A Barnes & Noble spokesperson claims a customer placed a book about monkeys in a window where Barack Obama books were on display.

Yeah, sure. Blame it on the customers. It makes you wonder how long it took Barnes & Noble employees to figure out why people were outside snapping pictures of their window display.

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. [LINK]