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Paula Deen's Contract Won't Be Renewed

bigdoublezero said:
I love the caption on that photo:

"Fat white people lined up Saturday outside Paula Deen’s restaurant in Savannah, Ga. Many were angry that Food Network had dropped Ms. Deen.
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I think there is one token black fattie on the right.
 
I read a pretty interesting article today on LinkedIn, written by the head of Reputation.com. Without really judging too harshly, he makes some observations about how she handled this PR crisis exactly the wrong way. She maintained a toxic work environment in her restaurants, refused to settle the case despite the damage that it would cause to her empire, and then was unprepared when asked things like if she had ever used the n-word. On one hand, I think that what she did was pretty terrible, but on the other hand, I think that the way that she responded to the lawsuit and the subsequent public relations disaster says a lot about the people working under her.

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post...taking-collapse-of-paula-deen-lessons-learned
 
I know this is a lot bigger than her using discriminating language in the past, but if someone can get fired for something they said 20 years ago, we're going down a seriously shitty, politically correct slope. I know that I said and did some dumb shit in my teens and I know that anyone reading this did too. I'm not defending the Heart Attack Queen, but it's really hypocritical to cast stones before thinking about some things from your past you wish you had back.

ETA: The "Plantation Wedding" idea was monumentally stupid. Wow.
 
Honestly who the fuck is Paula Deen? A chef on the food network. Who gives a shit? It's not like the Pope said whatever she said 20 years ago, but I have to hear about it every hour on the hour...Journalism is dead.
 
Is there some sort of media outlet that's pushing this whole "I'm sure we've all said stupid things in our past" angle?
 
Who had the "she killed gandolfini" tag. Out yourself for pos.
 
DeacGeneral11 said:
I know this is a lot bigger than her using discriminating language in the past, but if someone can get fired for something they said 20 years ago, we're going down a seriously shitty, politically correct slope. I know that I said and did some dumb shit in my teens and I know that anyone reading this did too. I'm not defending the Heart Attack Queen, but it's really hypocritical to cast stones before thinking about some things from your past you wish you had back.

ETA: The "Plantation Wedding" idea was monumentally stupid. Wow.
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I don't know that she's getting fired for using the N word 20 years ago, though. For some reason that seems to be what the media is mostly focusing on but the reason she was talking about saying it 20 years ago at all was because an employee is alleging racism and sexual harassment much more recently. It's confusing because I think the bigger issues are more current (the plantation wedding, her "black as a board" comments, the court case) but every article is talking about the incident that she spoke about in her deposition.
 
DeacGeneral11 said:
I know this is a lot bigger than her using discriminating language in the past, but if someone can get fired for something they said 20 years ago, we're going down a seriously shitty, politically correct slope. I know that I said and did some dumb shit in my teens and I know that anyone reading this did too. I'm not defending the Heart Attack Queen, but it's really hypocritical to cast stones before thinking about some things from your past you wish you had back.

ETA: The "Plantation Wedding" idea was monumentally stupid. Wow.
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Her contract ends this month, and apparently they didn't have a new deal in place. The Food Network knew what her ratings were and their trajectory and they were looking for an excuse to drop her. There's no way they got feedback from advertisers just last week and quickly decided to pull the plug. Her food isn't healthy and it's affected her personally. She doesn't have restaurants in NYC and SF which would face boycotts. The pictures in this thread likely represent her target demographic very well and they weren't pissed off by Deen's actions. There just aren't enough of them to justify renewing her contract.

The Plantation Wedding will seriously hurt her in getting another TV gig. People get a lot more pissed off about slavery than they do the N word. Deen's version of slavery comes from Gone with the Wind, others come from Django Unchained or Huck Finn. There were a dozen presidential wannabees who would have eaten wet boogers to win the Iowa Caucus last year. Bachmann and Santorum were the only ones dumb and desperate enough to sign a loopy social conservative pledge in Iowa which included a passage extolling the nuclear family values of slavery.
 
She's on the wrong side of several trends. Unhealthy food, a cooking show instead of a reality cooking competition, older instead of younger, southern instead of metropolitan.
 
will be interesting to see what they do about her upcoming appearance on MasterChef. She was all over the promos at the beginning of the season.
 
Rube and Ph are right - this is a financial decision on retaining expensive talent who has already peaked, whose time has come and gone.
 
DemonDEKEn said:
What would the unemployment rate be like if we all got fired for saying something inappropriate at some time?
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DeacGeneral11 said:
I know this is a lot bigger than her using discriminating language in the past, but if someone can get fired for something they said 20 years ago, we're going down a seriously shitty, politically correct slope. I know that I said and did some dumb shit in my teens and I know that anyone reading this did too. I'm not defending the Heart Attack Queen, but it's really hypocritical to cast stones before thinking about some things from your past you wish you had back.

ETA: The "Plantation Wedding" idea was monumentally stupid. Wow.
Click to expand...

Even if the plantation wedding thing didn't happen, do people really not understand the difference between some d-bag in a back conference room dropping an N-bomb while telling a joke and a major figurehead of a media network getting caught publicly doing the same?
 
People do not, which is why idiotic responses like DemonDEKEn's happen.
 
DeacGeneral11 said:
I know this is a lot bigger than her using discriminating language in the past, but if someone can get fired for something they said 20 years ago, we're going down a seriously shitty, politically correct slope. I know that I said and did some dumb shit in my teens and I know that anyone reading this did too. I'm not defending the Heart Attack Queen, but it's really hypocritical to cast stones before thinking about some things from your past you wish you had back.

ETA: The "Plantation Wedding" idea was monumentally stupid. Wow.
Click to expand...

It wasn't JUST the fact that she used the n-word 20 years ago that was the problem. That's what your "slippery slope politically correct" idea seems to assume.
 
BeachBumDeac said:
It wasn't JUST the fact that she used the n-word 20 years ago that was the problem. That's what your "slippery slope politically correct" idea seems to assume.
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Yeah but the problem is that most of the "journalists" I've read are reporting it that way.
 
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