Adam Rubenstein, the former New York Times editorial staffer who was famously blamed by the Gray Lady for the publication of a now-infamous 2020 op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), has now corrected the record with a scathing missive of his own, detailing just how much control the activist class within the newspaper controls its editorial decisions.
Among some of the appalling details relayed by Rubenstein — including the revelation that he was “never interviewed as part of any formal review” despite the paper publicly holding him responsible — is one hilarious anecdote about being asked what his favorite sandwich was as part of an onboarding icebreaker.
“Russ & Daughters’ Super Heebster came to mind, but I figured mentioning a $19 sandwich wasn’t a great way to win new friends,” Rubenstein writes. “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.”
Of all the galling tidbits included by Rubenstein, none has attracted more left-wing ire and disbelief than this story.
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It is, of course, telling that the Left has glommed on to this most innocuous detail rather than the pattern of flagrant disregard for objective journalistic ethics. The notion that woke New York Times staffers are so triggered by a spicy chicken sandwich is more intolerable to a subset of the illiberal Left than the idea that the tail — in this case, television critics and photo editors — wag the dog of senior editors and columnists who are supposed to be in control.
And Hobbes here is wrong. Rubenstein is telling the truth. I know this because not only did he tell me about the Chick-fil-A fracas in 2019, long before the Cotton crisis, but he also told countless others about it at the time.