The question is: Are there retailers in the US that do not have an exclusive line of Paula Deen products?
Answer?
McHuston Booksellers.
Apparently, I’m the only store without something with her name attached. Presumably, I could have a book or two in stock with her name on it. I don’t though.
By gosh, if I had one I swear I’d snatch it off the shelf and run it straight to the dustbin.
I’m kidding, but not due to matters of principal. And – although I’m surprised at the extent of her business ties and my naiveté about the extent of her fame – I am a little sympathetic about her current situation. I’ve never been one to relish in someone’s demise, particularly business people. (I’d say she qualifies even if business wasn’t her original claim to fame.)
Okay. I sort-of enjoyed the demise of Coach Hayes of Ohio State fame, who was fired as Coach/Icon for punching out a collegiate student-athlete who let him down in some fashion. And there was Bobby Knight. I admit feeling bad for President Richard Nixon, the guy who couldn’t just say, “Woopsie! I guess I messed up there. Forgive me?” I think I could have. And he was the president that was going to have me slogging around in the rice paddies of Vietnam.
Someone I cared a lot about once remarked – at watching the University of Arkansas athletic director arriving in a car – “Here he is. Oh. I didn’t know Frank [Broyles] had a driver.” The “driver” was Coach Nolan Richardson. She assumed a black man behind the wheel had to be a hired chauffeur. Driving Mr Daisy. These days, most of us would not make that assumption. (I could still be naïve.) The person observing the arrival of Mr Broyles that day was the product of a different era.
Not a bad person.
I’m not defending Paula Deen here. My father set me to rights at an early age but Ms Deen did not share a father with me. I did not grow up in the deep South, as she did and has reminded us of – more than once. I think that’s the trouble.
Like Tricky Dicky, the president who had to abdicate the throne because he couldn’t say “I’m sorry for my mistakes,” Paula Deen persists in defending her style of upbringing as an excuse for her racist-sounding commentary. “I’m not a crook,” said Nixon. “I is what I is,” says Deen.
Personally, I used to poop my pants, but I learned to better myself.
So, it has to be “Sorry, Paula. You’re books are forever banned from the shelves of–”
Oh, who am I kidding? I’m selling pages and information. Books. Recipes. Paula Deen didn’t know me from Adam when she fell from grace and she doesn’t know me now. I’ve never prepared food based on her recipes.
But I won’t deny someone else that chance and – me, a sale.
It isn’t personal or principal here. Just business. (I’m not a serial killer either, but sell murder mysteries.) The chef is losing sponsors for her past comments, but not so much for her past comments as for her inability to say today: “Woopsie! I guess I messed up there. Forgive me?”
It would have worked for a disgraced US president way back then and for a Deep South deep-fryer in this day and age.
Pride goeth, they say, before a fall. Wow. What a fall. Fail, as they say these days. But don’t start remembering later those loose words said these days, or don’t speak today those words that may be later recalled.
Cookbooks? Got ‘em. Political spin-doctoring? Not so much. But, you aren’t looking for those, anyway. Come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 S. Main Street, Broken Arrow OK!