TOO HOT TO HANDLE:
Paula Deen (
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The Food Network should have given Paula Deen the boot years ago.
And not just because she shamelessly pushed killer diabetes-inducing food and then hooked up with a pharmaceutical company to push a $500-a-month diabetes drug. It should have fired her for her racist remarks, which were already a matter of speculation and rumor.
But it took a public scandal like the one she’s embroiled in now for the Food Network to finally throw Deen out of the frying pan and into the fired.
It’s a matter of record that racism and unethical practices have been bubbling about the Deen money machine for years — but the network suits clearly chose to ignore them. Until they couldn’t.
Why didn’t they fire her sorry ass in 2007 when she suggested that her brother’s wedding be a plantation-style affair, complete with middle-aged black men in white jackets and black bowties serving as waiters? Waiters — or slaves?
Slaves. In fact, she allegedly used the N-word when describing the fantasy wait staff to Lisa Jackson, the former employee who is now suing for racial and sexual harassment at Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House, which Deen owns with her brother Bubba.
Not enough fat for the fryer? How about that stunt last year when Deen gave a video interview in which she talked about her great-grandfather, who owned 37 slaves and then killed himself when he lost them after the Civil War, saying, “Back then, black folk were such an integral part of our lives. They were like our family, and for that reason, we didn’t see ourselves as being prejudiced.”
Since she seems to think she was alive in 1865, I can only guess that some of her best friends back then were black. Slaves.
Was that not a concern for the Food Network? Did they not see the grease on the walls?
The woman is such a racist she doesn’t even realize she’s a racist. I mean, seriously — who thinks it’s OK to have said the N-word because it was a commonly used expression in the South back in the 1960s?
Meanwhile, the racial slur scandal is going to cost her in endorsements — if not customers.
Yesterday, Smithfield dropped Deen’s ham line, leaving us all to ponder whether a girl can ever recover from losing her hams.
QVC, however, was still wavering, and had — at press time — only said it was “reviewing” its business arrangement with Deen.
Not to worry, though. The racial slurring has been good for her Southern restaurants. Since the scandal hit, lines of morbidly obese, mostly white people have been lining up around her Savannah, Ga., eateries The Lady and Sons, and the notorious Uncle Bubba’s.
Me? I just wish she’d go away, but she won’t. To continue the pork theme, she’s too much of a publicity hog.
So now we’re going to have to endure the painful Paula Deen Apology Tour. In fact, after backing out of an interview with Matt Lauer on “Today,” she re-upped yesterday and agreed to appear on the program Wednesday.
Apparently she doesn’t understand that Lauer himself is on the frying pan and this interview is more than just pork-belly filler.
It’s the whole pig.