A former opinion editor for The New York Times said office colleagues shamed him for saying that he loved the spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A, with an HR rep claiming that owners of the fast-food chain “hate gay people.”
Adam Rubenstein, a New York City-based journalist who was hired in 2019 to work in the opinion section as a research assistant for columnists, recalled his experiences as a “heretic” at the Times in an essay he penned on Monday for The Atlantic.
At an orientation for new hires, Rubenstein, who left the Times in 2021, said he was asked to tell his new co-workers what his favorite sandwich was as part of an ice-breaking game.
“The spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A,” he replied, saying that the response made him feel as if he “considered the ice broken.”
“The HR representative leading the orientation chided me,” Rubenstein wrote, saying the human resources rep told him: “We don’t do that here. They hate gay people.”
Other Times staffers at the orientation then “started snapping their fingers in acclamation,” he wrote.
Rubenstein then tried to appease the crowd, saying: “Not the politics, the chicken.”
“But it was too late. I sat down, ashamed,” he wrote.
Chick-fil-A, the Atlanta-based fast food chain, came under fire from liberals after its chief executive expressed opposition to gay marriage and its foundation donated millions of dollars to groups that were also publicly opposed to same-sex unions.
Rubenstein, who described himself as someone “with a background writing for right-of-center publications,” wrote that the Times only published conservatives who “tended to be ones agreeing with the liberal line.”
According to Rubenstein, being a conservative working for the Times was “a strange experience.”
He wrote that the Times deemed the Hunter Biden laptop story “unsubstantiated” because “many of my colleagues were clearly worried that lending credence to [it] could hurt the electoral prospects of Joe Biden and the Democrats.”
Rubenstein also wrote that op-ed submissions from conservatives were “treated differently” and “faced a higher bar for entry, more layers of editing, and greater involvement of higher-ups.”
Whenever any commentator submitted a piece for the op-ed page, all of the editors would collectively discuss it after seeing it through an email distribution list.
“But many of my colleagues didn’t want their name attached to op-eds advancing conservative arguments, and early-to-mid-career staffers would routinely oppose their publication,” Rubenstein wrote.
“Our Opinion section’s commitment to publishing diverse views — including those that are unpopular, controversial or heterodox — is unwavering,” New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha told The Post.
The Post has sought comment from Chick-fil-A.
In 2012, Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy said in several interviews that he didn’t support gay marriage. In more recent interviews, Cathy — who is the son of Chick-fil-A’s founder — reiterated his personal beliefs but says he treats all customers with respect.
Last year, a three-year-old video resurfaced showing Cathy shining the shoes of a black man following the death of George Floyd, the Minneapolis black man who died at the hands of a white police officer.
In 2017 and 2018, the Chick-fil-A Foundation gave $2.4 million to the Missouri-based Fellowship of Christian Athletes for sports camps for underserved youth and $165,000 to the Salvation Army to buy Christmas gifts for needy children.
The foundation also gave $6,000 to the Paul Anderson Youth Homes. In 2019, Chick-fil-A said it would no longer contribute to those organizations. In 2022, Chick-fil-A reported record revenue of $6.4 billion compared to $5.8 billion in 2021 — an increase of 10.6%.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
