Paula Deen, Food Network’s queen of Southern cooking was dropped by the network on Friday. A network spokeswoman told the NY Times it would not renew her contract when it expired at the end of June. Deen has faced criticism last week over her remarks in a deposition for a discrimination lawsuit by a former employee. In the document, she admitted she had used the N-word, tolerated racist jokes and condoned pornography in the workplace.
The Food Network statement did not elaborate on its reasons for dropping her, but a person close to the network told the paper its shows featuring her sons, Jamie and Bobby, would not be affected. Deen currently has three regular programs on the network, including “Paula’s Best Dishes.”
In her first video 6/21, posted on YouTube and later removed, Deen, near tears, said: “I want to apologize to everybody for the wrong that I’ve done. I want to learn and grow from this. Inappropriate and hurtful language is totally, totally unacceptable.”
In a longer video posted later in the afternoon, she appeared more composed. “Your color of your skin, your religion, your sexual preference does not matter,” she said. “I was wrong, yes, I’ve worked hard, and I have made mistakes, but that is no excuse and I offer my sincere apology to those that I have hurt, and I hope that you forgive me because this comes from the deepest part of my heart.”
In yet a third video on YouTube, Deen apologized to Matt Lauer, the host of “Today,” for not appearing for a scheduled exclusive interview earlier in the day. She had agreed to the interview, extensively promoted by NBC News, to address the uproar generated by her deposition.
The lawsuit against her was filed in March 2012 by Lisa Jackson, the general manager of Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House, a restaurant that Deen owned with her brother, Earl (Bubba) Hiers. Jackson, who is white, said that her father was Sicilian, with dark skin, and that she had suffered prejudice as a result.
In the deposition, Deen said that she had used a racial slur in the past, though not in the restaurant, but that she and her family did not tolerate prejudice. “Bubba and I, neither one of us, care what the color of your skin is” or what gender a person is, she said. “It’s what’s in your heart and in your head that matters to us.”
She also stated that “most jokes” are about Jews, gay people, black people and “rednecks.” “I can’t, myself, determine what offends another person,” she said.
RBR-TVBR observation: We saw the deposition in the NY Times story and it’s kind of strange. She admitted to using the N-word after “a black man burst into the bank that I was working at and put a gun to my head.” She said she used the word when talking about the incident later with her husband and had used it from time to time in her life. She was under oath, so she was telling the truth. She loses either way—potential perjury charges if she had lied on the stand or being fired to avoid a potential firestorm over the incident.
