Apparently Paula Deen said racist things and thus has lost her Food Network contract. Now, keep in mind if a television personality says or does crazy things, or more importantly conducts his or her business in a way that is unethical or discriminatory they deserve to get the boot. From the comments (and please keep in mind I’ve spent all of about ten minutes listening to this extremely hard to listen to woman ramble on) I’ve heard from Paula Deen it strikes me that she’s more dumb than racist… putting your foot in your mouth when talking about race relations is remarkably easy to do. When you’re also not mentally playing with a seventh grade IQ it’s also likely you’re going to jump into the hole you dug and continue to make it deeper as you explain what you really meant.
Lots of people are pointing to Paula Deen discussing the south and race relations as if she’s a crazy racist, but the comments come off as clueless more than racist. Is that a defense? Not exactly… if you’re going to get on television and teach people how to do things, even things as innocuous as cooking, it would be nice if you were not a complete moron. But hey, let’s be honest: the nation’s best and brightest are not the current hosts and personalities on our television. Yes, Paula Deen seems like a dunce. But Paula Abdul doesn’t exactly come across like a Mensa member.
No, my issue isn’t that Paula may or may not be a racist… if she’s a hiring manager or setting business practices and is using race to guide those practices then clearly we have a problem, but I think there’s another, perhaps more obvious problem. Paula Deen works for the Food Network and teaches a nation how to cook and produce food. Her cooking style and recipes are best described as “questionable for your health” and more accurately described as “will kill you”. Paula Deen held off the news that she had diabetes for three years, during which time she taught the world how to make such healthy dishes as “Deep Fried Butter Balls”, which consists of butter and… well, a deep fryer. For Thanksgiving she came up with the genius idea to stuff a Turkey with a Duck stuffed with Chicken, all parts lined with cornbread and butter and deep fried. Seriously, this food will kill you. That she came out at all with her problems had more to do with the massive diabetes drug paid spokeswoman contract she landed than any sense of making up for instructing millions on how to be fat, unhealthy bastards.
I am 100% sympathetic to the racist craziness that went on for her staff, and the discrimination that may or may not (but likely did) occur on her show. I could really care less about her crazy comments about the South, and what bothers me most is the amount of people who have serious health problems following her insane advice. Am I wrong here?
