A joke is just a joke, right? That’s what Paula Deen is saying. The queen of butter, who has won Emmy’s for her role as celebrity chef on the Food Network, is being charged, alongside her brother, Bubba Hiers, who ran a restaurant with her, for making racist jokes, using the word “nigger” and also for Bubba Hiers sexually harassing the plaintiff, one Lisa Jackson, who is behind the $1.2 million lawsuit.
Deen, for her part, says “Yes, of course,” she used the “n-word,” and admitted to making racist jokes as well. “It’s just what they are — they’re jokes…most jokes are about Jewish people, rednecks, black folks…I can’t determine what offends another person.”
She claims to in fact not be racist. However, this could be disputed by her strange idea for a wedding, which would be a slavery-themed wedding. She had the idea of doing a historical setting wedding, and this of the pre-civil war South. She admired somebody who had such a wedding, saying:
“The whole entire waiter staff was middle-aged black men, and they had on beautiful white jackets with a black bow tie,” the National Enquirer reports. “I mean, it was really impressive. 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.”
Brother Bubba also referred to President Obama with the N-word.
The Food Network necessarily distanced themselves from all this, saying that the
“Food Network does not tolerate any form of discrimination and is a strong proponent of diversity and inclusion. We will continue to monitor the situation,” as they told Fox News last Wednesday.
The charges brought against Deen and her brother also allege that the brother viewed pornography from the work computer.