Helen Rosner is a New Yorker food writer, by which Cockburn means she is a temporarily frustrated politics writer ghettoized into the coverage of food. Poor Helen was deeply agitated by Wednesday’s kerfuffle at the Capitol, and greatly desired to milk 2021’s Reichstag fire for all it was worth. But how? She could denounce a member of her brunch group as a Nazi, but brunch is now a relic much like the Ottoman Empire. She could start a boycott of some helpless family-owned restaurant, but those have already all failed thanks to people like Rosner demanding people stay home for 10 straight months.
So only one option remained: go pulverize a random ice cream company.
Jeni’s Ice Cream was founded by a fine-arts major who dropped out of Ohio State. Cockburn didn’t need to read anything else about her before concluding that she probably is not a Trumpy kulak. But Rosner apparently knew better. The company’s release of a Joe Biden flavor for inauguration actually concealed a dark underbelly of reaction.
I don’t have a big takeaway to hand you or mean this to defend big business or whatever else, I just think it’s … interesting
— Helen Rosner (@hels) January 7, 2021
Sigh. Why, Rosner asks, can’t every small company be like Unilever, which uses Ben & Jerry’s progressivism to keep people from asking what happened to Borneo.
Rosner’s infliction of her personal emotional distress on to the Twitter-consuming public might have gone little-noticed had somebody not made a rather big blunder. Jeni’s communications director showed up to contend with Rosner’s attacks, which only served to bring more attention to them. Even worse, this communications director was a white male (the worst kind of male).
Things quickly went south:
Hi Ryan. Even without the contrast of a violent insurrection it’s worth commenting on. You went out of your way to assert that an ice cream flavor that celebrates the inauguration of a new president *isn’t about politics*.
— Helen Rosner (@hels) January 8, 2021
When your company fights racism, supports voter registration, is LGBT+-inclusive — and then you say in a tweet it would be inappropriate to comment on a violent white supremacist insurrection, who are you protecting? Who are you trying not to alienate?
— Helen Rosner (@hels) January 8, 2021
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You don’t *earn* speaking out against white supremacy. You either denounce it, or you’re part of it. Haven’t you seen all the Instagram memes? 🙃
— Helen Rosner (@hels) January 8, 2021
Poor Ryan interpreted this reference to Instagram memes as an attempt at good-natured jocularity. How foolish. There is nothing jocular about Instagram memes, and nothing good-natured about Ms Rosner:
We are rapidly approaching the point where you should be offering me a consulting fee
— Helen Rosner (@hels) January 8, 2021
You’re taking this all as a joke and that’s pretty gross
— Helen Rosner (@hels) January 8, 2021
Yikes! Cockburn can already see the inevitable longform article gracing the pages of the February New Yorker:
‘Cone of Silence: when Jeni’s came to the neighborhood, it carried the promise of natural ingredients and progressive values. What it actually brought were troubling questions — and a sprinkling of privilege.’
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article described Ms Rosner as ‘the New Yorker‘s food critic’, when in fact she is a ‘staff writer’ who almost exclusively covers food. We hang our heads in shame.
