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Politics: Do Paula Deen's words justify ruining her life?

by Dan Calabrese

By DAN CALABRESE - Speech code.

I don't really know a lot about Paula Deen, and whoever/whatever she is seems sort of beside the point. I guess she's an older southern belle with a cooking show, and for some reason she found herself getting deposed as part of a lawsuit - facing the question of whether she had ever used the N-word. Why yes, said the 66-year-old southerner. It's been a while, but yes.

Paula obviously doesn't know the rules of modern American culture. Her life is now over.

The Food Network said Friday it's dumping Paula Deen, barely an hour after the celebrity cook posted the first of two videotaped apologies online begging forgiveness from fans and critics troubled by her admission to having used racial slurs in the past.

The 66-year-old Savannah kitchen celebrity has been swamped in controversy since court documents filed this week revealed Deen told an attorney questioning her under oath last month that she has used the N-word. "Yes, of course," Deen said, though she added, "It's been a very long time."

The Food Network, which made Deen a star with "Paula's Home Cooking" in 2002 and later "Paula's Home Cooking" in 2008, weighed in with a terse statement Friday afternoon.

"Food Network will not renew Paula Deen's contract when it expires at the end of this month," the statement said. Network representatives declined further comment. A representative for Deen did not immediately return phone and email messages seeking comment on the decision.

The door is now open for an all-out assault on Deen, with people looking into everything she's ever said on the subject of race. The Huffington Post seems to thinkit's found some incriminating stuff, although it sounds more to me like the fairly incoherent ramblings of a southern chef who is not an authority on the subject and really didn't need to be asked about it:

And her defense of contemporary race relations is just as bizarre. She thinks the race relations in the South are "good... pretty good." OK. "It will take a long time for it to completely be gone. If it'll ever be gone." Fine. But here's where it starts to get weird. "We're all prejudiced against one thing or another," she continues. "I think black people feel the same prejudice that white people feel." Hmm...

By far the strangest, most awkward moment of the whole talk, however, is when she talks about a black employee of hers named Hollis Johnson. She says that he's become very dear to her in the 18 years she's known him, which is plenty sweet. But then she says points to the jet-colored backdrop behind her and says he's "black as this board." She proceeds to call out to him in the audience and ask him to come on stage, telling him, "We can't see you standing in front of that dark board!" The audience roars with laughter. Severson, shocked, says, "Welcome to New York." And Paula, characteristically, responds, "Welcome to the South."

She does not sound to me like a person who hates black people. She sounds like a person who grew up in the south a long time ago and still carries some of the condescending, insensitive attitudes of the time. I have a problem with these attitudes. I think black people are justified in objecting to them.

But I have a bigger problem with the notion that anyone who is found to have expressed racial attitudes that do not comport to the acceptable speech code/orthodoxy of the day becomes an open, undefendable target for the ruination of their life. The culture of this nation finds itself walking on eggshells to a degree that everyone is scared to death to slip up and say a word, or express an attitude, that does not entirely comport with the rules as enforced by the czars of sensitivity.

If you do, it's only a matter of time before Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition comes after you, and at that point, no employer, TV network, publisher or political supporter will be willing to withstand the pressure. The news media are only too happy to help with the assault, of course, by celebrating every attack on the offender, and digging for everything the person has ever said that can be portrayed as weird, odd or insensitive.

I am not going to defend Paula Deen's racial attitudes. I don't like them. But I'm really getting sick of this game where someone who reveals something not-so-admirable about the way they think becomes the object of ruination for sport by people who use this stuff as their raison d'etre. The compulsory apology, the sensitivity training, the public self-flagellation . . . it's never enough. There is no forgiveness and there is no redemption, because it's so much fun to tear down another human being when the culture decides it's OK for you to do so.

Paula Deen deserves criticism for her racial attitudes. But a lot of people deserve criticism for a lot of things. She does not deserve to have her life ruined, and the people who relish the chance to do it to her are far worse than she is.

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Politics: Do Paula Deen's words justify ruining her life?
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John Hames