Let me say up front that I am not a big fan of Paula Deen and it has nothing to do with how much butter she puts in her food. I questioned her intelligence when she supported Obama, and being a southern myself, I find her southern drawl just a bit too cutesy. But, the leftist politically correct war against her is just too hypocritical for words.
Larry Elder must agree. He writes: “What did the 66 year-old native of Georgia do that now threatens her enterprises? She has so far lost her show on the Food Network and her spokesman gig for Smithfield Foods, while QVC, Sears, Wal-Mart, etc. are deciding whether to continue their relationship with her.
Deen’s crime: In a deposition given in a harassment lawsuit filed by a white ex-employee at a Deen family-owned restaurant, she admitted using the “n-word” in the past, during a private conversation: “When a black man burst into the bank that I was working at and put a gun to my head,” she said, “I didn’t feel real favorable to him.” Deen says she didn’t use the word during the holdup, but “probably” used it later, “in telling my husband.”
Asked if she ever used the word again, Deen responded, “I’m sure I have, but it’s been a very long time.” When pressed to recall specific instances, Deen could not, saying: “I don’t know, maybe in repeating something that was said to me. … But that’s just not a word that we use as time has gone on. Things have changed since the ’60s in the South. And my children and my brother object to that word being used in any cruel or mean behavior, as well as I do.”
The fact that the ex-employee is white, not black, and worked for her for five years does not seem to matter to the politically correct crowd. Nor does it seem to matter that others have not come forward to corroborate her alleged racism. Does she refuse to hire blacks? Has she mistreated them or paid them below the wages of white workers?
If Deen’s crime is the private use of the n-word, why does the Rev. Al Sharpton, who hosts a nightly hour-long show on MSNBC, get a pass?
Sharpton rocketed to fame by falsely accusing two white men of raping and sodomizing a black teenager, Tawana Brawley. The fact that a New York grand jury investigation concluded that the whole case was fraudulent, to this day Sharpton refuses to apologize to Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones, one of the men Sharpton accused of rape, even after a jury found Sharpton liable for defamation.
One of Sharpton’s top aides became so disgusted with the farce that he turned against his boss. The aide acknowledged that Sharpton could not have cared less whether Brawley was telling the truth because, according to Sharpton, “We beat this, we will be the biggest n–gers in New York.”
Sharpton called the former Marine, magna cum laude graduate, lawyer, professor and then-Mayor David Dinkins, New York City’s first and only black mayor — a “n–ger whore.”
Sharpton has called Jews “diamond merchants” and described whites moving businesses into Harlem as “interlopers.” Sharpton helped incite three days of anti-Semitic rioting in Crown Heights, where two people died and over 100 were wounded. A Columbia University professor called Crown Heights “a modern-day pogrom.”
Then there’s Freddy’s Fashion Mart. A Jewish store owner in Harlem was accused of driving a black record store subtenant out of business by raising his rent. At one of many rallies meant to scare the Jewish owner away, Sharpton said, “There is a systematic and methodical strategy to eliminate our people from doing business off 125th Street. I want to make it clear … that we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Sharpton’s tongue incited a black man at the protest to storm the Mart with a pistol, screaming, “It’s on now! All blacks out!” In addition to the shooting, he set fire to the building, eventually killing seven before turning the gun on himself.
If Paula Deen is out because of the “n” word, what about HBO’s Bill Maher and his use of the “c” word?
Maher, on more than one occasion, publicly called former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin the “c” word. He has called her a “dumb tw-t” — a derisive slang word for female genitalia. He has described her son Trig, who has Down syndrome, as “retarded.”
But, to be fair, neither Sharpton nor Maher — at least to our knowledge — has called Palin the “n” word. That must explain the double standard.
