Have You People Got Nothing Better to Do Than Attack Paula Deen?

The Food Nazis Swarm

(c) 2013 by Tom King

There was a piece in, of all places, Forbes today with the headline  "Can Paula Deen Survive Without the Food Network: I Hope Not". The snarky piece was written by Caleb something or other (I'm not going to bother to look up his name; he doesn't deserve the effort).  In case you didn't know Paula's been booted off the Food Network for admitting she may have used the N-Word in the past.  They waited till she issued a videotaped apology, then dumped her.  Paula's fans are up in arms as well they should be.

I am sick of the hit pieces on people like Paula Deen. I'm sick of the smug sense of superiority. When we start calling in the Speech Police, we are living in the world of Big Brother and I don't like it. Paula's Southern cooking style has always drawn the ire of the Food Nazi crowd and they've done everything they could to bring her down.  Anthony Bourdain called her the worst chef in America and accused her of greed and worse in his ongoing one-sided feud with the maven of Southern cooking.  Others have come down on her for not warning people that her cooking was unhealthy and were almost (no scratch that)  absolutely delighted when she announced she had diabetes. 

What unmitigated arrogance.  Anybody who didn't understand that Paula's style of cooking was not "health food" is very probably mentally challenged.  As someone who uses her recipes on occasion, I know what I'm getting into. I know good and well that using all that butter and stuff isn't healthy, but ever once in a while it won't kill you.  It's celebration food. Sunday dinner, not intended for three meals a day.

We're big boys and girls and we do NOT need a bunch of Yankee busybodies telling us how to cook or who to watch on TV.  Paula could retire right now and run her website and stay busy. Her fans are going nowhere.  The politically correct crowd isn't watching her on TV anyway so it's not likely she's going to lose them.  Why should she give a rat's hiney about the opinions of Anthony Bourdain or Caleb Melloy?  I had to look up Bourdain to know who he even was the first time I heard of his attack on Deen.  And I didn't like him nor his "cuisine".  As Paula so eloquently put it, "We don't eat bugs here in the South."  As to the opinion of Caleb what's-his-name?  Meh.  He's one Forbes columnist who has alienated a reader in one shot.

As to Paula's so-called rambling response to some lawyer trying to pin her as a racist, Paula apologized for having offended anyone by saying things in private in a conversation not meant for anyone to hear her.  They had no business listening in on in the first place - snoopy busy-bodies!  And by the way, if someone pointed a gun in my face while holding up a bank like they did with Paula, I might go home and use some uncomplimentary expressions in reference to him and his character too. 

Give me a break.  Paula's one of the most refreshingly sweet people in the food business.  I have no use for "F-word" flinging, angry all the time arrogant chefs who are so wrapped up in themselves they can't take the time to be polite.  It's one of the reasons Paula is so popular with her fans.  She's a nice person and there aren't enough of those on TV.  Her brother's probably an oaf and did get out of line toward one of Paula's staffers.  Who doesn't have a brother like that.  There's probably a good chance that someone everyone calls them "Bubba" probably doesn't have the most refined sense of social etiquette.

I'd be a lot more sympathetic if these people got their panties in a wad whenever someone called me a cracker, a redneck, honky or use the F-word as an adjective like the, a or an, which I find highly offensive toward women.  Nobody cares about that, though, so I, in turn don't care about what Deen does or says in private.  She's polite and gracious in public. I'm far more outraged at the blistering string of profanity Gordon Ramsey pours out publicly on his shows than I am by Paula Deen. Paula doesn't insult my intelligence by reminding me that too much eggs and butter and white flour will do bad things to my arteries.  I'm not a two-year old.

I'm almost a vegetarian in my regular diet.  I belong to Paula's grandmother's church denomination. I know this stuff already.  If I can't figure out how to adapt her recipes to be healthier or eat such stuff sparingly, then I need to stay out of the kitchen and check myself into a nursing home for the feeble-minded.  And while we're banning words why is it that comedians and fashionable celebrities get to use the word "retard" without consequences? That's way more offensive because it's used as an insult and it stigmatizes someone because of a disability and they don't have a National Association for the Advancement of Developmentally Disabled People.

Sauce for the goose, dude. Think I'll write Paula a letter of support.

Tom King