Barnes and Noble Store Window Features Obama Alongside Monkey Book *UPDATE*

[CatWoman]

*****UPDATE*****

Barnes & Noble would like to publicly apologize for what happened in our Coral Gables, Florida store. We believe that a customer played a cruel joke and placed an inappropriate title in the front window of our store, where we were featuring books written by or about President Obama. We want to assure our customers that the book placed by someone other than our booksellers was never intended to be included in our display and was removed as soon as we became aware of the situation. We are looking into it and are taking the steps necessary so that it does not happen again. From time to time customers will move titles from one area of the store to another. In this particular case, we do not condone whatever message may have been intended with the placement of this title in our Presidential display. It certainly was not part of our merchandising and we regret that we didn’t see the placement of this title immediately.

Mary Ellen Keating, Spokesperson


http://www.blackpower.com/politics/barnes-and-noble-store-window-features-obama-alongside-monkey-books/

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. I don't see anything wrong with this.

say the dicks who defended the NY Post cartoon.

[NatBurner]

2. *sigh*

it's sad that there are ppl out there that still think shit like this is funny

[firedupdem]

3. I'm starting to feel really hateful....I better back up. n/t

[CatWoman]

5. on the positive side

that monkey is pretty cute....

[firedupdem]

8. much cuter than the shrub...you got that right!

:rofl:

[Jennicut]

25. I will never insult monkey's again by comparing them to Bush

[uppityperson]

37. Funnier thing, it's not even a monkey but an ape.

Chimpanzees are apes, not monkeys. So not only did someone put an book there to insult, but an inaccurate one.

[onehandle]

4. We should move books on proctology into the conservative section of book stores.

The subject of assholes should be grouped together.

[DJ13]

6. Customers dont typically have access to that kind of display area

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. Sure they do.

One near me has the display area right behind the magazines. All you have to do is reach over the top.

[DJ13]

12. Look at that photo again

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

15. Look at this one.

?v=1147137456

It's a wall that can be reached over, and enough space between the window and the wall that a person could walk around it, and it's in the general customer area, not behind the counter.

:shrug:

[Xithras]

13. Ever been in a B&N? Yes they do.

Most of the B&N's that I've been into don't have window displays in the traditional sense, they just have display shelves strategically placed around the store and near the front windows to show off new titles or push a particular theme. They're set up like that to ENCOURAGE people to pick up the book in the store, hoping you'll go buy one off a nearby table or shelf.

If this one is like all of the other B&N's I've been in, there was probably an overstuffed brown chair about four feet on the other side of this rack.

[hadrons]

20. Your wrong, its easy to reach over ...

you can see someone looking at eyelevel with the display ... all you have to do is to reach your arm to pull out one of the books.

Stop seeing conspiracies that don't exist

[treestar]

7. They apologized

Now, some enterprising DUer, do the same thing with Chimpy's memoirs.

Obama's intellect is such that this doesn't even compute. The idiot that did this is way closer to Chimpdom (and probably voted for the homo sapiens most resembling a Chimp, which happens to be a white man).

[Xithras]

9. Probably a dumba** freeper

Remember when Hillary Clinton's book came out and the freepers had a field day at the bookstores? They were flipping them over to hide the covers, moving them to other parts of the store to make them harder to find, and even DAMAGING them to force the bookseller to return it to the publisher.

The real monkey here was the freeper who thought this crap was funny.

[eleny]

11. So, a coward placed it in the window

Only a coward would commit a sneaky, anonymous act like this.

Our Attorney General was right about Americans and the issue of race.

[Cha]

14. Just freakin' WOW!

So glad they apologized..as far as I know, Barnes and Noble is a blue company which always made me happy when I ordered from them.

[ellenfl]

16. yes, b&n is blue. i buy from them exclusively

BECAUSE they are blue.

it IS a cute monkey.

ellen fl

[Cha]

24. Yeah, I'm betting

the Obamas would be laughing if they even had time to hear about it.

[YOY]

17. I really think this is telling of any racist bastard who thinks Obama "is a monkey".

Sure, Harvard Lawyer. Top of his class. President of Harvard Law Review. Successful family man and professional. Hell, lets cut to the chase. The man made it to the highest public elected office in the land and to a spot some would call "leader of the free world."

So...he's still a monkey to some really fucked up folks. Gonna guess they couldn't accomplish 1% of what Obama has and more resemble simians than they could ever project on Obama.

[hadrons]

18. I worked in the B&N stores, jokesters do stuff like that all the time ....

One time someone put a full-spread Penthouse foldout in one of the displays

[Occam Bandage]

23. I usually resist the temptation. I will confess that one time, I did not.

I took all the copies of the Jetlag Travel series out of the humor section and put them in the travel section under the appropriate headings. I've been good since, I promise.

http://www.amazon.com/Molvania-Untouched-Modern-Dentistry-Jetlag/dp/1585676195
http://www.amazon.com/Phaic-Tan-Jetlag-Travel-Guide/dp/B000W9067Q/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c
http://www.amazon.com/San-Sombrero-Carnivals-Cocktails-Jetlag/dp/B000W9064E/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

[kath]

41. Sure, customers move stuff around INSIDE THE STORE -but to get access to the WINDOW DISPLAY? I don't

think so.
Sounds like bullshit to me. Some EMPLOYEE did it.

On edit - this looks like the set-up at both of the stores near us - the window display is located right behind the long checkout counter, and thus is accessible only to employees. Plus it's TALL, and can't be reached over.
I still call bullshit. (the in-store displays, of course, are a different matter and are easy to mess with. But not the tall window display behind the checkout counter.)

[vaberella]

19. See man...and this is why most people will NEVER understand the Black burden.

Every bloody day, every damn times someone has to do or say something stupidly racial. It's so insulting.

[Occam Bandage]

21. When I first read the headline, I thought,

"okay, there's going to be a new book about Obama next to a new book about monkeys on a new releases display at a store, and people are overreacting to an obvious coincidence."

The picture, though, makes it absolutely clear what the intent was, since literally every other book in the display is about Obama. While it might have been a customer's doing, I see no evidence that it wasn't an employee's doing either. Either way, the apology is welcome.

[MUAD_DIB]

22. How does a customer get access to a window display?

:shrug:

[Occam Bandage]

27. He reaches over the top of it?

[MUAD_DIB]

30. The customer must have had very long arms.

[Occam Bandage]

31. They're not particularly hard to reach behind.

[CatWoman]

33. think it might have been a monkey?

:)

[DevonRex]

32. Same way the employees do. They walk into the display area. If it's

not walled off on the side, it's very easy to do. Sometimes there's a step up, sometimes there's not.

[hadrons]

34. Very easy ... check out how tall (or short) the window display is ....

?v=1147137456

They aren't up to the wall because they want people to see into the store

[SemiCharmedQuark]

26. I wonder how many copycats of this there will be.

[Uzybone]

28. Before I saw the display I was like "ok this has to be over-reaction"

I thought it was Obama side by side with a monkey book. But the president pictures surrounding a book on monkeys? C'mon. Glad B&N took swift action.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

29. Y'know, it makes no difference whether is was a customer or employee

Either way it's just one asshole and this is an epic non-story.

Unless someone wants to suggest that it is the official position of Barnes and Noble that Obama is a monkey (unlikely) then there is no more to this story than there is to, "I heard a guy in a bar say something racist last night."

Dumb-ass pranks, even racist ones, are not national news.

[Phx_Dem]

35. I don't doubt that Barnes had nothing to do with this display.

It's just too ridulous to think they'd do it. It sounds very reasonable that some racist wingnut moved the monkey book on purpose.

Keep it up, Republicans. Your brand is aleady floating in the toiletbowl, covered in shit. Pretty soon one of you will flush it and your GOP brand will be gone forever.

[skeewee08]

36. My sisiter-in-law just email this to me yesterday. My jaw just dropped WTF!

[Neecy]

38. This seems to be a theme of RW racists these days.

The NY Post cartoon seemed to have emboldened the racists to do crap like this. The people who defended it have no idea what's been unleashed.

I read an AOL story today about Mrs. Obama's official portrait and out of curiousity read some of the comments. Disgusting, vile stuff - lots of "monkey" comments, one referred to her as "Mrs Sambo" and a "nappy-headed ho" (sound familiar? And there were apologists for *that*, too) and she was referred to multiple times as "Blackie O".

That cartoon unleashed something ugly into the mainstream - something that was always there, but now the racists seem to think it's okay to spread that filth everywhere. And by the way, Michelle got overwhelming support in the poll that went with the story. These people don't realize how sick the majority of the public finds them.

[Spirochete]

39. That book has probably been there all along

but it was surrounded by pictures of the last president, so nobody noticed, since it blended right it. When they changed the books, then it stood out and was noticed.

[genna]

40. What is the strategy to combat the monkey = AA crowd?

They can jerk us around for the next 8 years.


I am not saying this new or latest outrage is not offensive. I am putting this forward as a means to stop what conservatives will label an overreaction poutrage.


The way conservatives demonized Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson over the years was to label them race hustlers and act like they continued to beg at trough of corporate largess.


The way conservatives attacked affirmative action was to make white people feel it is okay to say: how long must we be sorry for slavery? or better yet how long must non white non slave owning people be responsible for rehabilitating a morally reprehensible people?


I won't argue about whether these outright lying s.o.b.s deserve to have each and every charge answered. They don't. My idea is that if there is a new strategy underfoot to desensitize people so they can do greater and more offensive things to AAs, specifically the Obamas, then what in the hell should be done on a BROADER scale.


There are (please feel free to add to the list):
1. Obama ministrel waffle cereal
2. Obama as Curious George shirts
3. Obama's WH depicted as a watermelon patch

so on and so forth


What is a centralizing message that can be used whenever this b.s. surfaces without drawing our collective attention away from the prize?

[RollWithIt]

42. I once moved the Al Franken "Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot" to the Weight Loss Book Display

In a Borders store. I must say, I was rather pleased with myself at the time.

[Beacool]

43. Oh boy, here we go again..............

There was so much publicity of the NY Post cartoon that some wise guy probably thought it funny to place the Monkey book there. I don't blame B & N though, anyone can easily walk into their displays and take or place a book. They wouldn't be the wiser until a customer or an employee going outside noticed it.

:-(

[Sultana]

44. Fucking Racist!

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

[universe1701]

45. come on people use common sense!!!!

as an ex-barnes and noble employee, i know exactly how easy it is for the customer to change any display that they want. number 1, every display in the store has a title list. which instructs what book to put in the display. if you people actually worked there, you would know that no "bargain book" would be mixed with a regular priced display. you can clearly see the monkey book having a bargain sticker in the bottom right corner and the other books do not. so you can already see that barnes and noble as a company did not do this. number 2, there have been many times where i have recovered a section and political books are turned upside down, because of a customers political view. number 3, being located in miami where it is over-run with cuban republicans (as a cuban myself i know exactly how extreme these republican cubans can be)something like this is not unexpected. Barnes and Noble as company should not be blamed for this. trust me when i tell you this... it was definitely a customer. i voted for obama and proud to have him as my president, whoever did this (clearly a republican nazi!!)most likely got a lot of people in that store in trouble who didn't deserve this kind of attention.

[Starry Messenger]

46. Welcome to DU!

I used to work at Borders (boo hiss, I know) and my experience tallies with yours. There are posters here on DU who also turn books by conservative authors. This creates a bit of extra work for the employees. Sad this kind of racist shenanigans went on at B & N. They are a great company and don't deserve this kind of crap from a customer who probably can barely read.