{"id":6402,"date":"2013-06-29T15:59:58","date_gmt":"2013-06-29T15:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=6402"},"modified":"2013-06-29T16:00:23","modified_gmt":"2013-06-29T16:00:23","slug":"paula-deen-tell-em-all-to-go-to-hell-with-their-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=6402","title":{"rendered":"Paula Deen, tell ’em all to go to hell – with their ‘racism’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ilana<\/a>
Ilana Mercer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

by Ilana Mercer<\/p>\n

[followbutton username=’IlanaMercer’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]<\/p>\n

I miss journalist Andrew Breitbart. Although he was not a libertarian, he was at least interesting, and certainly courageous.\u00a0\u201cGo to hell\u201d<\/a>\u00a0was the late Mr. Breitbart\u2019s message to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as its bullies prepared to cow the tea party into racial submission by accusing its members of, what else but, racism.<\/p>\n

Interesting or courageous is not something your average conservative commentator can be accused of. (Settle down:\u00a0Using a preposition at the end of a sentence<\/a>\u00a0is perfectly fine, not that debates about grammar matter any longer. They\u2019re so white.) This a\u00a0senior editor<\/a>\u00a0at a conservative magazine proved in spades. (No apologies will be forthcoming in the event that the reader construes the last turn-of-phrase to be racially unkosher.)<\/p>\n

\n
Celebrity chef Paula Deen has transgressed against America\u2019s many\u00a0Orwellian Ministries of Truth.<\/a>\u00a0While being\u00a0deposed<\/a>\u00a0by a disgruntled employee, in May of 2013, Deen was forced to confess to using the \u201cN-word\u201d decades ago, upon which the Paula Deen Enterprises began to lose revenue.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Now the poor woman is on that familiar, modern-day Via Dolorosa: the apology tour.<\/p>\n

To the typical invertebrate conservative pundit, Deen\u2019s sins are self-evident and indisputable. Thus does the aforementioned editor \u2013 who simply typifies conservatism\u2019s\u00a0rigor mortis<\/em>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0noodle on,<\/a>\u00a0not about the abject folly, if not sheer wickedness, of waging economic warfare against an upright individual for her infelicitous speech. No! Marching with the media Mafiosi, our editor\u2019s mission here is to contextualize Deen\u2019s transgressions, rather than to dispute their gravity.<\/p>\n

Contextualizing Deen\u2019s sins is achieved by alluding to her age, as racism trumps ageism on the pyramid of politically dictated Thou shalt Nots. Deen\u2019s tainted upbringing in the Deep South forms another context. You see, Deen is a 66-year-old white woman who\u00a0\u201cgrew up in a small Georgia town in the Jim Crow South.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Says our author: \u201cIf a Southern white person of Deen\u2019s age told me they had never used the N-word, I wouldn\u2019t believe them. The word had not the slightest element of taboo at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In belaboring the context of Deen\u2019s use of naughty words, the writer has implicitly and unintentionally justified the histrionic reaction to such speech. It is part of \u201cthe daintiness of our popular culture in some areas,\u201d a \u201cdepressing aspect of modern life,\u201d he demurs meekly.<\/p>\n

There is nothing dainty or merely depressing about tyrannical speech codes, whose enforcement by the centrifugal forces in our culture and politics is meant to make malleable clones of each one of us, on pain of boycotts, bankruptcy and excommunication.<\/p>\n

Political authority depends on this sort of ritual sacrifice, reflexively coordinated by the country\u2019s Ministries of Truth \u2013 the self-anointed \u201cintellectuals\u201d (who aren\u2019t intelligent) in education, academia, the entertainment industry and the churches; among the ruling duopoly and everywhere in the malpracticing media.<\/p>\n

A national, media-fanned contagion over bad words is perverse. It must be resisted, not contextualized.<\/p>\n

Blaming Old-South culture \u2013 as the prototypical knaves of conservatism are doing \u2013 is, moreover, unlikely to help exculpate Ms. Deen in the minds of the morons who judge her for her words, rather than for her deeds. The bad Old South macro-narrative is as ineffective in mitigation as is pointing out that Deen misspoke because of a near-death experience. \u201cA black man [once] burst into the bank that I was working at and put a gun to my head,\u201d\u00a0recounted<\/a>\u00a0Deen. \u201cI didn\u2019t feel real favorable towards him.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is for the same reason that the young mother,\u00a0seen here in a video gone viral<\/a>\u00a0being kicked and punched repetitively and mercilessly by a burly black man, should watch her words in the future. The home of the mom was invaded by the man, who delighted in brutalizing her in front of her toddler.<\/p>\n

Instead of sticks and stones that break bones, there can be no doubt that the mother from Millburn, N.J., would have settled during that terrifying attack for the kind of cuss words that \u201cwill never hurt me\u201d \u2013 \u201ccracker,\u201d to quote\u00a0Trayvon Martin, RIP.<\/a><\/p>\n

But those who watched the persecution of the mom from Millburn and the tycoon from Georgia took away a different lesson than the one implied by that wise old adage.<\/p>\n

Mind your mouth, mom! The hate crime you endured will not mitigate or explain any future slip-of-the-tongue. You may stereotype an elderly, highly successful white woman, based on her tribe\u2019s past wrongdoing; but you dare not attach statistical significance to the misdeeds of a black man, because of his group\u2019s considerable contribution to crime.<\/p>\n

Ms. Deen appears to be a productive person who works hard and leads a good life. The Food Network, Wal-Mart and Caesars Entertainment have purged Paula, but her fans \u2013 hungry for the treacle of her voice and cooking \u2013 are packing into the \u201cPaula Deen Cruise\u201d liner and buying up her latest cookbook from Amazon.<\/p>\n

\u201cGo to hell\u201d is what Ms. Deen should tell her detractors and wishy-washy, condescending defenders alike. The latter, it would seem, are offering up in her defense nothing but mitigating circumstances, the kind that attach to a crime.<\/p>\n

[followbutton username=’IlanaMercer’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]<\/p>\n

Order lIana Mercer\u2019s brilliant polemical work, \u201cInto the Cannibal\u2019s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ilana Mercer [followbutton username=’IlanaMercer’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’] I miss journalist Andrew Breitbart. Although he was not a libertarian, he was at least interesting, and certainly courageous.\u00a0\u201cGo to hell\u201d\u00a0was the late Mr. Breitbart\u2019s message to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as its bullies prepared to cow the tea party into racial … Continue reading “Paula Deen, tell ’em all to go to hell – with their ‘racism’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,80],"tags":[3581,3523,65,157,324],"class_list":["post-6402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-ilana-mercer","tag-old-south","tag-paula-deen","tag-race","tag-racism","tag-trayvon-martin"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Ilana_Mercer_s640x427.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6402"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6404,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6402\/revisions\/6404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}