Fry a Little Tenderness

I just wanted to take a second to follow up on the whole Paula Deen miasma, which culminated yesterday in what had to be Deen's worst day ever. In a period of less than ten hours she bailed on the Today show, posted a bizarre, rambling apology on YouTube, took that apology down, put it back up, and lost her home at Food Network after executives there decided they weren't willing to take the heat of keeping her around. You have to have a lot to feel the excruciating pain of losing a lot, and yesterday Paula Deen lost a lot. I get the impression that she'd love to figure out a way to just make the whole day go away entirely.

There are a lot of people gloating right now over Deen's downfall and I fully admit to not being a fan of hers at all. I also admit to gleefully taking part in the hilarious Twitter pile-on both yesterday and Wednesday when this whole thing first broke. Having a somewhat good-natured laugh at pain, even someone else's pain, is what we human beings do; there's just no way around it, I guess. But believe it or not there truly is a part of me that feels a little sorry for Deen. Obviously, she's still got a giant bag of money she's sitting on and there's no way in hell this controversy is going to sink her entirely, so my sympathy is tempered quite a bit. Still, Paula Deen's brand of racism, while potentially far more insidious in the big picture, isn't the same as the brand that shows a true internal hatred for people of color.

Yes, an argument can easily be made that it's casual, inadvertent racism that allows for the more blatant, in-your-face kind, but as I often say when someone gets in deep shit for saying or doing something the masses find reprehensible -- rightly or wrongly -- you have to consider a person's intent before deciding what punishment to mete out. If Paula Deen truly didn't understand that what she was doing could be construed as incredibly hurtful and that it both enabled and perpetuated the problem of racism in America -- certainly in the South -- does she deserved to be publicly eviscerated and lose a substantial portion of that for which she obviously did work pretty hard? It's absolutely fair to refuse to tolerate racist behavior or language of any kind, but I'm genuinely not sure Paula Deen had any idea what the hell she was doing. If that's true, isn't it better to give her a hand to hold rather than one that beats her over the head?

It may be tough to see it as a legitimate excuse, but Deen's apparently blithe attitude toward racist language really is a product of her surroundings. That kind of crap still goes on all over the place in the South and I'm certainly not condoning or suggesting we let it slide. Far from it, in fact; I generally hate the fucking South. Deen is a hugely popular face of that region and its sometimes intransigent beliefs, though, and rather than trying to take several pounds of very fatty flesh, would it possibly be a better idea to reach out to her in the spirit of the understanding we all purport to crave and let a public conversation with her on race and racial issues perhaps be an example to those who look up to her? Of course we all know that there's a part of her that's crying more for herself than anything or anyone else when she pleads for forgiveness, but that doesn't mean her transgressions can't serve a useful purpose for everyone.

Maybe it's a bitter pill for all of us who seek to eradicate racism to swallow -- and maybe it's easy for me to say because I'm a white guy -- but if creating an open dialog by showing a little kindness and compassion to somebody like Paula Deen furthers that cause, maybe it's worth it.

Quote of the Day

"Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later."

-- Anthony Bourdain, via Twitter, on Paula Deen's announcement that she has diabetes, which just happens to coincide with a sponsorship by diabetes drug-maker Novo Nordis

Deen knew three years ago that she was a diabetic and yet she held off on telling anyone -- continuing to cook ridiculously terrible-for-you crap on television all the while -- until there was a way she could turn it into a cash cow (then promptly deep fry that cow in butter and eat it).

Pretty busy right now so I don't have time to really get into the back-story of Bourdain's ongoing, and perfectly understandable, loathe of Paula Deen -- but I can bring back what I had to say about it a few months ago.

"Quote of the Day" (Originally Published 8.20.11)

"She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations, and she’s proud of the fact that her food is fucking bad for you. I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it is OK to eat food that is killing us. Plus, her food sucks."

-- Anthony Bourdain

I'm actually a couple of days late to the table, so to speak, on this one, as Bourdain's typically astringent comments have quickly earned him a pretty nice little public feud with Paula Deen.

It should surprise no one to learn that I'm a huge fan of Bourdain: He's a surly, unapologetic prick who doesn't care one bit what anybody thinks of him, going so far as to regularly pick fights with those he dislikes; he revels in his lengthy history of bad habits and in his connection to the seedy cultural underbelly where he believes the true individuals among us can still be found; and he's a spectacular writer, chronicling his adventures and misadventures with a kind of balls-out gonzo flair that would've made Hunter Thompson proud. The guy's got one of the best lives imaginable, and he knows it -- and yet he still finds things to bitch about, because that's just who he is. So when someone like Tony Bourdain figuratively backhands a Rachael Ray, Guy Fieri or Paula Deen, you know whose side I'm gonna come down on.

For her part, Deen's response has been pretty much by-the-numbers. She says, with a predictable lack of willingness to offend, that Bourdain needs to "get a life." Ouch. But while a toothlessly genteel bon mot from Deen's Southern Belle persona is par for the course, her defense of the kind of cooking she does is a little disingenuous. "You know, not everybody can afford to pay $58 for prime rib or $650 for a bottle of wine. My friends and I cook for regular families who worry about feeding their kids and paying the bills... It wasn’t that long ago that I was struggling to feed my family, too," she argues.

I've said before that what a person eats is his or her own business, but Paula Deen's working class martyr spiel is a bunch of opportunistic nonsense. First of all, everyone knows by now that it's possible to cook on a budget without running an IV drip of some liquified butter-and-Crisco concoction into your family's veins, thereby keeping the Wal-Mart "Fat-Eze" scooter industry in business well into the next couple of generations. The stuff Deen makes tastes fantastic; it's also horrible as shit for you. Case closed. And if you've ever been to The Lady and Sons, Deen's restaurant in Savannah, you know that she overcharges for all that supposedly humble fare anyway. Paula and her two kids have turned their unpretentious "aw shucks" image into a massive money-generating enterprise. There's nothing particularly wrong with this, of course -- until you start believing your own hype and playing the righteous indignation card by holding yourself up as some kind of hero to the common people.

Bourdain's already backed off a little, saying on Twitter that while he still thinks she's a "destructive influence" on the Food Network -- a spot on the dial that's a regular target of his, by the way -- Deen is still a "nice lady."

Rachael Ray, though? Yeah, she still has no redeeming qualities.

Quote of the Day

"She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations, and she’s proud of the fact that her food is fucking bad for you. I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it is OK to eat food that is killing us. Plus, her food sucks."

-- Anthony Bourdain

I'm actually a couple of days late to the table, so to speak, on this one, as Bourdain's typically astringent comments have quickly earned him a pretty nice little public feud with Paula Deen.

It should surprise no one to learn that I'm a huge fan of Bourdain: He's a surly, unapologetic prick who doesn't care one bit what anybody thinks of him, going so far as to regularly pick fights with those he dislikes; he revels in his lengthy history of bad habits and in his connection to the seedy cultural underbelly where he believes the true individuals among us can still be found; and he's a spectacular writer, chronicling his adventures and misadventures with a kind of balls-out gonzo flair that would've made Hunter Thompson proud. The guy's got one of the best lives imaginable, and he knows it -- and yet he still finds things to bitch about, because that's just who he is. So when someone like Tony Bourdain figuratively backhands a Rachael Ray, Guy Fieri or Paula Deen, you know whose side I'm gonna come down on.

For her part, Deen's response has been pretty much by-the-numbers. She says, with a predictable lack of willingness to offend, that Bourdain needs to "get a life." Ouch. But while a toothlessly genteel bon mot from Deen's Southern Belle persona is par for the course, her defense of the kind of cooking she does is a little disingenuous. "You know, not everybody can afford to pay $58 for prime rib or $650 for a bottle of wine. My friends and I cook for regular families who worry about feeding their kids and paying the bills... It wasn’t that long ago that I was struggling to feed my family, too," she argues.

I've said before that what a person eats is his or her own business, but Paula Deen's working class martyr spiel is a bunch of opportunistic nonsense. First of all, everyone knows by now that it's possible to cook on a budget without running an IV drip of some liquified butter-and-Crisco concoction into your family's veins, thereby keeping the Wal-Mart "Fat-Eze" scooter industry in business well into the next couple of generations. The stuff Deen makes tastes fantastic; it's also horrible as shit for you. Case closed. And if you've ever been to The Lady and Sons, Deen's restaurant in Savannah, you know that she overcharges for all that supposedly humble fare anyway. Paula and her two kids have turned their unpretentious "aw shucks" image into a massive money-generating enterprise. There's nothing particularly wrong with this, of course -- until you start believing your own hype and playing the righteous indignation card by holding yourself up as some kind of hero to the common people.

Bourdain's already backed off a little, saying on Twitter that while he still thinks she's a "destructive influence" on the Food Network -- a spot on the dial that's a regular target of his, by the way -- Deen is still a "nice lady."

Rachael Ray, though? Yeah, she still has no redeeming qualities.

Headline of the Week (Honorable Mention)

The Daily Beast: Paula Deen Okay After Taking Ham to Face/11.24.09