long as you talk about what you love about the sandwich rather than how expensive it is.
It’s journalism anyways, people are gonna be used to having to hang out with rich assholes.
Also took a look at the article itself and he thinks doing right wing whataboutism and “this superficially sounds like this other thing” type shit was brave internal truthtelling at NYT.
I’m worried the writers at the New York Times, who all live in the most expensive city in the US, would judge me for liking an expensive sandwich.
Even when this guy makes shit up he still comes off like a dipshit.
People started snapping their fingers in acclamation.
Fuck Chick-fIl-A but if this happened to me I would walk out and never come back. Absolutely caucasian behavior
Was at a DSA meeting where one of the guys snapped his fingers as applause and all I could think was “Weird”.
I do like the fucking Atlantic doing “NYT Too Woke for Chicken Sandwich!” within two sentences of a guy leading in with “I bet this pack of poors doesn’t know how to appreciate a $19 Salmon Bagel”.
Dude should have been pitched off the side of the fucking building.
Crustacean behavior
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“We don’t do that here. They hate gay people.”
So does the NYT. If you make up a story about how you got scolded because you came off as a bigot because you lied to avoid coming off as a nepo baby, at least pick a minority the NYT cares about, like landlords or secretaries of defense.
i believe the nyt has lots of people who care about appearing homophobic as long as it doesn’t actually require they stop running right wing screeds about removed
but also this guy for sure thinks the nyt is a super lefty institution and made this up because of that
NYT and WaPo always publish opeds by conservative ghouls but never from any leftists. Curious
There are inception-level layers of internalized antisemitism here.
-my actual favorite sandwich is too Jewish
- I need to come up with another sandwich -but it can’t be too expensive
- or too cheap
- guess I’ll pick the culture war chicken -time to blame my coworkers for being too woke.
“Of course $19 is very expensive for a sandwich, so I only get it as a special treat.”
There, I just fixed your problem without you having to endorse the homophobic chicken.
Even better, there’s nothing saying he had to fucking name a place he got his sandwiches from
He could’ve been like “yeah I love me a fish sandwich” (I looked it up and fuck does this Super Heebster sound kinda awful) and if anyone asked him to elaborate he could’ve specified like a tuna salad or something
But nah this guy is so American treat brained he had to specifically name a place and sandwich name
I looked it up and fuck does this Super Heebster sound kinda awful)
This prompted me to look it up and it sounds amazing to me tbh. In fact, everything from this place looks great and now I want to go. But yeah, he can just say he likes smoked fish bagel sandwiches from Jewish delis and probably everyone in that room would get it.
also, this was specifically “favorite” and not “the one i get all the time”. Some of my favorite food is expensive too, but I’m not shelling out 20 bucks for a sandwhich every day.
I often found myself asking questions like “Doesn’t all of this talk of ‘voter suppression’ on the left sound similar to charges of ‘voter fraud’ on the right?” only to realize how unwelcome such questions were.
These things that happen are the same
I had one more task to take care of. Cotton’s office had emailed me several photos that they wanted to see published alongside the op-ed, showing times when the same legal doctrine had been invoked in the past. One was of U.S. troops enforcing the desegregation of the University of Mississippi in 1962. I sent these to a photo editor, Jeffrey Henson Scales, and asked him to “consider” them. He wrote me back to say, “A false equivalence, but historical images are there now,” meaning he’d added them to the story file in the system. I thanked him and added a “confusion” emoji, in case he wanted to expand on what he meant. He replied by sending me the emoji of a black box, representing solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
OMG this man is a dumbass
Him as he sent over photos of forced desegregation
You want to bring up an issue, yet it sounds superficially similar to a completely different one. These things must be the same. Curious!
Ah yes what do the poors love to eat? Not the $19 sandwich from Bourgeois Food And Sons
Damn… I didn’t realize Chick-Fil-A was actually cheaper than McDonald’s now.
That sandwich name sounds like an ethnic slur
So it actually is. The actual name of the original sandwich was the Heeb, which is a reclaimed slur for Jews.
Going to make a specialty high quality Reuben sandwich and name it the Hard R
Love the idea of being snapped at like I was on the wrong side of the street in West Side Story
Americans be like:
Oh yeah my favourite sandwich is the Chick-fil-A™ Spicy Pollo Surprise instead of just saying “spicy chicken sandwich”
???
Absolutely deranged.
“Waiter, could I please get some Hellmann’s™ brand Real Mayonnaise and Grey Poupon™ brand Dijon mustard to go on my Tyson Foods® brand chicken sandwich and a glass of Minute Maid™ orange juice?”
Like you don’t have to specify what chain your BLT comes from to give off the “I like bacon, lettuce and tomato together on bread” message across to someone.
Cyberpunk genre is not a parody, it is an observation of America
Brains broken by generations of corporate propaganda.
My man is actively trying to become a Chapo reading series
If this happened when Chick-fil-A first got called out for this shit, I’d believe it. Libs were falling head over heels about how they didn’t eat there. For like 3 months.
Yeah, getting side eyes from libs about lib culture war stuff is believable, as is the “people aren’t friends yet so they might not give you the benefit of the doubt” part.
Less believable is the HR person scolding you for naming a fast food sandwich, and the guy makes it clear he’s an idiot elsewhere anyway.
Yeah, once I realized they were a right winger complaining about working at the NYT, I didn’t see a reason bother reading the rest. OH, no, people didn’t like my version of Virtue Signaling even though we’re all capitalists!
I brushed off my discomfort about the office politics and focused on work. Our mandate was to present readers with “intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion,” as the Times’ founder, Adolph Ochs, put it in 1896.
Then I went on to write a long ass article about it in the Atlantic.
who is this article even for?
More broadly, who is the Atlantic for?
Liberal republicans?
All 6 of them?
this never happened. i am prepared to believe a lot about the nyt (especially them being rank hypocrites who care a lot about the appearance of being bigoted but not any actual material harm done) but i disbelieve any anecdote by an atlantic writer sight unseen
Every liberal on the planet would have said “Oh I love them too!” and then there’s about a 10% chance they would have followed up with “It’s too bad about their CEO, but oh well what can you do.”
i 100% believe your average liberal thinks it is worse to eat at chick fil a than to constantly platform bigots and be complicit in genocide
