Paula Deen: A Cautionary Tale
Brewman Jax: Paula Deen: A Cautionary TaleI recently read an article telling of Paula Deens continued advertising and marketing troubles. Sponsors are bailing left and right and Paulas brand is falling like a rock. Is she being raked over the coals to excess? A lot of people see the fallout from Paula Deens deposition as overkill and piling on; some say she earned the pain shes receiving. No matter ones opinion, Paula Deens troubles show how far this society has to go in the category of racial equity.
Longing for a Fantasy Racist Past or Waxing Ridiculous?
The really bad thing about the Paula Deen incident is not that she admitted to using racial slurs, something she likely shares with the vast majority of white people in general, but that it was done in a deposition for a discrimination case brought against her. A lawyer or other marketing/business professional would acknowledge that she is in a very high-visibility business and recommend that she not risk her good name and image in a court case and quickly settle out of court. I do not know if she got bad advice or no advice, or ignored said advice, or whatever the case, but, her deposition is now public record.
The next thing: what else has she said? Dig into the archives and find out. There are lot of people who will.
I had no opinion of Paula Deen either way. The few articles I read about her were not complimentary, including her cooking style and recipes that require insane quantities of butter, and her deal with a drug company to promote a diabetes prescription drug. However, the article that caught my attention was an interview about one of her past relatives who had a plantation and slaves and lost everything after the Civil War. In the interview, the slaves were called workers and were treated like family and she took great care to make the former slave owner look like a victim. The careful avoidance of any references to slaves and slavery is part of the neo-Confederate rewrite of history. I can see sympathy for a family member, but the rewrite of the history of the antebellum South made me want to vomit. I will not go into the historical treatment of slaves, but I do want to make this note: They were slaves. They were not considered people. They had no rights. I suggest reading the Articles of Secession issued by the seceding states back in the 1860′s; they made it very clear why they wanted to secede: to maintain and expand slavery. The Gone With The Wind South existed only in the movies...
More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/08/10/paula-deen-a-cautionary-tale/
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)Warpy
(110,913 posts)and damaged herself as a brand.
While those of us who grew up in the same place at the same time and got the same racist horseshit fed to us all day, every day, not all of us chose to rebel against it or had any support if we did.
I have enough empathy for her to feel just a bit sorry for her. You can hear worse bigotry in upper class suburbs every day even now. Apparently no one ever really got through to her that this is wrong.
I wish I could say I'm colorblind, but I'm not. That's a work in progress. I wish I could say I'm not blind to all facets of white entitlement, I'm still discovering bits and pieces every day. It's not an easy job to spot it and try to give it away/
I guess Deen just wasn't up to the job.
As for the south, they never did come to terms with the scrapping of the Articles of Confederation and the adoption of the constitution, even though they reluctantly voted for it. They feel they would do much better with each state a country in its own right, printing its own money and making its own treaties. That's really what the call for "states rights" is all about. They want to opt out of a lot of the constitutional government.
djean111
(14,255 posts)inedible, but she was interesting.
Then she was a judge on a finale of Top Chef, I think in Vegas, and she was so casually ugly and mean and rude to one of the contestants that I just disliked her from then on.
mysuzuki2
(3,521 posts)But she sure is dumb and clueless.
marble falls
(56,359 posts)benevolent plantation owners, but there's substantially more claimants than descendants. I don't know whether Deen actually has slave owners blood or not. Either way she has nostalgia for a life style in a slave holding past that not only is she not responsible for she can't remember any sort of real way being three or four generations removed.
Never cared for her shows or recipes. Don't know anything about her relationship with a diabetes treatment industry company and read about how she came about to be deposed. She's seems a closet passive sort of racism. It just seems to me she's paid a dear price and that too much attention and gloating been wasted on her when there is some serious, serious racism here we all need to deal with.
I mean: Deen wanting a plantation wedding vs Zimmerman "defending himself". Or the hatred towards the President, or the high percentage of minorities imprisoned, or .....