Reading a few articles on it, it sounds like it was roughly 30 years ago in a private conversation. But it was in talking to somebody about it in 2007 that prompted this lawsuit. It was the deposition in that lawsuit that caught Food Network's attention. But some questions remain:
Why rehash something that happened 30 years ago?
Why wait 6 years before filing a suit regarding it?
The statement, as I read it, concerned wedding planning and having a "southern plantation style" wedding, fitting with that time (you can figure out the rest from there). Also, my understanding is that this has to do with racial discrimination. What and where is the relation between her comments and the suit?
If this happened 30 years ago, and Deen has indeed apologized and atoned for her words, why bring it up now to the point that her contract doesn't get renewed? (She didn't get fired; Food Network opted to not renew her contract at the end of this month.)
So many missing pieces here that some of this makes absolutely no sense. Food Network is obviously being PC about it, but let's face it: Would someone like Sherman Helmsley get treated the same way (sacked from a network) from all the remarks he said on The Jeffersons? What about Carroll O'Connor? Would Archie Bunker be too much for a network to get past, or would everything he did on In the Heat of the Night make up for it?
As for the "y'all" thing.. You should have seen Down Home with the Neely's. They used it just as much as Deen.
Speaking of Deen, this makes you wonder about Bobby Deen's contract, since Food Network owns the Cooking Channel, where Bobby stars in Not my Momma's Meals.
Finally, look at where she was born and raised, as well as the time she was raised. Then ask the common sense question: Did you really not expect this? Really? If I got called that by kids in southern Oklahoma in 1983 when I was 9, what makes you think that that isn't going to be in someone's head let alone used during the time she was growing up? Believe it or not, but there is still a lot of pent up anger about everything from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights era down there that hasn't been dealt with. People say that they are over it, but here again, some of it shows its ugly head.
I digressed; back to Deen. A hell of a lot worse has happened to other people on broadcast TV, and have gotten away with it. To bring up something like this and make a lawsuit out of it is really petty. And again, this brings up the double standard with the N-Word that needs to be addressed in US society.
Full Disclosure: I'm a Black guy, and have been on the receiving end of that word many a day, and still hear my relatives use it, much to my dismay. Luckily, I've taken the high road and avoided all conversation about it outside of telling them that it's wrong and not to use it in front of my wife or children (wife is White; children are mixed). I can't control my relatives, but I can control what goes into my children's ears and vocabulary, and that word (among others) will never be one of them that slips through.
BL.
if you look at her PR responses, you'll realize how
fake and static they are. She could have handled the mess
better but it all looks so damn scripted