MONKEE ARMADA SENTINEL

Sun, Mar. 08, 2009

‘Monkeys’ book amid Obama display at Coral Gables Barnes & Noble prompts outrage

BY ELAINE DE VALLE

A downtown Coral Gables bookstore is facing an Internet-driven response of outrage after a prankster added a book on monkeys to a window display of books about President Barack Obama. ‘’Obviously, we wouldn’t do that,’’ said Julissa Carvahal, a cashier at the Barnes & Noble Booksellers on Miracle Mile, about a block from where an Obama campaign office closed a week after the election. “It was obviously a really bad joke.’’ Corporate headquarters in New York, which earlier had publicly apologized, on Friday issued a statement calling the ‘’malicious and despicable act’’ a hate crime. A customer called store management’s attention Feb. 17 to the ‘’inappropriate book placed in our presidential display,’’ manager Robert Martin said. “We removed it immediately.’’ He added that customers had access to the window display via a two-foot wide corridor between the bookshelf and the storefront. Employees placed a Foster Grant reading glasses kiosk at one end of the display shelf and a garbage can and stack of shopping baskets at the other to block access, and the corporate office in New York issued an apology on its website. ‘’Barnes & Noble would like to publicly apologize for what happened in our Coral Gables, Florida, store,’’ wrote Mary Ellen Keating, a corporate spokeswoman. “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.’’ While original reports said it could have been there for days, Keating said she did not know how long the display was there and that the inappropriate book was removed as soon as it was discovered. But the real controversy has come in the past week, as someone—possibly the same person who put the book there—took a photograph of the display and circulated it in e-mails. The image—in which books about Obama, his wife and his road to the White House surround a book with a picture of and titled Monkeys—also has been commented on in a slew of blogs and websites, including the NAACP’s The Defenders Online and www.blackpower.com, and has spurred calls for a boycott. ‘’Someone became vicious, or just playing a cruel practical joke, put the book and then snapped a picture that unfortunately now everyone has seen,’’ Martin said, adding his store fields about 200 calls daily about the display. ‘’There are stretches where all you do, all the phone lines are lit up, and you just go from call to call,’’ Martin said, adding that he was glad to do it. He came in on Thursday, his day off, just to take calls so that the rest of the staff could work. “We get the opportunity to talk to our customers and tell them that’s not what we’re about. Barnes & Noble would never condone anything like that. We would never set up a display of that nature.’’ Urbanlegends.com—a site that aims to rebuke Internet-spread myths—has it on its site already. ‘’The photo is authentic,’’ the site states. “The racist implications of inserting a book entitled Monkeys in a display devoted to Barack Obama are clear and undeniable. “According to company statements, however, the incident does not reflect the attitudes of Barnes & Noble, its management, or its employees. It is believed that a customer surreptitiously replaced one of the books in the display with the offending title.’’ It wouldn’t be the first time, however, the store has been the subject of a customer prank, Martin said. ‘It’s not uncommon to find adult material in our kids’ section,’’ he said. “People think that’s funny. “But certainly nothing of this magnitude has ever happened in our store and I don’t think nationally.’’ The photograph has circulated so wide that Coral Gables Business Improvement District—an agency funded by downtown property owners who tax themselves additionally for shared marketing and services—has fielded about 50 calls and e-mails about the image. ‘’People are outraged,’’ said Taciana Amador, assistant to the BID director. “They don’t realize the issue was already addressed weeks ago.’’ The Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce has been contacted, and the city has fielded complaints from as far away as New Jersey and Arkansas. ‘’This is unacceptable and does not reflect well on your city,’’ wrote Leroy Mayfield, an administrative assistant in the Arkansas State Office of Long Term Care. “Does this represent the city’s sentiments of our 44th President of the United States?’’ Gables Development Director Cathy Swanson Rivenbark, who works with downtown property owners to help keep the city’s core thriving, told him it did not. ‘’This was an unfortunate and truly tasteless customer prank that was corrected immediately as soon as store employees became aware of it,’’ Swanson said. “Obviously, the display area is vulnerable, and they are looking at how to better protect it from happening again.’’ Barnes & Noble bills itself as an easy-going, open store where people can browse at ease, linger on a casual ‘’date’’ or grab a book and read it by the coffee counter at leisure before deciding to buy it. Might this incident change the store’s laid-back style? No, Keating said. ‘’We always have things like this going on. During the election cycle, we had customers take books off the political table because they didn’t want us to sell a particular title and stick it way back in the store somewhere else,’’ Keating said. “We always have managers monitoring the displays. Obviously, we are going to be more diligent now.’’