Paula Deen - PC garbage or a true issue?

[Azale]

I certainly don't, but I do dislike PC witch hunts.

The bigger issue is that she treated her employees like crap. Dig a little deeper before you get your indignation fix.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Why then, the focus on the fact that she confessed to using racial slurs in the past? Sounds like political correctness did play a negative role after all, in making everyone focus on the superficial, rather then the underlying issues.

 

[Zelig]

Paula Deen is the one who got diabetes because of eating awful food and now makes money by promoting drugs?

Yeah, I support her losing all her endorsements and shows.

 

[Azale]

Why then, the focus on the fact that she confessed to using racial slurs in the past? Sounds like political correctness did play a negative role after all, in making everyone focus on the superficial, rather then the underlying issues.

Meh, all the people I follow focused mostly on the other stuff. If "PC" helped bring this stuff to light, all the better.

 

[Perfection]

I wonder how many corporate sponsors of Paula Deen were thinking, "thank God, now we can ditch this money losing brand" the moment the racism came out.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Why then, the focus on the fact that she confessed to using racial slurs in the past? Sounds like political correctness did play a negative role after all, in making everyone focus on the superficial, rather then the underlying issues.

It's a difference of someone being viscerally awful versus remotely and abstractly bad.
It's why you'd respond more strongly to a video of a politician stomping a small dog to death then one who shut down a shelter.

 

[kramerfan86]

If all the sponsors are shedding her because she used a slur, yea that's a pretty big PC overreaction. Now if stuff like the she wanted black people dressing up as servants at a dinner party thing is true, then you are getting into more behavior that really starts to justify it.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I certainly don't, but I do dislike PC witch hunts.

It is far from being a PC witch hunt.

Paula’s Worst Ingredients

Paula Deen is where sass meets crass, where the homespun and folksy curdle into something with a sour aftertaste.

Her manner may be as sugary as her cooking, her smile as big as the hams she hawked for Smithfield. But she doesn’t pause when she should. Doesn’t question herself when she must.

There’s a dearth of reflection, a deficit of introspection, and that’s not just a generational thing and not just a regional thing, as some of her fans and other observers have begun to assert, unprepared to surrender their image of Paula the Southern Eccentric to the reality of Paula the Deep-Fried Boor.

A fresh illustration of this traveled through cyberspace on Monday, a video that shows Deen at The New York Times last October, being interviewed onstage by my colleague Kim Severson. The subject of race comes up.

“I feel like the South is almost less prejudiced,” Deen says, “because black folks played such an integral part in our lives. They were like our family.”

That statement alone is awkward — she’s referring to servants, presumably — but she doesn’t stop there. Motioning to the inky backdrop behind her and Severson, she notes that her beloved driver, bodyguard and assistant, Hollis Johnson, is as “black as that board.”

“Come out here, Hollis,” she adds, looking offstage and directing the audience’s attention there. “We can’t see you standing against that dark board.”

That’s a lot of apparent focus on skin color, in a vein so breezy it really does make you wonder, especially given what that creepy deposition brought to light last week. She admitted having used “the n word,” more than once. She admitted finding beauty in a “plantation-style wedding” with an all-black wait staff. From her butter to her banter, she’s a Confederate caricature, and a reminder of a past that’s still too present.

Just how far have we trekked on our long road toward a more colorblind, equitable society? Just how hurtfully do we still stumble? Such questions are prominent this week, with the Supreme Court sidestepping an affirmative-action decision and testimony in the Trayvon Martin case set to begin. We’re once again taking stock.

And it’s this backdrop that’s relevant to Deen’s firing by the Food Network and, on Monday, by Smithfield Foods. In a world of pervasive insult and elusive consensus, she provided a discrete opportunity for a line to be drawn. She served up a teachable moment on a platter.

There’s almost always a larger context like that when someone falls as spectacularly as Deen has fallen, and there’s almost always a prelude: a first strike.

Hers was in early 2012. That’s when she lost the benefit of the doubt, not racially but in terms of her character, by revealing that she had been diagnosed three years earlier with Type 2 diabetes, which is abetted by the calorie bombs on which her empire thrived.

This disclosure was timed not to benefit her fans, who were continuing to follow her fatty counsel, but to benefit her: one of her sons had a new healthy-cooking show that needed promoting, and she herself was stepping out as a spokeswoman — a paid spokeswoman — for a diabetes drug.

What’s more, the triumphant cynicism of this situation seemed lost on her. She beamed as always. Was saucy as ever. You knew then that she had levitated to some altitude where she felt above reproach; that her investment in the bacon-wrapped burlesque of Paula, Inc., trumped a healthy conscience; and that self-examination was a condiment gone from her larder. And it’s through the lens of that knowledge that many Americans responded to her deposition and questioned what was in her heart.

Others have urged clemency, noting that she’s 66 years old and has lived her life far south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Please. All of her adult years postdate the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and she’s a citizen of the world, traveling wide and far to peddle her wares. If she can leave Georgia for the sake of commerce, she can leave Georgia in the realm of consciousness.

Beyond which, people can change, growing past wrongful ways in the name of what’s right. We pass new laws. We adopt new language. That’s the recipe for progress: putting justice ahead of habit, principle over precedent.

It’s not one that’s been mastered by Deen, whose worst ingredient isn’t corn syrup or Crisco but willful obtuseness.

How many times have we heard in this very forum how the South is supposedly less prejudiced than the rest of the country now? How much "willful obtuseness" is invariably present when the topic of racism arises?

 

[Zelig]

I think people should be far more outraged about the damage she's done to countless people eating her recipes.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Jon Oliver subbing for Jon Stewart while discussing the Supreme Court gay marriage ruling:

Does that mean that Brown v Board of Education potentially only applies to Brown. I think I know a certain lady chef who would be quite interested in this.

 

[Labtec600]

Apparently it's because she is a southern conservative woman that has to be linked to racism.

I'm not seeing any outrage over Alec Baldwins recent remarks towards a gay reporter.

 

[Lord Baal]

Apparently it's because she is a southern conservative woman that has to be linked to racism.

I'm not seeing any outrage over Alec Baldwins recent remarks towards a gay reporter.

I've heard neither of these stories outside of CFC.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I hadn't heard about Alec Baldwin because I don't watch Fox News or read People magazine. But I did read about Paula Dean in my local newspaper.

 

[Labtec600]

I hadn't heard about Alec Baldwin because I don't watch Fox News or read People magazine. But I did read about Paula Dean in my local newspaper.

That is my point exactly.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/michaelrusch/alec-baldwins-epic-twitter-meltdown

Why does one get away with it but the other doesnt?

 

[kramerfan86]

Ive heard about the Baldwin thing a fair bit, so its a not a "liberal media" blackout or anything. Overall Im not sure why people expect the response to be similar seeing as Deen and Baldwin are career wise fairly far apart. Deen had a TV show and numerous other television appearances, numerous sponsorship deals, a large presence in terms of branding in multiple stores, books, etc. From what I can tell about all Baldwin seriously has going right now is one sponsorship deal with capitol one.

Im not sure why people expect the Baldwin-Deen responses to be the same when Baldwin has so much less to lose, so of course he isnt losing piles of sponsors daily because he doesnt HAVE piles of sponsors and he doesnt have to go on a public apology tour to stave off the loss of tons of deals because he doesnt HAVE tons of deals to lose.

 

[Azale]

If Alec Baldwin is allegedly treating his employees (or people he hires) like trash, I'll be the first to annoyingly post links about it on my FB page.

 

[Inhalaattori]

PC garbage of course. I cant really understand why any word should be given so much meaning. I feel all these scandal and controversies are taking to much space in the media.

 

[caketastydelish]

Paula Deen is the one who got diabetes because of eating awful food and now makes money by promoting drugs?

Yeah, I support her losing all her endorsements and shows.

This. Even if she were the most non-prejudice person on the planet, for this reason alone, she does not deserve to have a show on national television.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Why does one get away with it but the other doesnt?

"Get away" with what? Alec Baldwin apologized for a comment he made when he was justifiably upset with an idiot who stalks celebrities for a living.

OTOH Paula Dean hasn't really apologized at all for being a blatantly stereotypical Southern bigot who mistreats her employees while being hypocritical about her own recipes. Furthermore, she condones even worse behavior from her brother.

It is really up to their sponsors and employers to take whatever action they feel is warranted. If you want to complain to Capital One that you feel Alec Baldwin isn't an appropriate spokesman anymore you are certainly free to do so.

But I have to ask. How much of this is due to Alec Baldwin being an outspoken "liberal"? Do you also condemn Paula Dean for her attitudes and comments? Do you disagree with the actions that her sponsors and employers took?

Do you also understand the difference between when African-Americans use that word and when whites do?

 

[NovaKart]

Alec Baldwin seems so temperamental. My sister has a friend who was in a play with him and she quit because he was so difficult to work with and wouldn't return even after being asked. His twitter just seemed childish. I'm not suggesting he go through Paula Deen type treatment, just saying how I feel about him.

Seems like the former employee changed her story so I don't really know what to think, maybe there's other stuff I haven't heard. People are awfully quick to bring up the Southern thing like only Southerners are racist. Now I know I'll be harshly criticized for saying that.