SELECT COMMENTS I'VE MADE ON FACEBOOK 
ABOUT THE PAULA DEEN CONTROVERSY

You can probably figure out what the other commenters said from context:

Well, Deen's views are rooted in history revisionism, which glamorizes a particularly brutal and harsh institution, slavery, for the amusement of her white friends and followers. It's total Mammy and Sambo stuff, and there's no way to get around that. The real tragedy here is that I don't even think she understands why that pisses people off, or the problem it poses for the continuing issue of race relations in the US.

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Oh, I agree. If you're of a particular age and white in the US, there's stuff programmed into your brain when you were a child, and you can't just erase it. You can, however, seek enlightenment, figure out the true racial dynamic. You know, acknowledge that the old South was a regime culturally, economically, and politically founded on the notion that the worst white man is better than the best black man, instead of getting all weepy-eyed Scarlett O'Hara about it. That's the problem with Deen. It's not that she's from an older generation. It's that she has allowed herself to hold onto notions about the world that simply aren't true, and that are damaging to the fabric of American society. Needless to say, Sambo parties are a manifestation of this.

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The only way she can revive her career, now that her media persona is tied to Sambo parties, is to really get a handle on why her attitudes about the old South are so damaging. This requires letting go, no doubt, of some very cherished notions about her very sense of identity, which I could probably say about LOTS of white Southerners. But she needs to do this very publicly, and maybe even lead an education campaign about how black stereotypes have enabled racism for decades after the Civil Rights era. That's not going to happen, I'm sure. But, as a media brand, she's now the Sambo Woman. And that's a product that just won't sell well on national television.

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Yeah, Steven, Deen's apology, for what it's worth, very strongly indicates that she has no idea why people are pissed off, only that she understands that people are pissed off, and that she'd better say some nice things or she's fucked.

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That's why this is so interesting to me. Nostalgia for the old South, for Gone with the Wind South, is an incredibly strong cultural force among whites in the region. And that, in itself, is mondo bizarre. I mean, we're faced with the spectacle of all her supporters implicitly suggesting that Sambo parties are just fine, and because there can be no justification of such minstrelsy, emotion, bile, and gumption is all they've got. This whole controversy is exposing a particularly vile strain of American culture, which just also happens to be at the center of national politics in the form of Democrats versus Republicans on, well, everything.

That is, Deen's Sambo-waiters are cut from the same cloth as the Cadillac-driving welfare queens who are the "takers not makers" of GOP rhetoric these days. And so on.

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That's a good question (about how to change attitudes). But before we can get an answer, I think we have to first admit the problem exists. For too long, people who know what's actually going on in this country have just shut up when white Southerners get their Confederacy on. I mean, I do it, too, for the most part, for the same reasons that exhausted you earlier today in your interactions with Deen supporters. We've got to start calling these Sambo-lovers out on their bullshit. No, the Civil War wasn't about "state's rights;" it was about slavery. No the Confederate flag isn't about "pride;" it's about celebrating a traitorous, racist regime. And so on.

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It's not simply the n-word. Rather, it's the n-word in an overall context of neo-confederate attitudes - you know, hosting Sambo parties, and apologetics for slavery - as well as an apology indicating that she has no idea what all the hubbub is about. It's not a one-off as with Michael Richards: refusing to call her out on this is the same as refusing to condemn Jim Crow or the Confederacy, or everybody today who wears the battle flag as an extraordinarily misguided symbol of "pride." That is, her whole racist thing connects with a much bigger cultural virus we've been allowing to fester since 1865.
 
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Well, I hear your point. But the deposition also comes courtesy of the media, and she's not causing controversy simply because of the deposition. For instance, the Huffington Post piece above is about an interview she did last year. But it includes video of her actually saying the things that are in the article. So that's something, too.

I mean, as the communist former Poet Laureate of the State of New Jersey, Amiri Baraka once said when pressed on his support of the Soviet Union, "Like you were there, man." That is, you have a good point: none of us know Paula Deen, and none of us can stare into her soul to see what she's about. All we have is her media persona that we can judge, some of which is carefully crafted by Deen herself, and some of which is crafted by reporters who offer accounts of what she and others have said about Deen the person. So none of us know the actual person.

But having said that, and it might be unfair for me to make this assumption, I simply figured that everybody gets that I'm only criticizing my understanding of her media persona, this entertainment product that looks and sounds just like the human being Paula Deen, but is, in fact, an important brand for the Food Network.

While nobody has died or been injured as a result of the controversy now surrounding this media product known as Paula Deen, the accusations raised against her are serious and consequential in that, as an apparent supporter of the historical revisionism that attempts to paint the brutal white supremacist regime known as the Confederacy in a much more sympathetic light, she lends institutional credibility, as well as the kind of credibility that goes with fame, to a point of view that really does damage American lives. That is, her Sambo style waiters are coming from the same evil place where we find the fictional Cadillac driving welfare queens which have been a major part of the political rhetoric over the years aimed at destroying important social programs for the poor. And this rhetoric has been very successful.

Now, I don't think she's doing this on purpose. I don't think she understands the ramifications of her statements and views. To her, it's all just like Gone with the Wind. But, of course, Gone with the Wind is a work of fiction - the old South was never like that at all - and it portrays the KKK as heroes who save white women from being raped by animalistic black men, when really it was black men who needed saving from the Klan and angry lynch mobs and vile segregationists.

So the overall point is that this isn't like one's slightly racist, but good-hearted, elderly aunt or grandmother. Deen, or, at least, her media persona, has what amounts to a megaphone. Her views, statements, and actions are all amplified by her status as media figure. So she has a lot more responsibility than just some older woman we might know. Clearly, she has failed this responsibility by, at the very least, not staying ahead of the changing narrative associated with her media persona. That is, she seems to be totally clueless that her apparent neo-confederate attitudes are socially damaging, offensive, and very unpopular outside the South. Hell, they're unpopular in the South if you're a white liberal or black.

But I do think this is far more complicated than simple gossip. There are some very serious issues involved here.

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