Jayzus. A whole week of navel-gazing, shirt-tearing, tearful nonsense, and ham-fisted apologies. And that was just Matt Lauer. [Hi-yoooo! - Ed.]
Really, did the largely self-imposed travails of 'murka's Buttah Queen evolve into some sort of nuanced, sophisticated observation of the nation's (not just the South, though they're obviously the most grievous, entrenched offender) race issues? Of course not. It turned into the predictable sideshow of Deen wallowing in abject, self-pitying burble. Pro tip: even nailing oneself to the proverbial cross is easier with a stick of butter, y'all.
No, it just turned into another reminder that in a nation of 320 million people, a good chunk of them can only self-actualize and express themselves via consumerism. So of course as Deen is losing endorsers almost hourly, her cookbooks are flying off Amazon's virtual shelves. This is of a piece with last August, where we saw hordes of sweaty hillbillies racing their Hoverounds down to the nearest Chick-Fil-A to show their solidarity with the gay-bashing CEO. The idea that any of these acts might qualify as expressions of intellectual coherence tells you a lot about the folks indulging in those acts.
So it went as these things typically go, and ended up being almost not at all about Paula Deen, and whatever or how long ago her transgressions were. It's much more about a substantial chunk of like-minded people, who jes' don't see whut awl the fuss is about, where peoples just is whut they is, y'all.
Instead of helping Deen hide behind her lame "I'm just an old lady who was raised that way" defense, her enablers might consider that Deen was nearly 20 years old when the civil rights movement came to fruition, when southerners were forced to confront the moral ramifications of murdering college students, picking on schoolchildren, and siccing dogs and turning firehoses on people who had the nerve to be tired of that shit and said so.
There was a choice to be made then and there, and Deen, while obviously not a cross-burning, hood-wearing knuckle-dragger, chose like most southerners to pretend that offensive symbolism and ofay "humor" were just part of that fabled suthuhn cultcha. The anecdote she told about her great-great-grandfather killing himself after "losing" his "workers" tells you everything you need to know about that Lost Cause mentality, just completely obtuse, the stubborn refusal to see what has been right in front of them all along.
I don't know that Deen needs to have her career ruined over this particular kerfuffle, but I do know that her apologies seem to lazily trace the shopworn "I'm sorry if you were offended" trope of the insincere buffoon who isn't even quite sure what they did wrong. It mostly conveys the possibility that Deen hasn't really thought much about any of this, at least not deeply enough to understand why the descendants of the people her great-great grandfather owned might take umbrage at some of this.
People not from the south wonder what it will take for southerners to unscrew their heads from their asses on this thorny subject, why they can't just admit what everyone knows -- that the Civil War really was about slavery, and that slavery was and is a stain on this nation's soul. The South's greatest writer famously noted that the past is never over, nor even past, and that's part of it.
But it's also the inability of the remaining crackers to just admit these things to themselves, much less to outside observers. This refusal to acknowledge obvious historical facts -- facts corroborated by the papers of the Confederacy itself -- produces a condition where their backs are just instinctively up on this subject. It's not hard to see why -- to acknowledge the atrocity is to admit complicity, in a way, because they've so stridently defended the excesses and symbols all this time.
I don't think there's anything to talk them into or out of, all we can do is make sure to call "bullshit" when it's uttered.
[Update 6/30 1:37 PDT: Also, too. If even half of what's alleged there is true, Deen and her goon brother deserve exactly what they're getting, and worse.]
Really, did the largely self-imposed travails of 'murka's Buttah Queen evolve into some sort of nuanced, sophisticated observation of the nation's (not just the South, though they're obviously the most grievous, entrenched offender) race issues? Of course not. It turned into the predictable sideshow of Deen wallowing in abject, self-pitying burble. Pro tip: even nailing oneself to the proverbial cross is easier with a stick of butter, y'all.
No, it just turned into another reminder that in a nation of 320 million people, a good chunk of them can only self-actualize and express themselves via consumerism. So of course as Deen is losing endorsers almost hourly, her cookbooks are flying off Amazon's virtual shelves. This is of a piece with last August, where we saw hordes of sweaty hillbillies racing their Hoverounds down to the nearest Chick-Fil-A to show their solidarity with the gay-bashing CEO. The idea that any of these acts might qualify as expressions of intellectual coherence tells you a lot about the folks indulging in those acts.
So it went as these things typically go, and ended up being almost not at all about Paula Deen, and whatever or how long ago her transgressions were. It's much more about a substantial chunk of like-minded people, who jes' don't see whut awl the fuss is about, where peoples just is whut they is, y'all.
Instead of helping Deen hide behind her lame "I'm just an old lady who was raised that way" defense, her enablers might consider that Deen was nearly 20 years old when the civil rights movement came to fruition, when southerners were forced to confront the moral ramifications of murdering college students, picking on schoolchildren, and siccing dogs and turning firehoses on people who had the nerve to be tired of that shit and said so.
There was a choice to be made then and there, and Deen, while obviously not a cross-burning, hood-wearing knuckle-dragger, chose like most southerners to pretend that offensive symbolism and ofay "humor" were just part of that fabled suthuhn cultcha. The anecdote she told about her great-great-grandfather killing himself after "losing" his "workers" tells you everything you need to know about that Lost Cause mentality, just completely obtuse, the stubborn refusal to see what has been right in front of them all along.
I don't know that Deen needs to have her career ruined over this particular kerfuffle, but I do know that her apologies seem to lazily trace the shopworn "I'm sorry if you were offended" trope of the insincere buffoon who isn't even quite sure what they did wrong. It mostly conveys the possibility that Deen hasn't really thought much about any of this, at least not deeply enough to understand why the descendants of the people her great-great grandfather owned might take umbrage at some of this.
People not from the south wonder what it will take for southerners to unscrew their heads from their asses on this thorny subject, why they can't just admit what everyone knows -- that the Civil War really was about slavery, and that slavery was and is a stain on this nation's soul. The South's greatest writer famously noted that the past is never over, nor even past, and that's part of it.
But it's also the inability of the remaining crackers to just admit these things to themselves, much less to outside observers. This refusal to acknowledge obvious historical facts -- facts corroborated by the papers of the Confederacy itself -- produces a condition where their backs are just instinctively up on this subject. It's not hard to see why -- to acknowledge the atrocity is to admit complicity, in a way, because they've so stridently defended the excesses and symbols all this time.
I don't think there's anything to talk them into or out of, all we can do is make sure to call "bullshit" when it's uttered.
[Update 6/30 1:37 PDT: Also, too. If even half of what's alleged there is true, Deen and her goon brother deserve exactly what they're getting, and worse.]
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