When a regular reader to the fields sent me an e-mail about the Barnes & Noble Book Store in Florida placing a book about monkeys with the Obama book display, I was fit to be tied. I couldn't wait to jump all over the Barnes & Noble folks. But something told me to chill and learn some more about the situation before I got on the grievance train.
Well I am happy to report that I did. Because as it turns out Barnes & Noble has apologized for what happened, and they swear up and down that they had nothing to do with it. Apparently the hard economic times are getting to those citizens down in Florida. They have to take out their angst on somebody, and right now it looks like the guy in power who they think is closer to the monkey in the evolutionary chain.
Now some bloggers still don't believe that Barnes & Noble weren't aware of the display, and they are still pissed at the large bookstore chain. I am not going to go that route, because I know how our fellow A-merry-cans can be. We can be hard on each other sometimes, and it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to see some customer going over to the display and doing a quick makeover.
But still, this is A-merry-ca, and a part of me wants to agree with the blogger, "Mr. Grey Ghost", when he posted this:
"'This was not a company driven decision," Edgar Chang, the store manager, said in an interview with TheDefendersOnline. “We are not sure how the book got in the window, but we believe it was put there by a customer who didn’t like the fact that Obama won the election.'
I'm not buying this apology. How does a customer get the time to place a book in a store window? Much less, how does the monkey book stay there long enough for people walking on the street to take photos? This sounds like the work of a bigot store employee. This Barnes & Noble store needs to conduct a thorough investigation of its workers, because so far their excuse sounds pretty lame. "
Hmmm, okay, I will buy the fact that it could have been an employee. And it shouldn't be hard to find the culprit. Just watch for the one driving out with the McCain/Palin bumper sticker on the back of their ride.
