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The Progressive Lynch Mob Claims Another Victim
FrontPage Magazine
David Horowitz and John Perazzo
6/26/2013
Excerpt:
Celebrity chef Paula Deen is a Georgia-based restaurateur, a self-made woman and national celebrity who has published fourteen cookbooks and hosted popular TV cooking shows on the Food Network for more than a decade. Known for her gregarious personality and folksy southern charm, Deen has performed charity work on behalf of poor people and minorities across the United States. She has donated massive quantities of food, money, and time to Second Harvest, an organization that distributes grocery products to the poor. She has given large donations to, and held fundraisers for, Blessings in a Backpack—a program that feeds elementary-school children from low-income families. This year she created the Bag Lady Foundation to help women and children in financial need. In each of these cases, a substantial percentage of the beneficiaries of Deen’s generosity have been African Americans. But thanks to a malicious law-suit, Deen’s irrepressible candor, and a nation-wide vilification campaign conducted by a civil rights lynch mob, she has been tarred and feathered as a “racist.” As a result, she is out of a job and out of pocket many millions of dollars in business revenues lost.
The campaign against Deen was triggered by a couple of answers she inadvisedly volunteered during a private deposition last month. The deposition was part of a $1.2 million discrimination/sexual-harassment lawsuit filed against her by a disgruntled former employee named Lisa Jackson. Jackson, a white woman, had managed a Savannah seafood restaurant owned by Deen and her brother. According to Jackson, the working environment at the restaurant was permeated by sexual innuendos and racial slurs. During her deposition, Paula Deen was asked by Jackson’s attorney if she herself had “ever used the N-word.” A person sensitive to the toxic environment civil rights vigilantes have created for white Americans—and particularly southerners—would have said “No,” particularly since Deen had never used the word in the course of her business. But Paula Deen is a transparently decent person, dangerously innocent of the racial mine fields into which the suit had transported her.
Instead of “No,” or “I don’t recall ever having used that word,” she replied, “Yes, of course.” She then explained that it happened a “very long time” ago. When asked for details, she said she had used the word in 1986 while recounting to her husband how she had been held up earlier that day by a black gunman at the bank where she was employed. In other words, she used the word in a private conversation with her husband twenty-seven years ago. She also admitted to telling or tolerating “off-colored jokes” of the kind that “we have all told.” (Indeed, TV comedians like Lisa Lampanelli have made racial humor their stock-in-trade, as have black comedians since Richard Pryor – but the butts of their jokes are white.) “But,” Deen added, 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.” If Paula Deen is a racist, every white, black, brown and yellow person in America is a racist too.
But that didn’t make any difference to the racial media vultures all the way from tabloids like the National Enquirer to publications of the elite culture like Salon and the New York Times. It began with an Enquirer story based on leaks by Jackson or her lawyer of Deen’s answers in her deposition. The Enquirer editors broke what they called a “bombshell revelation” of the chef’s “shocking racial scandal.” The credulous embrace of this Enquirer bombast, which normally would garner sneers from the arbiters of the mainstream culture, shows how in today’s poisoned racial atmosphere a gutter tabloid can become the gold standard on such matters. Instantaneously a derisive liberal clatter spread across the Twitterverse becoming fodder for the stories that followed. Without a shred of evidence, the Internet magazine Salon condemned “Deen’s history of casual, clueless racism,” portraying her “hurtful and demeaning” attitudes as reflections of America’s “stunning national glut of racial ignorance.” (More likely this characterization itself reflected the stunning lack of self-awareness of leftist character assassins as they go about their nasty business.)
.................................................. ......
View the complete article at:
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/david-h...nother-victim/
FrontPage Magazine
David Horowitz and John Perazzo
6/26/2013
Excerpt:
Celebrity chef Paula Deen is a Georgia-based restaurateur, a self-made woman and national celebrity who has published fourteen cookbooks and hosted popular TV cooking shows on the Food Network for more than a decade. Known for her gregarious personality and folksy southern charm, Deen has performed charity work on behalf of poor people and minorities across the United States. She has donated massive quantities of food, money, and time to Second Harvest, an organization that distributes grocery products to the poor. She has given large donations to, and held fundraisers for, Blessings in a Backpack—a program that feeds elementary-school children from low-income families. This year she created the Bag Lady Foundation to help women and children in financial need. In each of these cases, a substantial percentage of the beneficiaries of Deen’s generosity have been African Americans. But thanks to a malicious law-suit, Deen’s irrepressible candor, and a nation-wide vilification campaign conducted by a civil rights lynch mob, she has been tarred and feathered as a “racist.” As a result, she is out of a job and out of pocket many millions of dollars in business revenues lost.
The campaign against Deen was triggered by a couple of answers she inadvisedly volunteered during a private deposition last month. The deposition was part of a $1.2 million discrimination/sexual-harassment lawsuit filed against her by a disgruntled former employee named Lisa Jackson. Jackson, a white woman, had managed a Savannah seafood restaurant owned by Deen and her brother. According to Jackson, the working environment at the restaurant was permeated by sexual innuendos and racial slurs. During her deposition, Paula Deen was asked by Jackson’s attorney if she herself had “ever used the N-word.” A person sensitive to the toxic environment civil rights vigilantes have created for white Americans—and particularly southerners—would have said “No,” particularly since Deen had never used the word in the course of her business. But Paula Deen is a transparently decent person, dangerously innocent of the racial mine fields into which the suit had transported her.
Instead of “No,” or “I don’t recall ever having used that word,” she replied, “Yes, of course.” She then explained that it happened a “very long time” ago. When asked for details, she said she had used the word in 1986 while recounting to her husband how she had been held up earlier that day by a black gunman at the bank where she was employed. In other words, she used the word in a private conversation with her husband twenty-seven years ago. She also admitted to telling or tolerating “off-colored jokes” of the kind that “we have all told.” (Indeed, TV comedians like Lisa Lampanelli have made racial humor their stock-in-trade, as have black comedians since Richard Pryor – but the butts of their jokes are white.) “But,” Deen added, 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.” If Paula Deen is a racist, every white, black, brown and yellow person in America is a racist too.
But that didn’t make any difference to the racial media vultures all the way from tabloids like the National Enquirer to publications of the elite culture like Salon and the New York Times. It began with an Enquirer story based on leaks by Jackson or her lawyer of Deen’s answers in her deposition. The Enquirer editors broke what they called a “bombshell revelation” of the chef’s “shocking racial scandal.” The credulous embrace of this Enquirer bombast, which normally would garner sneers from the arbiters of the mainstream culture, shows how in today’s poisoned racial atmosphere a gutter tabloid can become the gold standard on such matters. Instantaneously a derisive liberal clatter spread across the Twitterverse becoming fodder for the stories that followed. Without a shred of evidence, the Internet magazine Salon condemned “Deen’s history of casual, clueless racism,” portraying her “hurtful and demeaning” attitudes as reflections of America’s “stunning national glut of racial ignorance.” (More likely this characterization itself reflected the stunning lack of self-awareness of leftist character assassins as they go about their nasty business.)
.................................................. ......
View the complete article at:
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/david-h...nother-victim/