I have often said that Paula Deen is to Southern women as Flavor Flav is to black people. It’s possible I was giving her too much credit.
Whatever gets her off the television is OK by me. Now if only we can dig up some dirt on Guy Fieri.
You’re living in the century when every phone is a camera, dude! WHY haven’t you posted that picture?
I was coming back from lunch and my phone was on my desk. I went out for a smoke later, but he was gone. And if he saw me take his picture, he might’ve wanted to talk to me. 
Maybe I could’ve used that opportunity to hear his feelings on Prop 8.
When will Emeril apologize for his human-cayenne eugenics program or Guy Fieri apologize for his third world sweat kitchens?
Well, there were those allegations of homophobia a while back:
Everybody knows he’s working for a fish-alien to help her take over the human race.
Back in 1976, when my great-aunt, who was about the age Deen is now, told the story of the charming “pickaninny” who was on the bus with her and my mother gave me a laser look that told me not to correct the woman, I could maybe - MAYBE - accept that someone who was no longer in the prime of her life might have completely missed the civil rights era.
However, I remember 1986 really clearly. It may have been over 25 years ago, but it was really not okay to say that then. Really. If Paula Deen didn’t learn the lessons of the 60s and 70s by 1986, it’s probably fair to say she’s not going to learn them, ever. And I’m not all that sanguine about what her sons learned from her, either. This is not a case of “times have changed” the way it might have been back in the mid-seventies. The cultural change happened long, long ago and if people missed that boat, they had to have been trying pretty hard to ignore it.
I’ve never said that word without quotation marks around it. If I was pissed off at an African American person and I wanted to call him a name, it would be “asshole” or “shithead”, just like it would be for someone of any other race. It wouldn’t occur to me to use a racial slur because I was mad at someone.
I never said anything about using it as a slur or insult, and I’m not quite sure how you say something with quotation marks around it (air bunnies?). The question she was asked is if she had ever said the word.
After her first honest response of “of course” it went down hill quickly for her to the point she couldn’t climb back up.
My wife can definitely attest to this. It’s crazy. At multiple jobs people will always go up to her with their rantings about minorities or how Barack HUSSEIN Obama is literally Hitler. She’ll look at them and ask, “you have seen me with my husband, who’s black, right? And you don’t notice the pictures of my obviously mixed nephew at my cubicle?”
They’ll either try and backtrack or they’ll glare at her and never talk to her again, which isn’t a bad thing.
I read that court transcript and Paula Deen is going to have a hard time winning her public image back. She repeately lies and constrants herself so many times throughout her testimony. The prosecutor basically pounded her on every turn. When she tires to counter the prosecutor, it makes her more guilty. “We all tell our colored jokes.” :smack:
I think everyone knows she is weird, but it get weird weird. When she wants to have someone favoring her side, she wants to him them a massage:confused:. Also, she has some company meeting in her bathroom at her home. What is weird also about this bathroom is that it has counch for people to sit on and talk. Who puts a counch in their bathroom :eek:
Also she is also a really s(8$%* business woman. Claims not to know how to work email, claims not to know the name of the positions and duties of the people she hires, claims not to know how much net income she makes off her business deals, and claims not to know how much money she give to her brother to keep his/her restaurant afloat (Prosecutor said that there was 300,000 dollars that Deen used on her brother 's business). I will admit that there are alot of business owners who never taken a school course on business management, but when a business gets to be a million dollar empire. you think she might take a interest from the people she hires how to know how to run a business better.
She might make a comeback, but she will alot of her fanbase and profit from it in the end.
“Putting quotation marks around it” in the proverbial sense, i.e. If you’re quoting someone who said it in conversation. Which, of course, shouldn’t be considered racist in that context.
Which brings this brilliant piece of satire to mind.
Maybe I just have a messed up sense of humor, but I’ve had this SNL type skit in my head for the last 2 or 3 days where Paula Deen is back on the set at Food Network and she’s obviously been drinking and she’s calling everyone the n-word and when someone finally calls her out on it she says “n-- please. I PAID to say this. Ima get my money’s worth!”
Yeah, I know. Probably only funny to me, messed up sense of humor and all.
From my point of view, as a 41 year old black man, I don’t really see what the big deal is. This country in general hates black people, and always has. I grew up among white people, and I know they are obsessed with hating black people.
I think it actually does more harm to force her off the air, as if that will actually change the anti-black bias in this country. This bias runs deep in the US, and a change can’t be forced. I think all these forced apologies and firings are pointless. You can’t change people’s heart like this.
I would say leave her on the air and let the ratings be the judge.
I can’t begin to relate to the BS you’ve had to endure in this country, but concerning her show remaining on TFN, in this situation, rating or not, she’s dead in the water.
Advertisers (let alone the network itself) will treat her like a uranium fuel rod now. Pillsbury, Crisco, Nabisco, et al, will not want to be associated with the latest racist-of-the-year award winner.
That’s showbusiness. And capitalism. Gawd bless America!
I was born in the South in the fifties, and as a child I was taught that “Nice people don’t use that word,” so I never have, unless it might have been in quoting someone else with some disgust. It’s funny that I was told the same thing about cuss words and I grew up to swear like a sailor on occasion, but I still won’t use that word and I don’t like it when others do. I don’t know how racist you are, but I think we all may be to some extent. That just means we need to think about our attitudes and the words we use and try to weed that shit out.
I’ve never said or used the word nigger in an insulting way, ever. Never in a joke. Never as a pejorative. The only time I’ve ever availed myself to use the word is to discuss the word itself, like I am doing now. I’ve never even said it jokingly like, “what’s up my nigga!?”
Frankly I find it disturbing and shocking that so many people here feel like everyone is secretly using the word nigger in jokes or insults behind black peoples’ backs.
Not quite the Axis of Evil, but AWESOME nonetheless!
Yeah, I’ve certainly said the word, but only referring to other people saying it, or talking about a joke making fun of racists, like Mel Brooks or SNL.
Speaking of which, I’m now totally picturing Paula Deen in the Chevy Chase role in the word association interview with Richard Pryor.
I love her magazine covers as well. They are completely terrifying! It makes me laugh to reflect that, with all the fashion magazines in the rack next to her cooking rag, hers is the most aggressively Photoshopped cover picture.
Highlights:
She admitted not just saying “nigger,” but calling a black person a nigger, in earnest. As in “Then this nigger came in the bank and held a gun to my head,” when she told her husband about a robbery where she worked.
Some of her testimony showed clearly that she was trying to deceive through vagueness, and fudge facts so she looked less racist, but the lawyer pinned her down, and she came out looking racist and dishonest about it.
Everyone agrees that when Paula was planning her brother’s wedding, she referred to a restaurant she’d been to where the waiters were all black men dressed in white coats and black ties, and that she spoke about possibly doing a similar thing for the wedding (but didn’t actually follow through). The plaintiff says Paula casually used racist language when discussing it and said they couldn’t do it because of how people would react. Paula says she didn’t use racist language, and merely mentioned how nice that restaurant’s setup had been, but that they couldn’t emulate it because people might misunderstand the intent. But when pressed she admits she knew that the restaurant was presenting the servers as though they were “house slaves” in the antebellum South.
exactly. The word makes me sick my my stomach. I have never said it, ever
In a world where Don Imus is still pulling in plenty of dough, I don’t think Paula Deen has anything to worry about.