Oh, Paula!

There is not a whole lot left to say about Paula Deen’s deposition. I think the whole “Wedding Fantasy” was just plain creepy. Her thoughts on the use of racial slurs and rationalizations still remain among some people in the South.

Hubris is a bad thing. This family had the tiger by the tail selling what I called “special occasion” fare and marketing all kinds of books and kitchen ware.

Here is a good read with some thoughts about food and race from Nathalie Dupree, probably one of the most well known Southern chefs of today, and some of the more “real” traditional chefs in the region….

“It’s almost like a spoof of Southern cooking,” said Nathalie Dupree, the author of “Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking,” a cooking teacher and food historian in Charleston, S.C. Ms. Dupree, 73, said that in her childhood fried food was a once-a-week treat, that rich desserts were served even less often, and that vegetables and grains like rice and grits made up most of what was a healthy, farm-based diet.

“That is not how the people I know cook, and that is not how the people I know speak,” she said.

Ms. Dupree, who is white, is especially incensed by the notion (advanced by many of Ms. Deen’s defenders) that whites who grew up in the segregated South routinely use racist language without attaching any significance to it. “I’m beginning to take umbrage at being lumped together with people who haven’t taken the trouble to learn what is offensive and what isn’t,” she said. “It puts the whole region back again.”

If the statements in the deposition are not enough, the charges in the complaint against Deen Enterprises from Lisa Jackson, a former general manager at Uncle Bubba’s Seafood and Oyster House, paint an entirely different picture of the family than what is presented on teevee. Pornography passed out at meetings, segregated bathrooms, public humiliation of employees, derogatory remarks about appearance and sexual harassment are just a few of the charges. The complaint reads like that worst nightmare of a food service employee. If even half of it is true there will be hell to pay. I hope so.

I’ll be in Savannah for the 4^th of July holiday to visit my relatives and spend time at the beach. I am sure this will be a topic of discussion while we visit. Of course, I’ll venture downtown to see what damage, if any, this has caused to Lady and Sons. When the diabetes controversy came up folks were lined up the sidewalk, as always, as if nothing had happened.

I wonder if those enamel Dutch ovens will end up at the flea market after this.