Paula Deen
Jun. 21st, 2013 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxYou know, as awful as reading this crap is, what's worse is reading internet comments DEFENDING this crap. Comments on The Daily Beast make you long for a Tyrion smacking Joffrey gif on endless loop.
People are disgusting.
From TVGuide:
Paula Deen acknowledged using the N-word during a videotaped deposition last month — but that's not the only eyebrow-raising admission from the celebrity cook.According to The Daily Beast, Deen also said during the deposition that she wasn't bothered by the fact that her brother watched pornography at work and showed it to other co-workers, and stated that she and her husband taught their children that it was only OK to use the N-word in a joke, or when repeating something that a black person had said.
When recalling that she once had to fire a female manager after discovering that she had had sexual relationships with underage servers, Deen referred to the employee as "a piece of p---y," the Daily Beast reports.
And in regards to the now-infamous "Southern plantation"-themed reception she wanted to plan for her brother's wedding, Deen explained: "What I would really like is a bunch of little n----rs 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."
Food Network should be on the phone to their lawyers now. She doesn't need to air there ever again.
John Oliver on The Daily Show got in a few good digs.
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Date: 2013-06-21 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 02:27 pm (UTC)Who the hell is this woman, that she thinks she can get away with talking like this?
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Date: 2013-06-21 02:31 pm (UTC)and...
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Date: 2013-06-21 02:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 02:41 pm (UTC)The Food Network is basically the cooking channel and has all sorts of hosts. Paula Deen is a 60ish white haired deeply (exaggeratedly) Southern. (There's Southern and there's deep fried impersonating Scarlett O'Hara's sacchrine OTT accent. Deen's is the latter. It's an affectation. Normal southerners do not have her accent. People who don't want to pretend they're living in Gone With the Wind do not have the Southern accent that she does. There is one, but it's not like hers.)
She's made a shitload of money off of her schtick. We're talking not just her show(s) on Food Network (Or the fact that she's wrangled a show or more for both of her adult sons there as well), or her cookbooks, or her restaurants, but she has also has a furniture line, a kitchen line, a fabric line, etc. She's aspiring to Southern Fried "Martha Stewart".
I think she had better place those plans on hold. (Though I'm sure that when Good Morning America fires her as a consultant {she called in "exhausted" this morning as per host Matt Lauer {and he was reportedly rather snarky in saying that.} Fox News will be happy to snatch her up.)
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Date: 2013-06-21 03:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 03:22 pm (UTC)More from the lawsuit:
This runs bone-deep.
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Date: 2013-06-21 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 04:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 04:48 pm (UTC)Thank you. Her voice is like nails on a chalkboard to me because of that fake accent. I have a Southern accent. So do most of the people I speak to on a daily basis. NONE OF US SOUND LIKE THAT. The only region of the country where that accent originates from is Hollywood.
stated that she and her husband taught their children that it was only OK to use the N-word in a joke, or when repeating something that a black person had said.
Oh, well, that's okay then! ::facepalm:: I'm going to be disgusted with the Food Network if they don't get her off the air as fast as they can.
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Date: 2013-06-21 05:00 pm (UTC)Deen made a pile of money off a certain idea of old-school southern culture. In return, she had an obligation to that culture–an obligation not to embody its worst, most shameful history and attitudes. Instead, in one swoop, fairly or not, she single-handedly affirmed people’s worst suspicions of people who talk and eat like her–along with glibly insulting minorities, she slurred many of the very fans who made her successful.
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Date: 2013-06-21 05:16 pm (UTC)OMG. Racist jokes about their cultural group offend people, Miss Deen! She is so deeply racist she doesn't even know she's racist.
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Date: 2013-06-21 05:20 pm (UTC)She's quite popular in Georgia for her down-home cooking.
But she sounds like she's living in Gone With the Wind, same attitudes as Gone with the Wind, and same persona. ie. The Southern stereotype.
And oh dear, I didn't realize she was a racist. I knew she was a bit of an idiot. But not a racist and a sexist.
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Date: 2013-06-21 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 05:57 pm (UTC)And just read the non-pology issued by her PR people. Apparently she's old and Southern so it's okay...
I'm not as old (although my mother is), but I am Southern, and it is NOT okay.
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Date: 2013-06-21 06:06 pm (UTC)Truly, what's in her deposition is shameful, and made even more so because she's utterly oblivious to what's shameful about it!
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Date: 2013-06-21 06:12 pm (UTC)Right, the problem with it was the media...
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Date: 2013-06-21 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 06:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 08:06 pm (UTC)Just, she seems incredibly savvy at constructing a mask which appeals to the public, so successful that she's built an empire on her own persona. How does she let this 'likeable' persona slip? To the extent that she appears horrendous?
I just... it seems off to me. Not the fact that there's this grossness underneath her public persona. But maybe that she's become so convinced of her ~appeal~ that she thinks she's invincible, that her ~appeal~ is innate so whatever comes out of her mouth is pure gold.
(Sorry for the rampant speculation, but there's just something inexplicable about the turn in her behavior. LMAO or to put it another way, as your icon demonstrates, it's like evil soulless Paula Deen stopped trying harder.)
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Date: 2013-06-21 08:20 pm (UTC)Which isn't to say people shouldn't call them out. On the contrary. Sometimes, it works.
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Date: 2013-06-21 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 08:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 10:01 pm (UTC)Even reading comments "in support" (Blergh!) of Paula Deen in this, you see a lot of assumption by bigots that "of course" people agree with them (deeeeeep down).
I wonder whether she said it in front of this white employee because "of course" this woman would agree.
That doesn't explain why she thinks her brother showing a female employee porn while at work would fly.
Or why she doesn't see the problem when she's testifying that "Of COURSE she's used the n-word!" (Because she thinks 'everyone' does...?)
Or why she thinks jokes about ANY of this would ever actually be funny. And that the people who find it galling just don't have 'a sense of humor' (Blergh again!)
In the end, beats me.
But, wow, does this deposition out her as a piece of work.
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Date: 2013-06-22 01:48 am (UTC)Oh, for fuck's sake. I think pretty much everyone knows what people consider offensive, it's just that some people don't care. So she's not only racist and sexist, she's just plain dumb.
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Date: 2013-06-22 04:42 am (UTC)I knew she was a completely craven individual when she accepted money to push a type-2 diabetes drug. Her entire career has been based on helping people to develop type-2 diabetes. All her recipes contain cup upon cup of butter, sugar, canned fruit cocktail, cream cheese, whipping cream, sour cream, mayonnaise, cake mix, etc. etc. Utterly disgusting.
But this takes the gooey butter cake. A "plantation wedding like in the Shirley Temple days?" Oh. My. GOD. She's just released a tearful "apology" video on YouTube in which she blames everything on her "exhaustion." Yeah, Paula - "exhaustion" turned you into a racist pig, just as "exhaustion" made Lindsay Lohan drink, do drugs and steal things, and "exhaustion" made Mel Gibson spew anti-Semitic, misogynistic rants. "Exhaustion" is such a great excuse for the vile things these people do.
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Date: 2013-06-23 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-26 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-26 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-26 02:53 am (UTC)I knew she came off as something of an airhead. And I knew that the accent was exaggerated (to say the least).
But, no, I didn't know that she was the person that her own words paint her to be (or that she was such an airhead that she doesn't understand that her words -- and actions! -- are objectionable).
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Date: 2013-06-26 02:55 am (UTC)Sad.
Disgusting... but also sad.
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Date: 2013-06-26 02:57 am (UTC)Truly, reading her say that was breathtaking in many ways.
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Date: 2013-06-26 03:00 am (UTC)I don't know what's more disturbing, that she is so blase about it... or that she's oblivious to it.
Either way, it's awful.
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Date: 2013-06-26 03:05 am (UTC)Either way, it's awful.
Also awful is the way that the media covers it, as though it was just about her using a single racial slur. Reading her deposition it's clear that the racial slur is just evidence of all that's wrong with her mindset. And then reading what she's accused of actually doing in her BUSINESS (not paying employees fair wages, having racial glass ceiling, etc) and it's pretty reprehensible across the board.
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Date: 2013-06-26 03:09 am (UTC)Since she's partial owner, she was brought into the deposition to establish that she was AWARE of all the stuff going on, hence "just because he has a sense of humor {gag} doesn't mean he can't run a business..."
... Yeah.
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Date: 2013-06-26 03:11 am (UTC)Between that and the voting right's act stuff from the Supreme Court day, it's hard not to feel as though we're going backwards these days.
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Date: 2013-06-26 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-26 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-26 03:16 am (UTC)And, yeah, it's a LOT like Mel Gibson. Take off the fame and the facade and what you're left with is pretty disgusting.