I hope this will be my last post for awhile about the recent Paula Deen controversy.
But today it seems worthwhile to note a few of the journalistic takes on the evolving controversy.
Here I’m just going to cite three significant pieces and make a few comments about them.
The AP had a major article yesterday: PAULA DEEN FANS VENT THEIR OUTRAGE AT FOOD NETWORK. From that piece:
Angry messages piled up Saturday on the network’s Facebook page, with many Deen fans threating to change the channel for good. “So good-bye Food Network,” one viewer wrote. “I hope you fold like an accordion!!!”
The decision to drop Deen, whose daytime shows have been a Food Network fixture since 2002, came two days after disclosure of a recent court deposition in which Deen was asked under oath if she had ever used the N-word. “Yes, of course,” 66-year-old Deen said, though she added, “It’s been a very long time.”
And this:
The fallout may not end with Food Network. At least two other companies that do business with Deen say they’re keeping a close eye on the controversy. Las Vegas-based Caesars Entertainment Corporation, which has Deen’s restaurants in some of its casinos, said Friday that it “will continue to monitor the situation.” Publisher Ballantine, which has a new Deen book scheduled to roll out this fall, used similar words.
As I noted in a short post on Friday, I’d guess that the Food Network’s decision-making extended well beyond the confines of the narrow question of Deen’s past use of the N-word.
The general public is largely assuming that the Food Network’s decision was based solely on that one issue, but one would hope that, in the absence of a broader statement from the Food Network, media coverage would try to provide a broader context for the decision.
The New York Times has a typically interesting piece: At Georgia Restaurant, Patrons Jump to Defend a Chef From Her Critics.
The accompanying image online is one of the pre-lunch line at The Lady & Sons — a photo dominated by a number of overweight women. I’d say that this is purely manipulative, but it’s clearly just a random shot on the street.
From that piece:
“I don’t understand why some people can use it and others can’t,†said Rebecca Beckerwerth, 55, a North Carolina native who lives in Arizona and had made reservations at the restaurant Friday.
Tyrone A. Forman, the director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University, said the use of derogatory words can mean different things to different groups.
“People take a term that was a way to denigrate or hold people in bondage for the purpose of continuing their subordination and turn it around as a way to reclaim it,†he said.
But that kind of subtlety is often lost in a discussion of race.
“That nuance is too much for us,†Mr. Forman said. “We have a black president so we’re postracial, right? Someone uses the N-word? That’s racist. But the reality is there is a lot of gray.â€
Some who thought Ms. Deen’s words were hurtful gave her a pass for her apparent inability to articulate her evolution on race and her awkward apologies, which she offered in a series of three videos on Friday.
As I noted in my first post about this issue on Friday, I am also inclined to give Deen a pass on her language, even though I find it silly that so many keep insisting that every white Southerner of her age has used the N-word.
The Savannah Morning News has also finally published a detailed look at the allegations and statements regarding Deen’s use of the N-word. I say “finally” because the story started making national headlines on Wednesday. Editor Susan Catron has an interesting commentary — Fast news vs. factual news — explaining that reporter Jan Skutch was doing due diligence and reviewing multiple documents rather than cherry-picking a few controversial quotes. I agree broadly with Catron’s points, but disagree that the paper should have taken so much time before publishing anything of substance. I also disagree with the choice to look only at the very narrow question of Deen’s use of the N-word. The national media firestorm might be focusing on that narrow question, but her deposition contains far more problematic elements.
So the SMN piece today is titled “Paula Deen and the N-word”, according to the link on the home page and the URL. But if you go to the article, the title changes: Plaintiff’s deposition in Paula Deen case: never heard a racist remark.
It’s pretty common for articles’ titles to shift as one clicks through a publication’s website, but I note the distinction in this case because the latter title is not strictly true. Plaintiff Lisa Jackson’s complaint — click here to read it — says that she and “her employees were surrounded in the workplace with the most vulgar and obscene racial comments” and details alleged examples. You can read about those in slightly more detail in Jackson’s deposition, (especially, p. 53).
So the title of the piece simply does not reflect the reality of the plaintiff’s allegations. The SMN coverage says little about allegations that racist language was used by management at Uncle Bubba’s, and the piece says nothing about the allegations that pornography was routinely seen by and showed to subordinate employees. As I noted in my first post Friday, those allegations seem to have been substantiated by other documents.
The SMN article today is a thorough examination of the narrow issue of Deen’s own use of the N-word, but the case is about a lot more than that.