The world is crashing down around Paula Deen. and I’m am surprised to find that I actually care.
I don’t like her – I find her cloying molasses drawl to be a grating caricature of Southern women, and annoying as Hell – but she is being pilloried for something I suspect was geographical and generational, the use of a word once common as oxygen.
It all began with a lawsuit in which a former employee claimed that Deen once used the word Nigger, a term rappers and black comedians use all the time.
[I once had a long and serious discussion with a good friend and (Black) coworker about how it could be perfectly fine for him to use the N-word, but never okay for me. His final answer was “It’s just something that White folks can’t understand.” Condescending as that sounds, he may have been right. I still don’t understand it – a word is either acceptable or it’s not.]
The Food Network used that allegation as an excuse to announce that it was not renewing the contract for her show. A more likely reason was that her ratings had slipped - Ratings for Deen’s show “Paula’s Best Dishes” were down 15% in total viewers—and 22% in the 18-49 demographic that advertisers care most about—for the 2012-13 season, compared with last season, according to Nielsen ratings provided by Horizon Media.
Whatever the reason, once that news hit the air there was a stampede for the door. Deen has lost contracts with department stores, casinos and drug manufacturers as each company joins an Olympic level competition to see who can appear to be the most offended.
These character assassinations in the name of political correctness have become all too common. Big corporations like KBR survive them, and I suspect Monsanto will make it through their current woes. But attacking an individual over something that is of little importance in the grand scheme of things is something else again.
It’s mob mentality, and sad evidence that too many among us enjoy kicking a person when she is down.
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