Quick question: how many times are we going to have to sit through another New & Improved Paula Deen Reboot? Because it feels like this is the third time? Paula tried to reboot/rebrand herself immediately following her racist-implosion last year. Then, earlier this year, Paula got the cover of People Magazine to explain her side of things and she ended up making it worse when she compared her ordeal to “that black football player who recently came out.” Maybe she’s finally hired some real crisis managers and branding experts. Hopefully. Paula appeared on this morning’s Today Show. Matt Lauer recaps the scandal and Paula seemed more comfortable, probably because her sons were there.
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Maybe you guys will call me a butter apologist, but I believe that she’s genuinely sorry. Now, I’m not sure she knows exactly WHY she’s apologizing, but she’s sorry. She says at one point: “I’ve always been very naïve. And unless you’re doing something that I can see, you’re trying to hurt me, in my heart, you’re good. It’s childlike, it’s naïve, I’m trying to be more guarded.” Butter, please!! It wasn’t naiveté that got you into this mess.
She also says: “Words hurt people… well, my words hurt people, they disappointed people. And frankly, I disappointed myself. And for that, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for the hurt that I caused people because it went deep. It went deep, people lost their jobs.”
Anyway, she’s just promoting her subscription network. She bought the rights to all of her old Food Network shows, so the network will be showing the old episodes, plus there will be new, buttery recipes. Paula also gave an exclusive interview to Closer – you can read the piece here. There’s not much of interest but she says: “You take your lumps, lick your wounds and move on. I had to see my family every day. As soon as we got up, we saw each other to make sure we were all right and we were going to make it through.”
Photos courtesy of WENN.
That manic smile will haunt my dreams for weeks now.
seriously.
I know, I was so startled when I refreshed the page that my laptop slid to the floor.
LOL
LMAO
I was blinded. Will have to come back later and read the article.
She’s using her fluorescent eyeballs to hypnotize you! Look away quick!
She scares the hell out of me. She looks like a Halloween nightmare come true. BTW I don’t think she is sorry about anything except losing her show and platform. She comes across as fake but she paid her price and now it seems right that she be able to do her show again. Even if I won’t be watching
Saw her on TODAY this morning and honestly had a hard time even watching her. She is SO FAKE, and you are right…she isn’t sorry about a dang thing except losing her show and platform.
I never want to see one more thing Paula Deen and that includes her sons.
seriously, how many teeth does that woman have?
I have lived in the deep South and I never once heard anyone that sounded like Paula Deen. Anyone else ever heard an accent like her’s? Well, maybe one gal from Birmingham, AL that I worked with. Not nearly as grating as Paula, tho.
OMG Kaiser, WTF? The jump photo is like one of those possessed dolls that comes alive at night and butchers an entire family. I can’t even read the article, I’m utterly creeped out. You are the queen of terrifying photo-editing. propz.
It IS!! Remember, no you’re too young, but there was one where this doll comes alive and grows tiny, razor sharp fangs and attacks. Oh my God, it was terrifying. AND IT LOOKED JUST LIKE HER.
Are you referring to Trilogy of Terror with Karen Black? If so that haunted my friends and me for years.
Don’t know it, but my imagination is on warp drive.
YES ESMOM. It was so scary. I was just a kid and I was practically drooling in the fetal position by the time it was over. Lol
GNAT, classic. I used to torture my little sister with this little embellished maraca that I said would turn into that doll. I recently showed it to my son on YouTube and we laughed, it’s so darn cheesy.
Trilogy of Terror scarred me for life! I’m 41 and I still think about it!
The weight is back on. Dieting almost NEVER works long-term. The statics are abysmal (for people who lose weight and successfully keep it off – without removing their stomachs). A few people CAN do it, but the vast majority gain back more than they lost. What is her diabetes drug supposed to do again?
Your take from that photo was about dieting? She probably put on weight from slaughtering and eating PEOPLE, run away!
Jesus Yes! ive always called her a creepy living doll and I stand For that
Im also deeply sorry for the Hurt you caused my eyes, Butter Baroness, Deeply Sorry
Butter Baroness, lol
Maybe she’s apologizing for the horror carnage?
@Kiddo, don’t you mean butterly creeped out?
I stand corrected.
She looks like that doll from the Conjuring! Eek!😣
she does sound contrite, but I’m betting it has more to do with being sorry she lost so much money, not truly sorry for her racist views.
I seriously wonder if she is even bright enough to truly understand why what she did was so profoundly wrong. I kinda feel like in this day and age, you either successfully impress upon the public that you truly understand the wrongness of your behavior and your particular societal privileges, how your behavior affects the wronged party, and the social and historical context that makes what you did so truly awful, or you fail to do this and you’re never really forgiven and restored to your original position. And that’s a good thing.
Contrite…she sounds CONTRIVED to me. She is not a smart woman, and the kindest thing I could ever say about her is that she’s too damned dumb to understand the profound implications of her actions.
Her sugary delivery on TODAY this morning left me wanting to hurl.
well, I guess I should clarify and say her words sounded contrite…I just read the transcript and didn’t watch the vid.
but my point was that, contrite or not, I don’t buy that her sorrow is about the people she hurt or the folks who lost their jobs. it’s all about HER struggles.
You are so right, Doofus…it is all ABOUT HER, as it always is. Poor victim, poor martyr Paula.
She has the craziest expression when she is smiling lol
She has the most frightening smile
Her fake teeth scare me.
As an AA / black woman I’m willing to forgive her as long as she doesn’t veer back into that old BS. #oldpeople
She isn’t old. The supermajority of her life has been after the Civil Rights Era. She is younger than my mother, and my mother isn’t old by any means. She isn’t some 90-year-old woman who lived her whole life in a swamp.
She is a racist.
“we were going to make it through”
This poor woman’s struggle.
Eyeballs rollin’…
I saw one of her magazine’s in line at the store the other day. I blocked it so no one could buy them.
I do that every time I see one, too.
IKR?! Lol
Oh yes, what a struggle they endured. Their financials may never be the same. How life altering.
I was in a little resort town last week and guess what new storefront I found. She has a store bearing her name that sells kitchen stuff, with a heavy emphasis on the butter theme. And the place was packed with mostly older women shoppers.
She so disgusts me. My in-laws leave in Tennessee where she is opening a restaurant. The local papers announced a delay in opening and the sheer number of disappointed comments on the website … and most were just lamenting the hardship she had endured at the hands of the press. SMH
She’s given local interviews and it is always “woe is me” and it is much more blatant than her Today show interview this morning.
Nope. Absolutely nope, Paula. Go ahead and sell it, but I’m not buying it.
Did you see the interview? She’s faker than those blue contact lenses she always wears.
I just can’t stomach this woman.
i do believe that she’s sorry – sorry that everything came crashing down once someone called her out on her bull$hit and racism. “oh, i’m so naive, lil’ ole me, i don’t understand the ways of the world these days.” bitch, please. you’re old. you’ve been around. you run a huge business. if you don’t know better, that’s your own choice. you’re not naive, you’re just an ignorant racist.
Exactly, Ag. Exactlyexactlyexactly.
This is her “act” and anyone who’s read the court transcripts would know that this woman did not just fall off the turnip truck. She’s not the grandmotherly country bumpkin that she pretends to be–she’s a savvy business woman with a lot of racist notions, who thinks that women are subservient to men.
“turnip truck” – lol. i have to incorporate that into my vocabulary.
I sense a lot of fake naïveté and sweetness as well. I have suspected this for years. Most of her recipes seem to be culled from any country style cooking grandma, circa mid-century. Only the grandmas would not have served up things like doughnut burgers.
I don’t buy it either. And imo she’s only doing this so people will go back to lining her pocketbook. Sorry, never.
I don’t buy it either. Isn’t she like 75 years old? Why not sit the hell down and enjoy her family and her massive fried butter empire? She’s addicted to the fame.
She’s not that old…she will be 68 in January.
Her eyes look deranged. And the song she’s singing is “I’m so butterly sorry (Now give me all the money back).”
seriously. And they match her hair, which is terrifying.
OMG, butter apologist. I’m dying! LOL!
Yay, Kaiser! You pulled through. I was really hoping you guys would cover this.
I watched the interview and she is the QUEEN of martyrdom. She’s also the most manipulative and cunning con-artist to ever deep-fry a cheesecake.
Con-artist. Yes. A conniving carney.
“And unless you’re doing something that I can see, you’re trying to hurt me, in my heart, you’re good. ”
EXCEPT, dear Paula, your companies’ abuses against female employees and employees of color were brought to your attention REPEATEDLY and it was documented. I know ignorance is your shtick, but your responsibility here can not be dodged.
Thats all we need, more African American cooking with this crazy chick, pass!
LOL that last picture.
i watched paula and her sons on today this morning.
and, i’ve watched her attempts at redemption before this.
i truly don’t think she realized how utterly disgraceful, insulting, horrible, unacceptable…all of this…her words were and are.
so, i don’t think when she used those horrible words that her intention was evil.
at least, i hope not.
i like her…she’s a great entertainer and had built a unique and wonderful brand.
i think when she says she’s naive, she would better describe it as IGNORANCE.
ignorance does not excuse any of it…
but, i believe that’s what her use of those words was.
ignorance, pure and simple.
hoping she has realized the depth of what she’s done and is able to rebuild her life and profession.
But it wasn’t just her words. Her brother was sexually harassing the female staff and breaking labor laws and this was brought to her attention multiple times by multiple people. Even an outside firm that did an audit for them and said “Paula, this is breaking labor laws”.
If she focuses on what she said, she can claim ignorance.
If she focuses on what she DID, she can’t claim to be ignorant.
ah, yes…thanks for reminding me.
there were actions as well.
you know…i look around at friends/family who have restaurants and other businessess.
and the way they treat staff is sometimes deplorable.
especially in restaurants where it seems (and i will NEVER understand why they would do this risking their liquor license) staff and owners drink on the job giving rise to much of this unprofessional, rude, insulting and even criminal behavior.
unfortunately, it’s part of the culture in the restaurant business.
where there’s alcohol, there’s wayward behavior…
not an excuse, AT ALL, but it runs rampant.
paula and her family were exposed for seems to go on everywhere.
i hope lessons were learned and it was a wake up call.
she has too much at stake…an empire…time to get the disgusting wreckess behavior under wraps.
she deserves a 2nd chance, i think.
and i hope she gets it and is eternally grateful that she did.
Good for her. She deserves second chance. Go girl.
You’d think the woman shot a puppy or let a kid die in a hot car the way people react to her. Jeesh, isn’t she allowed a second chance?
Yeah, all she did was call an entire race of people by a humiliating, degrading name, make her black employees dress up like slaves at her white people parties, pay them for overtime with beer, not money as required by law, allow her brother to sexually harass the women at work and watch porn in the office…Jeez, don’t people have a sense of humor?
@GNAT Silly us, right? We just can’t take a joke, Paula’s not killing animals so she must be an alright person after all.
@GoodNamesAllTaken
Right? I’m all about forgiving people who are genuinely sorry and have learned from their mistakes, but she deserved all of the backlash that she got when the truth about her came to the light.
I guess she does deserve a second chance,but she’s done a few questionable things. Using the N word and wanting the black staff to dress up as slaves. Those are the things that people are having issues with.
Thank you, GNAT.
thank you GNAT.
a second chance, for me anyway, is for people who are mostly good but F up and do something bad, ONCE.
this is systemic and ongoing abuse that has been going on for a LONG time, all the while knowing how wrong (not to mention illegal!) all of it was. so, no…she doesn’t get a second chance, not from me.
not to mention, this is now her third “second chance”, so by my calculations it’s actually her fourth chance. so, again…NO.
Thank you, GNAT!
In addition, this illegal behavior was brought to her attention multiple times, and she did nothing about it. As a business owner, she had a responsibility to follow labor laws at her establishments.
Paula only became sorry, not when it was brought to her attention, but when it was brought to the PUBLIC’S attention.
Deserve a second chance? Na-na. Once the truth of your values system is revealed by your actions, and the facade of image dissolves because we all have the right to form our own judgements, I don’t think you “deserve” a change in public assessment.
You people love to pile it on, don’t you? I don’t condone what she said or did but if Michael Vick got a second chance hy shouldn’t she? I doubt all black people feel humiliated by her, probably some defend her. Perhaps we should put her in jail?
Yes because the only two choices are: jail or merciful forgiveness.
@Meme,
I think we lost a great opportunity to at least talk about our shared history. Yes, Paula is an unsavory person (see what I did there?), but she is of an age group that would have been teenage or young adults during the civil rights struggle. She was NOT alone in her ‘of course’. But instead of us starting a dialog with other white southerners of a certain age, about their ‘of course’ moment (without recriminations), we deep fried this one and felt good about ourselves. ‘We did it. We got rid of the ONE racist in America. Well done everyone.’
@Meme – people still detest Michael Vicks. He will never outlive his horrific reputation as a prolific abuser of dogs. Paula will never outlive her degrading and anachronistic treatment of black people and her son’s misogynistic attitude towards women. Both of them will carry on and be successful in their chosen careers but their reputations will hover over them for the rest of their lives. And deservedly so.
Michael Vick was out there promoting the idea that abuse against animals is wrong. He spoke at many events, partnered with the Humane Society and worked to pass federal legislation that makes it a crime to bring a child to an animal fight.
I have yet to see Paula go on a campaign against sexual harassment in the work place, or about work place discrimination. Her response has been NOTHING like Michael Vick’s.
‘I’m so sorry for the hurt I caused people…and to make it up to you I want to share news about an exciting new diabetes drug, y’all!’
Thank you. The general public is still so ignorant about the huge range of her shilling, her manipulation of the public, her potty mouth, her manhandling of male guests, her bawdy behavior at events, her unsanitary and disgusting kitchen etiquette…it goes on and on. She sickens me like no one before her ever has.
I know. And yet she seems to have a contingent of supporters who are as vile as she is. Birds of a feather, I guess.
Preach it! She is a horrible, manipulative person who only regrets the money she lost.
I thought she did her apology tour over a year ago, seems that way to me. I could not watch her show for it was an impossibility for her to get through one episode without licking her fingers during and after preparing her food. Grossed me out. Perhaps a return to the food truck with her two boys might be an option for her y’all.
I am letting this go. I am moving on with this. I am a proud black woman and I love myself unconditionally as a black woman, but when you say nasty, disgusting word to anyone of my negro descendency, I was so disappointed and angry at Paula, or any other white southerner who refuse to be vulnerable with this multitude of change and instead hurt black people with their words and attitudes toward us. But with that being said, I am willing to forgive Paula Deen for apologizing for what she did, I will give her a second chance and I hope she takes this chance to full potential for change in her behavior.
So Paula, I forgive you and I will take you back.
Thank you. A voice of reason.
Really, Meme, she is the voice of reason. Because she acknowledges that what Paula did was truly hurtful and wrong. I’m sorry you felt people were piling on you, but it was because of your attitude that Paula hadn’t really done anything that bad, and you doubt all black people were offended anyway, etc. What she did was serious. And your willingness to give her a second chance means nothing because you can’t admit that. Kiki is willing to forgive, but doesn’t gloss over what actually happened. There’s a big difference.
I am very impressed by your post and I think there is a lot I can learn from it. 🙂
My sticking point with Paula is that she still acts as if it was one word and not repeated abuses of her employees, both those of color and females.
Lol, I am not a butter apologist. I am over Paula. If people want to buy the subscription to her network, good luck to their arteries.
OMG! It’s like Pennywise the Clown mated with that freaky Annabelle doll and this is the result. Jesus, put her on a shelf with Ariana Grande so they can wake up at night and slither around looking for their next victim.Oh, and I’m sure you are “sorry”.
I literally just snorted at your comment. Between you and the peanut gallery above, I’m going to be having serious doll nightmares tonight. And as a pediophobe, that’s not unusual for me.
I’m afraid to close my eyes tonight. Lol
TBKA & GNAT (sounds like a major railway conpany!)
The one comforting thing about this dame’s appearance, for moi, is the teef. So dazzling, so fake. I see this much-too-white error a lot, and so console myself that sometime soon, typical Brit ‘pale primrose’ gnashers will be in vogue, with superwhite seen as un-hip as those 2 inch-long rectangular (white) nail tips!
😉
@Chris-These images should be a cautionary tale of veneers gone wrong.
The only thing I see when I look at pictures of her is her turkey neck.
If she had actually used Michael Sam’s name I would have awarded her a point. However, since she still referenced his skin color I’m deducting another point from her already negative amount.
Secondly, this is just a money grab and since she already has millions, she needs to go away. More points deducted for being arrogant.
This. And I need to get off this thread because this woman raises my blood pressure to a dangerous point.
The only thing this white trash fake bitch is sorry for is the hit to her bank account.
From that photo, I am terrified that she will butter my soul and eat it! ALL THOSE FAKE, NEON WHITE TEETH!
I don’t believe she understands what she did wrong. Not really. And as such, I can’t forgive her, though I won’t waste my time hating her.
“I’m so sorry for the hurt this caused my bottom line.”