A couple of days ago, Adam Rubenstein dropped a story in The Atlantic detailing his experiences as someone on the political right working at the New York Times. One anecdote that really caught people's attention was asked to name his favorite sandwich as part of an icebreaker exercise. He said "The spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A. He then said the HR representative leading the icebreaker said "We don't do that here. They hate gay people." People started snapping their fingers in acclamation, he recalls.
Apparently, that's a right-wing conspiracy theory and it never happened.
If you wrote this into an SNL skit people would call it a ham-fisted strawman pic.twitter.com/ZmI8Sj2GAP
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) February 26, 2024
Are the people questioning the veracity of this anecdote saying it would change their opinion of the NYTimes and its staff if it were true? https://t.co/dn17JI2yf3
— Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) February 27, 2024
Serial fabulist Nikole Hannah-Jones tweeted that it "never happened."
Fwiw — Adam Rubenstein told me the chicken sandwich story in 2019. pic.twitter.com/jqbAcjSBfs
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) February 27, 2024
The NY Times made their choice and they chose a fabulist whose major work had to be corrected several times over Bari Weiss and Rubinstein. https://t.co/f4NwM4T1om
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 27, 2024
Here's journalist and professor Bill Grueskin:
I will swear on a stack of AP stylebooks that it is perfectly acceptable for editors, even at @TheAtlantic, to both fact-check first-person anecdotes and tell your readers you did that. https://t.co/RyN2VpnHt1 https://t.co/FovRZ5l4Ef
— Bill Grueskin (@BGrueskin) February 26, 2024
And what those editors would find is that every word here is true. Adam Rubenstein told me and other colleagues that story when it happened. https://t.co/wwd90N7x6b
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) February 27, 2024
I love that so many people -- who took Christine Blasey-Ford's "I told people at the time I think" attestation as dispositive evidence -- are now taking a dump on contemporaneous reports; not just because of the sweet taste of hypocrisy, but because of the shame hidden there. https://t.co/4GwrRvgj4m
— (((Not That Crown, Maybe))) (@CrownMaybe) February 27, 2024
An Atlantic spokesperson reached out Jesse Singal to say that their editors had confirmed the story.
Atlantic spokeswoman on the Chick-fil-A incident that Nikole Hannah-Jones and many others claimed must have been fabcricated: "the details were confirmed by New York Times employees who had contemporaneous knowledge of the incident in question." pic.twitter.com/KL0cptFB6B
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) February 27, 2024
2/ For the Hannah-Jones, Hobbes et al theory to be true, it would need to be the case that Rubenstein not only lied about this nonexistent event at the time, but somehow convinced other NYT employees that it happened, or to lie for him. Quite a conspiracyhttps://t.co/V5Zu6fjO4P
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) February 27, 2024
3/ I am once again confused as to why journalists are comfortable loudly accusing others of lying rather than doing bare-basic reporting. This took me 10 minutes of work.
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) February 27, 2024
The only people who found this unbelievable are the exact same people who would have been snapping along in the first place https://t.co/vQvs18O3Al
— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) February 27, 2024
The funny thing would be to ask the people claiming this was unbelievable if THEY would patronize Chick-fil-A. I think we can guess the answer.
— Craig Murphy (@CraigMurphy8881) February 28, 2024
*snaps vigorously*
— Russell (@theramblingfool) February 28, 2024
Yep pic.twitter.com/dVneRui15u
— The Doctor (@TennantRob) February 28, 2024
I can't get over the snapping. These people live in an alternate universe.
— Charlotte Clinesmith (@CharClin) February 28, 2024
The first time I heard of finger snapping for approval outside a beat poetry reading in a 1958-era café was during Occupy Wall Street in 2011. I thought finger snapping was de rigueur in leftist circles after that until even that was too aggressive for some.@robbysoave👇 pic.twitter.com/pl4JYo5nK1
— Consigliere (@Consigliere187) February 28, 2024
We'd been told that snapping was a way of accommodating those who are triggered by the loud sound of applause.
So are the people who believe the story Chick-fil-A truthers? We don't know who to believe anymore.
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