The June 2013 Douchey McDouche Bag Award

    

 

When it came time to choose our June champion of douchiness, my first thoughts revolved around the spy game and I really expecting to ship our next rubber bag, vinegar and water and tubing all the way to Russia for everyone’s favorite traitor Eric Snowden.

However, after hearing apologies, both coached and extra coached from Southern Belle and deep fried television chef Paula Deen, I had to make a change.

Deen,  the industry’s leading proponent for the use of  butter, fat and lard when cooking, recently stuck her foot deep inside her dirty little mouth after admitting she used the word “nigger” on more than one occasion and that she had a secret wish of holding an old Antebellum wedding, replete with white jacketed darkies and all of the trimmings.

As an African-American, I initially wasn’t surprised by the admission about the “N-word,” afterall, Paula is from the South, is white and is a member of a certain age group that needed federal legislation to force her and others to even sit with Black people, so needless to say, I actually would have been more surprised if she would have admitted to never using the offensive slur.

But after a talk with my friendly neighborhood super hero, the Man-O- Steele, and as advertisers abandoned the Deen ship in conga-line fashion, I softened to the idea of a douche for Paula.

Her fate was sealed after she embarked upon a media mea culpa-fest that spanned several television shows and to paraphrase the great William Shakespeare – she doth protest too much.

Yep – somewhere between her whiny, runny make-up’ed Matt Lauer interview and the New York Times interview that she turned into show-an-tell starring the “black as that board” man in her life. I had a change of heart and realized that only a good cleansing formula could rid the world of this bug-eyed, Ellie-Mae.

Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner

 

Things started getting funky for Deen, a cooking entrepreneur, with a show on the Food Network; and endorsements by the likes of Walmart, Target, and drug giant Novo Nordisk, late last month when depositions from a May lawsuit were submitted to the courts.

The lawsuit was filed by a former employee of Deen’s restaurants in Savannah, Ga.  The employee, Lisa T. Jackson, who is white, alleges that numerous acts of violence, discrimination and racism resulted in the end of her five years of employment at the Lady & Sons as well as Uncle Bubba’s Seafood and Oyster House restaurants.

Jackson , a former manager for the eateries, is suing Deen and her brother Bubba Hiers for $1.2 million. Deen and her brother of course denied uttering the vile slur or partaking in any harassing antics.

During Deen’s depositions, administered by Jackson’s lawyer, the 66-year-old celebrity chef disclosed that she did not use the “N-word” in racial jokes, but more so in casual conversation.

“Yes, of course,” she said when asked if she ever uttered the epithet.

Deen went on to described a personal hankering for a “Southern” wedding at one of her restaurants,  replete with a set of middle-aged black men dressed like slaves with white jackets and black bow ties.

“I mean, it was really impressive,” Deen was quoted as saying about the wedding she envisioned. “That restaurant represented a certain era in America…after the Civil War, during the Civil War, before the Civil War. It was not only black men, it was black women…I would say they were slaves.”

Deen’s disclosures didn’t sit too well with her many advertisers and business partners. Because faster than you could say: “yessir – boss,” the bug-eyed, Southern chef watched in horror as her carefully crafted empire began to crumble right before her mascara -laidened eyes.

Along with Walmart, Target and Novo Nordisk, Deen also lost the backing of: Home Depot, Caesar’s Casino, the Food Network, Smithfield Foods, Sears and QVC, JC Penney and book publisher Ballantine, to name a few.

On its face, Deen’s omission makes her a contestant in our douche-o-the-month contest, but her behavior during this scandal pushed her over the top and caused her to wrestle the bag of warm liquid from other deserving contestants.

For me, it was the half-hearted nature of her many apologies that made the whole thing smell.

Her initial video-taped apology asked for a second chance for: “the wrong that I’ve done. I want to learn and grow from this inappropriate and hurtful language, which is totally, totally unacceptable.” The video, released on YouTube, was thought to be hastily prepared and heavily edited.

So what did Paula’s country-ass do?

She released another one, hours later.

In the new improved apology, Deen apologized to “those that I have hurt.” That included: people of all races, gays, dogs, cats, basically anyone one who she may have offended by calling Blacks “Nigger.” The apology, which came from the deepest part of her heart,” came after she blew off an interview with the Today Show’s Matt Lauer.

I guess that was okay, because when Lauer did interview Deen, she summoned up all of the tears and sobbing that comes after you just lost a whole plantation’s worth of slave labor.

She even asked for those without sins to chuck rocks at her big, ‘ol head and kill her if they had never said anything they regretted.

Boo, friggin’ hoo!

Before all of the pancake make-up had dried, Deen’s family came to her defense and emphatically proclaimed their Mom is not racist (perhaps she just played one at her restaurants).

Her sons, also celebrity chefs, Bobby Deen and Jamie Deen, said the accusations, or omissions  which is the name we give statements made under oath, were “hurtful,”  and “a character assassination.”

In fact, Jamie recalls how Momma Deen taught him how Hank Aaron was a hero and about the challenges he had to overcome as a black, super star athlete.

I wonder if that was before Hammerin’ Hank  was fielding death threats from Deen’s neighbors for challenging and eventually breaking Babe Ruth’s Home Run record?

Nonetheless, others came to Deen’s defense too.

Ultra liberal Bill Maher opined that our politically correct society saw it fit to cast out someone for saying bad things and in the truest sense of the word, it is a little unsettling that advertisers piled off the wagon so fast, but I enjoyed it anyway.

More disturbing was the rush to defend Deen from one of my favorite Tom-lettes – Stacy Dash.

That’s right the Clueless co-star, again couldn’t seem to stay away from controversy.

Dash first caught our ire during the Presidential Election when she dropped support for President Obama, who she backed in 2008, and took racy photos and all but licked the boots for eventual GOP loser Mitt Romney.

This time Dash, an admitted conservative, took to Twitter and threw her support behind Deen and reminded her that, “God does everything for a reason.”

Ironically Dash, who would have made a glorious addition to Deen’s slavery motifed wedding, said her daughter loved the TV chef’s show and joked that the show was the “only way she can get me to cook.”

In the old days, someone like Deen could have used a well-placed bullwhip to get someone likeDash to cook. However, I digress.

After the statements from family and friends failed to stop the exodus from her brand, Deen went into ultra-damage control mode and fired longtime agent Barry Weiner, who she said was instrumental in getting her show “Paula’s Home Cooking,” on the Food Network in 2002.

As douchey and disturbing as these revelations were, we should have already known the deal.

 Black is Black is Black is Black!

During a 2012 interview with the New York Times Deen hit maximum douchiness when she introduced the “young man in her life.”

Deen, who sat in front of a black backdrop emblazoned with the New York Times logo, brazenly summoned one of her staffers – Hollis Johnson, who she asked to walk into the light because he was “black as that board” and “we can’t see you standing against that dark board.”

Sheesh!

So in the end, Deen is not the victim she pretends to be, nor is she a monster carelessly tossing racial slurs about in a malicious fashion, she “is what she is and (she) ain’t gonna change.”

Paula is a racist douche bag, simple and plain. And just like countless other racist douche bags who have been debasing and demeaning people of color for so long, that they aren’t even aware doing so is repulsive and repugnant.

Douche Bags like Deen can’t see themselves as “bad people” in the politically correct world of the 21^st Century. Shoot they wouldn’t have seen themselves as “bad” when they openly enjoyed picnics with a lynching as the headliner or participated in a separate but equal system that they knew was neither.

No, people like Paula live in a fantasy world full of rainbows and gumdrops, we call “Denial.” A place where the pre-Civil Rights South wasn’t full of racists, but in fact as Paula said: “we were less prejudice.”

Now 50 years removed from Segregation and Civil Rights marches, they applaud how far they were forced to come, but never shoulder any of the blame for their role in a past in which they openly participated. They can’t be racist because they have a black driver of which they are fond or because they let the maid wrap up the scraps and take it home.

Sure this award has largely gone to killers and politicians, but Paula, a douchey dinosaur like you who longs for the good ol’ days of Antebellum South and its racist views, has to be recognized before you disappear.

So here’s to you Paula!

You may have lost madd endorsements, but we’ve got something new for your mantle. The Boom Bap Radio Douchey McDouche Bag Award for June 2013.

Of course you use “the N-word” and you may be a relic of the past and monster of the present, but to us you’re special. So enjoy your award and you know where to put that vinegar and water – you bug-eyed, ignorant, mint julep sippin’ , hoop-skirt wearing – Douche!