Paula Dean Fired By Food Network Over Racial Slur

he Food Network has pulled Deen's shows, which were scheduled to air, from their line-up.

crowd gathers at lunchtime outside the Lady & Sons restaurant owned by celebrity cook Paul Deen in Savannah, Ga., on Thursday, June 20, 2013. Deen's admission in a recent court case that she used racial slurs in the past has put the Food Network star on the defensive. Fans eating at Deen's restaurant said they're willing to stand by her. (AP Photo/Russ Bynum) / AP

http://www.thenorthwestern.com/viewart/20130622/OSH0101/306220300/Paula-Deen-fans-vent-their-outrage-at-Food-Network?odyssey=tab%7Cmostpopular%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE

On Saturday, the controversy didn’t keep customers from The Lady & Sons, the restaurant owned by Deen and her sons in Savannah’s downtown historic district.

“If you look at her restaurant here, I don’t think it’s going to hurt her too much,” said Felipe Alexander, an Atlanta trucking company owner, as he waited on the sidewalk for his lunchtime reservation. He also said he didn’t blame the Food Network for cutting Deen loose.

“If the network didn’t want to be associated with somebody who used that word, it has the right to

Future of Paula Deen's magazine, produced by Birmingham-based publisher, uncertain
By Jon Reed
June 21, 2013

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- The fate of Paula Deen's magazine, Cooking with Paula Deen, is still up in the air after a controversy over the Food Network host's use of racial epithets led to the end of her television contract.

"We are not in a position to discuss her magazine and contract right now," said Phyllis Hoffman DePiano, the president of Birmingham-based Hoffman Media, which produces the magazine. "A statement will be forthcoming later."

"We at Hoffman Media do not condone discrimination of any kind," DePiano said.

http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2013/06/future_of_paula_deens_magazine.html#incart_river_default

"We at Hoffman Media do not condone discrimination of any kind," DePiano said.

Amazing how quickly things change.

Thursday good.
Friday good.
Saturday goodish.
Sunday crap.

You need to keep on the news.

Quote:

You need to keep on the news.

As I said my money is on the little old southern girl.

http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/24/viewpoint-give-paula-deen-back-her-job/?iid=tsmodule

Viewpoint: The Food Network Should Give Paula Deen Back Her Job

People of her generation can neither change the past, nor completely escape their roots in it

By John McWhorter June 24, 20138 Comments


Follow @TIMEIdeas
Paula Deen grew up in Georgia. In the fifties. Her world was the one depicted in The Help, in which black people’s status as lesser beings was casually assumed. So, who is really surprised that she has used the N-word in her life? It would be downright strange if she hadn’t, and we can assume the same of pretty much any white Southerner of a certain age (not to mention more than a few Americans of other regions).

And yet the Food Network has fired her after revelations that Deen has been a normal person of her time and place. Even though she has levelled no fewer than three public apologies. The reason is the unique status of the N-word.

(MORE: Paula Deen Begs for Your Forgiveness, For Something)

In modern America, we really have only a few genuinely profane words, and the N-word is one of them. Sure, we call a certain suite of four-letter words profanity, and they once were. However, they are now used so freely by most that they qualify more as salty. A Martian, hearing our “bad words” decorating our hit songs, tossed off in movies, used in a hit parody children’s book like “Go the F—k to Sleep,” and sprinkled into ordinary conversation, would never even think to describe these words as “bad.”

Yet we do have words we treat as truly unthinkable. They are no longer about excretion or sexual intercourse or religion, but about disrespecting groups of people. One begins with F; another begins with C.

The third is the N-word. Even the sassiest comedy shows refrain from tossing it around. We shudder at the thought of our children using it. And, we regularly watch celebrities treated as if they were lepers for saying it – comedian Michael Richards in 2006 – or even saying it to refer to it, like Dr. Laura in 2010.

(MORE: Can Whites Say the N-Word?)

This taboo status, then, is why Deen is being fired for what her fans are decrying as “just using a word,” and also why Deen in her videos steps around even saying what she said. Yet this restraint on her part is also an indication that she, like most Americans, has gotten the message. Crucially, getting the message doesn’t mean becoming superhuman. Changing times cannot utterly expunge all traces in her of the old South’s assumptions. Old habits of thought linger, like excema and asthma.

So yes, she just might pop out with the N-word in private in a heated moment. And yes, a certain part of her will see something vaguely nostalgic in the sight of black men as waiters. In this, she represents a transitional stage between the then and the now. Deen was already a twenty-something when the old racist order broke down; her world view had pretty much jelled. How could she have a perfectly egalitarian take on race growing up when and where she did?

(MORE: Viewpoint: Leave Ben Carson Alone)

People of Deen’s generation can neither change the past nor completely escape their roots in it, anymore than the rest of us. They can apologize and mean it, as Deen seems to. They also deserve credit for owning up to past sins, as Deen did candidly when she could easily have, shall we say, whitewashed the matter.

The taboo on the N-word, and associated attitudes, is appropriate. It’s certainly smarter than the goofiness of the 1800s when the terms white and dark meat emerged to avoid the possible sexual connotations of referring to breasts and thighs. However, we’re less smart when we turn taboo enforcement into implacable witch hunting, which is not thought but sport.

Deen is old and she’s sorry. She should get her job back.


John McWhorter
John McWhorter is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and the author of What Language Is (and What It Isn't and What It Could Be). The views expressed are solely his own.



Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/24/viewpoint-give-paula-deen-back-her-job/#ixzz2X8FNpOf6

retire or fall on her sword, be the poster child for the reformed southern rebel, them be the choices.

So yes, she just might pop out with the N-word in private in a heated moment.

Somehow I think she became aware of that decades ago but what the hell let prove how PC we are by throwing her under the bus.

Dean is being accused of (and admitted to) routinely making racist slurs, telling racist jokes in the workplace...She can be as racist as she wants in her private time. Abusing her employees who likely don't have many employment alternatives is what the case is about.

According to the Huffington Post, the deposition was held on May 17 as part of a court case brought forth by former Paula Deen Enterprises employee Lisa Jackson against Deen and her brother, Earl “Bubba” Hiers. In the suit, Lisa claimed there were several instances of sexual and racial workplace discrimination.

In one particularly salacious story from the deposition, Lisa was asked to plan a wedding for Paula's son Bubba. Lisa claims Paula said she wanted to do a slave-style wedding. No, really....she did. Paula's words:

"I want a true Southern -plantation style wedding. Well what I would really like is a bunch of little niggers to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts and black bow ties, you know in the Shirley Temple days, they used to tap dance around. Now that would be a true Southern wedding wouldn't it?"

The deposition goes on to claim that Black workers at "Uncle Bubba's Restaurant" were required to use the BACK entrance to pick up their checks, and were all required to use the same bathroom at the BACK of the restaurant (while white employees could use the customer's restrooms). Also, Blacks employees who worked in the back of the restaurant were not allow to go to the front of the restaurant.

Elsewhere in the deposition, Lisa goes on the quote Bubba saying things like, "I wish I could put all those niggers (in the kitchen) on a boat back to Africa)." And, he allegedly said, "They should send President Obama to the oil spill in the Gulf Of Mexico so he could nigger-rig it."...

And on her brother's behavior:

Lawyer: Are you aware of Mr. Hiers admitting that he engaged in racially and sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace?

Deen: I guess

Lawyer: Okay. Well, have you done anything about what you heard him admit to doing?
Deen: My brother and I have had conversations. My brother is not a bad person. Do humans behave inappropriately? At times, yes. I don't know one person that has not. My brother is a good man. Have we told jokes? Have we said things that we should not have said, that -- yes, we all have. We all have done that, every one of us.
http://theybf.com/2013/06/19/this-is-not-the-way-to-celebrate-juneteenth-paula-deen-admits-to-using-n-word-accused-of

retire or fall on her sword, be the poster child for the reformed southern rebel, them be the choices.

better yet she should have had a plan months ago, and she should have been building better relationships with her business partners all along.