Paula Deen isn’t really on trial for using the N-word. She’s on trial for the crime of being Paula Deen, a woman who cooks with lard (yum!), shows up for the Today Show wreathed in tears and garbed in an inappropriately girlish hue of pink, and says unfortunate things such as “I is who I is.”
Think of Paula as the anti-Julia Child. Unlike Julia Child, who also loved butter and cream but had the discipline to take only one bite, thus preserving her well-bred appearance, Paula goes whole hawg for fattening (but tasty) pimento cheese rather than pâté. She must be punished!...Later: "If they couldn’t get her on those delicious globs of butter, any weapon will do."
Hays is right for half a sentence, anyway: Paula Deen isn't really on trial. She was fired, not by the International Left or the PC Police, but by a major corporation that didn't want to deal with the controversy her case engendered. That's capitalism, comrade!
Maybe what Hays means by "trial" is that people have been making fun of Deen, which Hays may consider Alinskyite, the usual conservative complaint when some wingnut makes an ass of him or herself. But these days, every time celebrities get their tit caught in a wringer, they get heckled mercilessly. I didn't see Hays blubbering in National Review that Lindsay Lohan was "on trial" for being a former child star.
I can see sympathizing with Deen if you actually believe she's just a simple belle who don't know what-all she was sayin' and is caught up by forces she doesn't understand, or if you think the case has been overblown, as Bob Somersby does. But neither Hays nor the other less scrupulous conservatives who've taken up the cause ("The Far Left shows blatant hypocrisy in crucifying Paula Deen," "The Lynching of Paula Deen," etc) are doing that.
I expect they're misrepresenting the event so badly because they think there's some culture-war capital to wring out of it. Deen is, from all I can tell, a female cooking show equivalent of Larry the Cable Guy, marketed to people as a lovable Southern artifact like NASCAR and Moon Pies. Now that she's become a laughingstock, these guys are in a rush to attribute her downfall to Political Correctness, so they can rile up the dwindling number of people who think that the liberals with whom Deen signed a million-dollar TV contract have put her "on trial" for having quaint cornbread ways, and will do the same to them.
Also, Hays' commenters seem obsessed with the idea that black people can say "nigger" and they can't (or, rather, can't without some pointy-head getting all pissy with them). I assume the people who'll buy this guff are probably delighted that the Voting Rights Act got gut-shot in the Supreme Court. But that's obviously because I'm the real bigot.
UPDATE. I see the Center for American Progress and the ACLU have cut ties with Deen -- oh, wait, it's actually Caesar's Palace and Walmart. When did they become part of the liberal conspiracy?
Hey, I acted like a racist idiot and market forces responded. So how come I'm fired? This was not the Rebuplican Reality I was promised! (Seriously, whenever someone complains about PC, grab your wallet and sense of irony).
ReplyDelete"The Far Left shows blatant hypocrisy in crucifying Paula Deen"
ReplyDeleteI'm dissapointed that one didn't do the "how come rappers can say it and not old racist white ladies?" On the other hand, it did offer comparisons to Robert Byrd, Chappaquiddick, Barack Obama doing cocaine, and calling Perez Hilton, "a known gay supremacist bigot"... the only thing worse being an unknown gay supremacist bigot, I suppose.
"Also, Hays' commenters seem obsessed with the idea that black people can say "nigger" and they can't (or, rather, can't without some pointy-head getting all pissy with them). ". Don't any of these people have siblings? 'Cause I can call my kid brother a numbnuts and smack him upside the head, but if you do it, I'd gut ya, And, oh yeah, there might have once been something about capturing people and, you know, selling them.
ReplyDeleteI think these right wingers should feel free to go out in the streets of major US cities and freely use the N-word. And see what kind of response they will get.
ReplyDeleteRichard Daley (the Elder Boss) got mocked for saying "they have vilified me, they have crucified me, they've even criticized me." It seems that to our right-wing friends that's not a comic example of rhetorical anticlimax, it's a perfectly executed crescendo.
ReplyDeleteThe weird thing is, they're already free to do so and since they feel such an urge to do it, why don't they?
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the Publisher in Foucaults Pendulum.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it's the N word that did her in so much as making black employees use separate bathrooms and not let them come in through the front door (i.e. the sort of actionable discrimination that every schoolkid learns about in 2nd grade, and is then lovingly told that it's all in the past) along with that old standby, slavery-themed weddings: http://www.salon.com/2013/06/19/paula_deen_i_want_black_people_to_play_slaves_at_a_wedding/
ReplyDeleteSlavery. Themed. Weddings. I don't know what goes on in the mind of a wedding planner who thinks "Hmm, what will help people relax and have fun at this wedding? I know! Slavery!" and I don't want to. I also don't want to know what goes on the mind of people who read an invitation and start getting their finest seersucker suit ready.
Quite recently, it was Hostess and Papa John's who were the victims of liberal 'persecution' and 'silencing.' They survived, because junk food is a bipartisan issue. Deen will too: butter and cream will be the instruments of her liberation, not her oppression. The great thing about American celebrity is that it's impossible to leave behind, even when you want to.
As far as Deen's 'cornbread ways', I admit that I'm not the target demographic, but Deen always seemed a bit...too cheerful to me, to the point of creepiness. Like, if Hunter S. Thompson ever hallucinated about a manic, over-indulging TV chef who represented the rot at the heart of bourgeois domestic culture, she probably looked a lot like Paula Deen.
You should really include Domino's .
ReplyDeleteI'm still wondering how Deen managed to get a tv gig. From the recent photos I've seen of her, you could use them to scare small children (or, "pickaninnies," as Deen would refer to them).
ReplyDeleteI also don't understand how she thinks she's keeping quaint white antebellum Southern traditions alive by giving its advocates heart attacks.
There will be a place for Deen on the soon-to-be-launched Fox Food Network, where she can feature home-made Nig -- uh, Chocolate Babies.
ReplyDeleteBut that's obviously because I'm the real bigot.
ReplyDeleteYou are!?!? You bastard!
I think the word you're lookin' for is tar.
ReplyDeleteIf the right wing is interested in winning elections ever again, they would do well to keep their mouths shut when somebody gets fired for saying n****r on TV. It's like a kneejerk reaction that they can't control.
ReplyDeleteIt's not, of course. The real reason is (as others in this thread have already said) that they figure they can wring a few dollars out of the racist rubes downstream from their intellectual urination. But again, elections, guys? Ever again? They seem to think they can have their cake and eat it too. I sure hope they're wrong.
I also don't understand how she thinks she's keeping quaint white antebellum Southern traditions alive by giving its advocates heart attacks.
ReplyDeleteIn the white antebellum south the goal was not to do enough labor to cause the heart attack.
You're all making me snackhungry. You wouldn't like me when I'm peckish.... wait.... screwed up the nerd joke. *sigh' Jus' gimme a piece of chocolate.
ReplyDeleteLooks to me that nearly all the vilification of the hideous-human-mask-wearing Paula is coming from the Food Network and fucking WALMART. Mostly we hippies have just been completely unsurprised at the whole thing.
ReplyDeleteTo be scrupulously fair, those ellipses are really misleading.
ReplyDeleteHere's a fuller transcript, and she definitely was sort of looking back to a sort of minstrel show, self-serving ideal of a south where happy black men and women were proud to be professional butlers to classy, kindly white plantation owners. In a not too generous interpretation, she could have been going for a turn of the century kind of thing.
It's not like she wanted to have black people in chains with a whip-wielding overseer.
Again, not trying to defend her, it's just an important enough issue that I still think it's important to be really clear about what we're talking about.
The turn of the Century was 13 years ago, not a 113. But hey, what's a 100 years..
ReplyDeleteI thought she was on trial for owning a restaurant where, allegedly, there were constant racist and sexist remarks combined with pervasive sexual harassment and physical intimidation.
ReplyDeleteSeems like a pretty good reason to hold a trial to me!
I'm not at all clear on whether she's actually on the hook, or if she just testified because she would've noticed the environment alleged in the complaint.
The reporting on this whole tsimiss has been really bad and unclear, from what I've seen.
Fixed.
ReplyDeleteHeh, the fact still sneaks up on me all the time.
ReplyDeleteThey're not chocolate babies, they're chocolate flavor babies! So, chocolate babies are neither chocolate nor babies. Discuss.
ReplyDeleteI'd eat pretty much anything right about now,
ReplyDelete" I don't know what goes on in the mind of a wedding planner who thinks "Hmm, what will help people relax and have fun at this wedding? I know! Slavery!" and I don't want to."
ReplyDeleteIt's probably similar to what goes on in the mind of a wedding planner who thinks "Hmm, how about we butcher a Redwood grove?" and does it.
Oh, Cheese and Crackers!
ReplyDeleteLook chuckleheads, Paula Deen was a famous TV chef who couldn't really cook. Likability was what kept her on the air. And yes, that means she needs to be likable with black viewers as well. You can't suppress voters in the Nielsen ratings. (You're trying to figure out how to do that, aren't you?)
Like, if Hunter S. Thompson ever hallucinated about a manic, over-indulging TV chef who represented the rot at the heart of bourgeois domestic culture, she probably looked a lot like Paula Deen.
ReplyDeletePretty sure he would have checked himself into detox at that point.
Until fairly recently there was a food product called a "Plantation Brownie". The maker was bought by Keebler, then Kellogg's bought Keebler and shut down the Plantation Brownie business.
ReplyDeleteThe only candy that was rated X by an all-white jury.
ReplyDeleteNothing wrong with scrupulous fairness. And I think that there is a small bit of daylight between 'black people in chains' and 'black people in butler getups.' Not a whole lot, though, especially given the context.
ReplyDeleteYeah, you're threadin' a real swollen camel, unless you actually deal with what the butler brings in.
ReplyDeleteYeah, later on in the transcript the questioner pointedly asks her why the staff at the wedding couldn't have been of multiple races, rather than just black, and she doesn't really have an answer, largely, I think, because there is no answer to that question that isn't racist. The questioner gets her to admit that the people doing the serving in the pre-war south were slaves, but it still comes off like she wants to hang on to the fantasy of an idealized, benign south without real racial strife.
ReplyDeleteThis is a common and -I think- pernicious fantasy that is worth discussing and calling out for what it is.
Also worth doing is exploring more deeply the very serious allegations that have been leveled against her restaurant.
But, as I'm sure we all agree, it has to come from a factual position based on what Deen has actually said and done, and so much of the reporting about this whole thing doesn't reach that standard. I clicked on Roy's link to Bob Somersby, and, holy shit. A lot of people in the media are just telling blatant, flat-out lies about what Deen has said, and many more are so vague that they do nothing but confuse the issue.
It's incredibly frustrating, because I care about language and I care about racism and I want to see thoughtful, accurate discussion about this whole thing.
We were somewhere around Birmingham on the edge of the kitchen when the butter began to melt. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should cook..."And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the refrigerator was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the range...
ReplyDeleteThese were the brownies liberals would give to black people in exchange for voting for Democrats. This is the origin of the tales Republicans tell of the liberal plantation.
ReplyDeleteSeems like a pretty good reason to hold a trial to me!
ReplyDeleteOnly if you have a moron for a defense attorney. You would think a good lawyer would have asked her all of these questions ahead of time and then told her to settle no matter how high the pile of required was going to be.
Winning or losing the lawsuit is irrelevant now. Had she settled a few people might have heard about it but it would have mostly been written off by the media as just paying off a nuisance
Don't you guys get it?? The only reason market forces are rejecting Deen is because the American People have been brainwashed by the liberal MSM, effete academia, and 150 years of slow, painstaking progress that drew on epic courage, heartwrenching hope, and shameful quantities of bloodshed. IT IS ALL A LIE.
ReplyDeleteWell, stay away from the urinal cakes.
ReplyDeleteIn tvtropes it's called "Arson, Murder and Jaywalking".
ReplyDeleteAl Capone. Tax Evasion.
ReplyDeleteHey, I'm a Raised Right Man.
ReplyDeleteHays does not understand the fact that people, including conservatives, can be and should be fired for being irresponsible unprofessional assholes on the job. Deen was an irresponsible unprofessional asshole on the job.
ReplyDeleteHays can prove this out by calling her fellow co-workers insulting names and see if she keeps her job.
It's so typical that the commenters (and everybody defending Deen/attacking Food Network on Facebook, etc.) are all laser-like focused on "why can rappers say the N-word and Paula can't???" From how furious and weepy conservatives get over it, you'd think it was the preeminent civil rights injustice of its time.
ReplyDeleteI wondered if it was some sort of forbidden-fruit thing, but if one day we all woke up and it suddenly was all right, all the secret thrills and piss shivers of hiding behind Chris Rock routines would suddenly vanish since there wouldn't be any PC weenies to get all steamed up about it. They want to be able to say it precisely so that they can upset people with it, yet when people get rightfully upset, they complain they're being persecuted.
Bob Somerby has got to be Bob Somerby. It's weird to actually hear him speak. You'd never guess that he produces more anti-liberal screeds than many conservative bloggers. He usually makes a good point, but I don't share his vision that liberals need to be perfect in order to correct the public discourse and somehow shame the conservatives by our example. Sorry Bob, the right wing already owns Jesus™.
ReplyDeleteI love how whenever a right-wing doofus is berated for some sleazy behavior or speech the immediate word of choice for their knee-jerk wingnut supporters is "lynching". To my knowledge, no one went around saying the ordeal of Bill Clinton was a "high-tech castration" or that Anthony Weiner was a victim of a "digital gas chamber" or that John Edwards was "raped by the media". It's bad enough they wear their bigotry on their sleeves, but do they have to be such fucking assholes, too?
ReplyDeleteLook at you crucifying him with your mild disagreement!
ReplyDeleteLAST NIGHT I SAW LESTER MADDOX ON A TV SHOW/WITH SOME SMART-ASS NEW YORK JEW... and his hair was perfect.
ReplyDeleteWell, all liberals are perverts, see, so it's OK. This is how things like DOMA and Prop H8 being overturned get transmogrified into "the right of dudes to buttfuck each other." [NB: that's not an actual quote; in reality, their description of gay sex is much more gross.]
ReplyDeleteRoy, how do you feel about your home town being "First in Flight" as of today? F the Wright brothers.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Whitehead
Fox has the story
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/06/27/it-official-connecticut-gov-signs-bill-writing-wright-brothers-out-history/
See also.
ReplyDeleteDo Gay Supremacists wear pink sheets and burn rainbow flags on your front lawn?
ReplyDelete12 years ago, the millennium was in 2001
ReplyDeleteI'd suspected that she was already on the outs, after blithely switching from pimping for Big Butter to pimping for Big Pharma after being diagnosed with the 'beetus. Like Guy Fieri, she was a celebrity chef who favored easy comfort food over rampant foodism, and is pretty easily replaceable, but the same people who usually preach the Gospel of Personal Responsibility regarding lifestyle choices such as lobster-butter shooters are willing to set it aside to absolve Deen of any responsibility she may have in this. As per usual, it's all about the hypocrisy with NRO.
ReplyDeleteConservatives may own Jesus but liberals must love thy enemy and turn the other cheek.
ReplyDeleteNext he will try to holocaust Sara Palin
ReplyDelete"The N-Word": Black people can use the word any time they want but if a white guy says it, there will be hell to pay. "Cracker" on the other hand, anyone can say the word “cracker.” The Nabisco Company has made a fortune slapping that word on most all their products and nobody gives a damn. Imagine what would happen if that very same company were to come out with a product called “Chocolate Glazed Nigger Snaps!” There would be hell to pay. Why the double standard?
ReplyDeleteThe Bulger Trial. I understand that he is a mobster and a murderer but that’s no good reason to bring race into the picture. The media is all “Whitey Bulger” this and “Whitey Bulger” that, “Whitey Whitey Whitey!” I get it, he’s a white guy but what does that fact have to do with anything? Did we call the O.J. Simpson Trial the Blackie Simpson Trial? No we did not.* Why the double standard?
ReplyDeleteWith a slightly pained look, the fiend!
ReplyDeleteYou'd never guess that he produces more anti-liberal screeds than many conservative bloggers.
ReplyDeleteMostly about Rachel Maddow. I never understood that.
Other than that, this is classic Somerby nuttiness for two reasons: He's written about Deen nine times this week, and those nine posts are peppered with references to the Clintons and "Candidate Gore." Someone needs to tell him that political references don't age like scotch whiskey.
liberals must love thy enemy and turn the other cheek.
ReplyDeleteI've already covered my originalist 18th-century definition of "love" in the previous thread, and I also have a useful interpretation of turning the other cheek. So I'm all set.
Still, it's unfortunate that she must cede the field to dissolute leftists like Anthony Bourdain, who indulges in only the most exactingly healthful recipes.
ReplyDeleteDeen, Deen .... Isn't she the Typhoid Mary of Type II diabetes?
ReplyDeleteIn Paula Deen's mind, dressing the black men up in white coat and black pants made it all better. She's a clueless bigot who mimics what she was taught and never thought for herself. Yes, it was inappropriate and, yes, she's all cornbread, but bigots exist and neck tie parties and burning at the stake are not the way to go. It wasn't so long ago that Archie Bunker, a dyed-in-the-wool bigot was all the rage and he wasn't even subtle. It was humorous. Now everyone is just waiting to be offended and get their 15 minutes of rage at the expense of everyone else. Let it go already. So, she's not evolved. Neither are a lot of other people.
ReplyDeleteYou might be missing why Archie Bunker was humorous.
ReplyDeleteSweet Sweetback in more ways that one.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, the intersection of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue in Manhattan.
ReplyDeleteAs a Southerner, I think it's important daylight even though it's small. There's been a lot of talk about how it's not surprising that Deen is a racist, because she's Southern. Which is bullshit; I now live in the northern city that MLK said (with very, very good reason) that Mississippians should come to to learn how to hate.
ReplyDeleteWhat is distinctively Southern about Deen and racism is her paternalistic, romanticized racism: they were the good old days because we like black people and they were better off in their place as inferiors. It's not better than explicitly hostile racism; it may be worse, in ways I can't really articulate. But it is Southern in ways that are resonant with the region's history. How important that is for practical reasons I'm not sure, but it is sort of a helpful distinction when I'm explaining the peculiar racism of the South.
In 1968 I saw a film called Greetings that had a character trying to avoid the draft by flunking his physical. He goes into a bar in Harlem and says, "OK, which nigger wants to take me on?" The only scene I remember. Later I learned that it was Brian DePalma's first movie, and Robert De Niro was in it.
ReplyDeleteHe doesn't even make a good point, in this case.
ReplyDelete"Do we normally form our judgments of people by describing the bad behavior, even the murderous behavior, of other people, long ago, in the area where they were born?"
This is mentioned because Ta-Nehisi Coates brought up the lynching of Shirley Sherrod's cousin in Southwest Georgia, where Deen grew up. Bobby Hall was lynched soooo long ago: in the 1940s, when Deen was born. Coates was judging Deen based on things she said, and explaining them by way of history.
I haven't seen Somerby mention the part about her fucked-up wedding plans. But she doesn't use the N-word, so it's cool.
It's important to note that Paula Deen wasn't fired after the deposition testimony she came out. She was fired after she booked the Today Show, cancelled at the last minute, the put out an absolutely insane video followed by an only slightly less insane video.
ReplyDeleteShe could have issued an apology, shut up, and weathered the storm. Given her fanbase, she probably could have gotten away with it. But she chose to be a total PR nightmare, and really gave Food Network and her sponsors no choice but to cut ties.
Daley's press secretary, Earl Bush: "Don't write what he said. Write what he meant to say."
ReplyDeleteMy father, who grew up poor in Atlanta in the 1930s, always put it this way: in the south, you could get as close as you want - as long as you didn't get too high (as in "uppity" to use the more common phrasing). In the north, you could get as high as you wanted as long as you didn't get too close.
ReplyDeleteDon't know how accurate that was (or is) but it's an attempt to articulate the distinctions you've noted.
I'm the opposite of you--a born-and-bred Chicagoan now living in MLK's home city. (And also African-American, FWIW.) And I don't get where her "good old days" ideas come from. (The year she was born was the year Jackie Robinson integrated the Major Leagues.)
ReplyDeleteIt's "paternalistic, romanticized racism" but it's also entitlement--she doesn't say these things because she knows, as part of Savannah's power structure (which she is) she won't be called to account.
And there was a giant flag--a pat of chicken-fried butter against a gravy-brown field
ReplyDeleteAgreed. And then he insists, over multiple posts, that Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer for The Atlantic, needs to prod the NY Times to print a correction on the article. I'm not quite what TNC must have done to Somersby to elicit such treatment. It is a really strange post and subsequent follow-up. I was reminded why I no longer read the Howler often anymore, since Somersby writes like he enjoys the smell of his own farts way too much.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Roy, the Randy Newman cite is subversively funny.
ReplyDeleteAs one who covered (the real) Mayor Daley and had Earl Bush down my neck frequently, I can tell you that 'don't write what he said, write what he meant to say' happened all the time. Daley had a press conference every single morning when he was in town and took on the questions of the day. Sometimes his answers were so incoherent we reporters had to caucus to work out 'what he meant to say'. It wasn't really pernicious, it was a public service. Still, yet, and however . . . we went along with it.
ReplyDeleteMy personal pinnacle was when I wrote 'Daley became red-faced and angry'. He opened the next day's press conference with a red-faced, angry tirade, the burden of which was 'THE MAYOR DOES NOT GET RED-FACED AND ANGRY!'
Daley was famous for his malaprops and verbal bungles, but I don't think he cared most days. His speech on President Kennedy's assassination blew us all away with his eloquence.
When I travel in time, I'm going to the Apollo Theater when the Beastie Boys raced out on the stage with their standard opening shout, 'How are all you niggers doing?' and received the opposite of the expected response.
ReplyDeleteLet it go already. So, she's not evolved. Neither are a lot of other people.
ReplyDeleteGet back to us when you get paid in beer instead of, you know, money.
Go to so much hell. (Almost wrote go so much Mozart... Your name is trying to hypnotize me!)
ReplyDeleteNow I'm craving moon pies, damnit. And you can't buy those in Yankee Landwhere I now live. As for the black people calling each other names, my liberal wife says the same goddamned thing. She refuses to understand why it's OK for them but not white people. I'm from a southern family and I once referred to Brazil nuts by the name I always heard them called. I thought my wife would kill me. Seriously, I didn't know that they were Brazil nuts, I thought the real name was n-toe. One of my favorite German confections is officially named N-toes, really
ReplyDeleteGreat, now I'm craving n-toes, the German treat.
I hate Brazil nuts, always have
my mom cooked with bacon grease. when i first moved in with my wife and we had bacon I was helping her clean up and asked her where she kept her bacon grease, hahaha she asked me what the fuck? throw it away, it was actually hard for me to do. My mom had a bacon grease can.
ReplyDeleteWe know. But no one asked you to make an example of yourself and yet here we find ourselves.
ReplyDeletei agree with you. she thought an old timey plantation wedding would be the bees-knees.
ReplyDeleteI figure that she still uses that expression, too.
Your wife is trying to save your heart. Appreciate it.
ReplyDeletemy dad, who was born in 1926 in the great state of Louisiana told me that Jim Crow was shameful.
ReplyDeletewhat do you know about it, Dutchy?
ReplyDeletesounds like the press during the days of chickengeorge bush.
ReplyDeleteHey, it's Danish, make a donut-joke. And Denmark has its own shameful history of slavery.
ReplyDeleteme too, i had to stop reading him because of that
ReplyDeleteno she wasn't. she just thought cooking with bacon grease is weird. she's a yankee.
ReplyDeleteYeah, nothing wrong with cooking something in the grease of something else. But storing it? Don't that shit go rancid?
ReplyDeletenot if you cook with it enough
ReplyDelete(/voice of experience)
Grandma?
ReplyDeleteMy New England grandparents always saved their bacon grease. It's not North v South; it's raised or not raised during the Great Depression.
ReplyDeleteHe can't stand that she makes fun of Republican morons in and out of office by using facts and logic. For a so-called humorist, he doesn't seem to understand how it works when she uses it against the Republicans.
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather used to say that you can always find a lawyer who will tell you he thinks he can win regardless of the real circumstances.
ReplyDeleteThink of Paula as the anti-Julia Child. Unlike Julia Child, who also loved butter and cream but had the discipline to take only one bite, thus preserving her well-bred appearance,
ReplyDeleteFuck that, Julia Child was a bon vivant, she wasn't the type to not eat whatever she wanted to. Years ago, I went to a BBQ pit in Dallas, and there were pictures of Julia on the wall, chomping on ribs and drinking beer. It was glorious.
Sounds more like you're describing Boys from Brazil nuts.
ReplyDeleteOr kissing Santa Claus.
ReplyDeleteI was expecting a link to that "Eat da poopoo" guy.
ReplyDeleteUgh, yeah, I don't even wanna think about Martin Ssempa, who is pretty evil.
ReplyDeleteFor God, for country, and for Yale.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's always a violation of someone's freedom of speech (such as Limbaugh's advertisers jumping the sinking ship) if a corporation chooses to break ties with someone who said repellant things. Wingnut views not only have a right to be expressed, but are said to be repressed when someone else isn't willing to pay to have them expressed.
ReplyDeleteThe wingnuts should take a hint from, of all people, Cindy Crawford. I saw her interviewed back in the day and she was asked about being dropped by Cadillac as a spokesperson. And she said, well, my job is to help them sell cars, and the target market for this car was women, so it probably didn't make a lot of sense for them to be running sexy ads with models to attract female buyers, and I respect that and think they made a good decision. Then she went on to talk about how she didn't go out in public without being completely turned out, because she had contracts with a number of companies and felt like she needed to do that because they were paying for a certain image of Cindy Crawford with big hair and full makeup, and it would undermine their brand and advertising if she was constantly being photographed schlepping around in sweats with dirty hair. In other words, she had a very good understanding of the nature of her business relationship to the people she worked for - that she was there to help them, hopefully, move product, rather than them being there to pay her for being photographed.
It seems that Paula Deen and many other fauxlebrities and other assorted gasbags have the idea that the corporations they've made deals with are there to serve them rather than the other way around.
really? I thought it was just Southern cooking since my aunts and female cousins cooked with it.
ReplyDeleteNo, my mom did too, and I still do occasionally, but it's not specifically a Southern thing OR the Depression; it's from WWII. They actually went around collecting grease from home kitchens for weapons manufacturing and maintenance purposes, or so my mom told me.
ReplyDeleteSee? And your wife larned you a lesson, which you remembered, like my own mom really remembered getting smacked by my grandma for using the same word. Also, remember the old version of eeny-meeny-miney-moe? I don't remember if I said it or got schooled by some other kid's error, but I remembered and I didn't say it any more, because, I don't know, common courtesy. People like Paula Deen get told umpteen dozen times, but they won't bother remembering, because *their* pain is the only pain that matters.
ReplyDeleteYup, they did indeed gather grease.
ReplyDeleteThe War Production Board urged citizens to save the fat that came from cooking so that it could be used for making explosives. Housewives were reminded that glycerin, made from waste fats and greases, was one of the most critical materials needed for the war effort. Three pounds of fat could provide enough glycerin to make a pound of gunpowder. Nearly 350 pounds of fat was needed to fire one shell from a 12-inch Naval gun.
Until Pearl Harbor approximately 60 percent of the glycerin used in the United States had been obtained from fats and oils imported from the Pacific areas, most of which were under the control of the Japanese during the war.
Hell I have a can for my (cooking) grease & fat, but only so it doesn't clog the drain..
My mother lived and worked in New York City from 1938 to 1954, and she always spoke of a professional class of African-American waiters and chefs who worked in middle-class white-tablecloth restaurants. She was an executive secretary on Wall Street (basically the highest obtainable position for a woman at the time). She went to "nice" restaurants, better than diners and coffee shops (no white table cloths!) but not French food (wine in the sauce!). It seems to me that those jobs have been replaced by low-cost Latin workers in the back of the house, and low-cost actor/model/singer/dancers in the front of the house, combined with some evolution and complications over the years. I think it would be a fascinating study to see if my impressions (partially conveyed to me by my mother) are correct. It's similar to what has happened with legal and executive secretaries -- the women who would have become legal secretaries in 1965 became lawyers in 1985. The problem in mid century was that competent, highly skilled people had no room for advancement if they had the wrong genitalia, the wrong skin color or the wrong gender of fiance[e], except for very specific roles. I long thought that my job options were florist, caterer, undertaker, antique dealer, hair dresser, etc, because that is what Hollywood showed me. The first woman partner at one of America's most prominent law firms (where I worked for many years) started as a secretary, and advanced to partner. A rare, but inspiring, exception.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think right-wing types would prefer Julia Child, who served in the OSS in World War Two.
ReplyDeleteThe use of the N word was sensationalize because it was Paula Deen who utter it. And if she doesn't have the intention to discriminate anyone then it should not be an issue. The big corporations that fired her or didn't renew her contract are more interested in their public image so they don't want to get involve. Well, Paula Deen is Paula Deen and no one can take that away from her.
ReplyDeletegov
car auction
The chickenhawks and Keyboard Kommandoes? They'd just accuse her of fraternizing with the French.
ReplyDeleteAnd you can't buy those in Yankee Landwhere I now live.
ReplyDeleteThere's this thing called "internet shopping" that you may want to look into.
Not in the fridge. I use bacon grease to cook mirepoix for soup, or when a dish calls for a small amount of bacon and I don't have any. Sometimes I cook an egg in it but not often.
ReplyDeleteIt's like throwing away carmelized onions or duxelles. They are concentrated flavor.
Don't you just love it when someone tells you that pointing out racism is just like a lynching?
ReplyDeleteAlso, unless any of those (white) commenters has lots of black friends with whom they hang everyday, and calls them "nigger" to their face without getting the shit knocked out of them, they've earned the right to use the n-word. Somehow I doubt it. They want to be cowards and say it among their white friends and co-workers. They don't even think about what a black person would think or feel if they heard their casual use of the word. They get most offended if a white person objects to it. I doubt their casual use of "nigger" is anything but derogatory. But the person objecting to it is, no doubt, the "real racist".
ReplyDeletebuying food on line just doesn't seem to be a good idea.
ReplyDeleteJulia Child = what the Republican party used to be.
ReplyDeletePaula Deen = what the Republican party now is.
Whether or not this represents a coming-down in the world is a matter of opinion. One thing I'm certain about, though, is that no lefties were consulted about the change of chefs.
That's the whole problem with white people deciding what is and isn't offensive to other ethnicities and cultures. They don't seem to think it's important what the other-than-their own kind think. If it seems like pleasant good old days to them, what's the big problem? Why would ANYONE object to it, except hyper-sensitive types?
ReplyDeleteWhen one of their own kind is offended by said pseudo-historical romantcism, it really sends them off the rails.
Funny how the same yoyos who insist that anything other than completely at-will employment is OMG SOSHAMALISM suddenly shit their pants when one of *theirs* is sacked for saying stoopid shit in public.
ReplyDeleteI didn't hire Deen, and I sure didn't fire her. It's unfortunate that people get riled up about ancient racial cracks as if they were as meaningful as, well, the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act.
ReplyDeleteI will admit that my sympathy for publicly-shamed individuals wanes when their personal worth gets north of a million dollars. And I'm now proud of that; our fellow-feeling should touch all humanity.
But like I said, it's ain't my crime, and I do resent the implication (not yours, Chuck!) that I have some responsibility for the latest celebrity takedown because members of the political party I tend to support are associated with low-fat food and precise diction.
Oh also, Chuck, I don't know where you get that I think it's cool these corporations turned on her. Corporations will turn on any of us; they're psychopaths. And some of us don't get to negotiate the terms on which we associate with them.
ReplyDeleteJust to be clear, as I know these little comments on the internets often come off totally different than if more or less like-minded people were having a discussion over a beer; none of that was meant as any criticism of you whatsoever, nor was I implying anything about you or anything that I think you would take too far amiss. For the most part, just chatting as I would with a friend in a bar. As for corporations, it's I who in some sense think it's cool that they (other than media) turned on her. I'm glad they see it in their best interests to punish racism rather than profit by it. And yea, she's still rich and her restaurants will get a chik-fil-A bounce from the wingnuts, so I'm not crying a lot of tears for her lot in life. Just find it all interesting, both politically and socially, more so because it's a big topic of conversation among my crowd, which is usually not the case with political stuff -- and certainly the right blogger aspect of it, which you cover so well. I read you so I don't have to read them. Lost the stomach for it some time ago. Anyway, sorry if there was any misunderstanding.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting aspect, to me at least, that so far I haven't seen anyone else comment on concerns the low-fat food angle. The scientific consensus is rapidly coming around to the hypothesis that it's the sugar and refined carbs that cause type II diabeates, heart disease, i.e., metabolic syndrome. Looks like it may turn out that the low fat diet was the cause of the obesity epidemic and untold suffering for millions. When she makes those foods with all those gobs of butter, buckets of lard, sacks of flour and heaps of sugar; the fat may prove to be the health food part of the recipe. Neither here nor there, I guess. Somersby doesn't even bother with that critique of the facts.
ReplyDeleteNot in the fridge. I use bacon grease to cook mirepoix for soup, or when
ReplyDeletea dish calls for a small amount of bacon and I don't have any.
Sometimes I cook an egg in it but not often.
Jual Mesin Jahit
Oh please. I've heard that said or cited hundreds of times in my life, and I seriously doubt it originated with your dad.
ReplyDeleteActually, there may be a real link between saturated fat in the diet and diabetes, but isn't a simple cause-and-effect:
ReplyDeleteA better understanding of the body's response to indulgent eating could lead to new approaches for treating diabetes and metabolic
syndrome. High-fat foods can contribute to obesity, which increases the risk for developing type 2 diabetes.
The researchers learned a key protein called Bcl10 is needed for the free fatty acids -- which are found in high fat food and stored in body fat -- to impair insulin action and lead to abnormally high blood sugar.
In the laboratory study, mice deficient in Bcl10 were protected from developing insulin resistance when fed a high-fat diet. The findings will be published May 31 in Cell Reports.
That might make sense for produce and perishables like milk, but you're talking about Moon Pies, FFS.
ReplyDeleteYes, but those are high quality gourmet food products Pronounced with the T sound.
ReplyDelete