Paula Deen isn’t really on trial for using the N-word. She’s on trial for the crime of being Paula Deen, a woman who cooks with lard (yum!), shows up for the Today Show wreathed in tears and garbed in an inappropriately girlish hue of pink, and says unfortunate things such as “I is who I is.”
Think of Paula as the anti-Julia Child. Unlike Julia Child, who also loved butter and cream but had the discipline to take only one bite, thus preserving her well-bred appearance, Paula goes whole hawg for fattening (but tasty) pimento cheese rather than pâté. She must be punished!...Later: "If they couldn’t get her on those delicious globs of butter, any weapon will do."
Hays is right for half a sentence, anyway: Paula Deen isn't really on trial. She was fired, not by the International Left or the PC Police, but by a major corporation that didn't want to deal with the controversy her case engendered. That's capitalism, comrade!
Maybe what Hays means by "trial" is that people have been making fun of Deen, which Hays may consider Alinskyite, the usual conservative complaint when some wingnut makes an ass of him or herself. But these days, every time celebrities get their tit caught in a wringer, they get heckled mercilessly. I didn't see Hays blubbering in National Review that Lindsay Lohan was "on trial" for being a former child star.
I can see sympathizing with Deen if you actually believe she's just a simple belle who don't know what-all she was sayin' and is caught up by forces she doesn't understand, or if you think the case has been overblown, as Bob Somersby does. But neither Hays nor the other less scrupulous conservatives who've taken up the cause ("The Far Left shows blatant hypocrisy in crucifying Paula Deen," "The Lynching of Paula Deen," etc) are doing that.
I expect they're misrepresenting the event so badly because they think there's some culture-war capital to wring out of it. Deen is, from all I can tell, a female cooking show equivalent of Larry the Cable Guy, marketed to people as a lovable Southern artifact like NASCAR and Moon Pies. Now that she's become a laughingstock, these guys are in a rush to attribute her downfall to Political Correctness, so they can rile up the dwindling number of people who think that the liberals with whom Deen signed a million-dollar TV contract have put her "on trial" for having quaint cornbread ways, and will do the same to them.
Also, Hays' commenters seem obsessed with the idea that black people can say "nigger" and they can't (or, rather, can't without some pointy-head getting all pissy with them). I assume the people who'll buy this guff are probably delighted that the Voting Rights Act got gut-shot in the Supreme Court. But that's obviously because I'm the real bigot.
UPDATE. I see the Center for American Progress and the ACLU have cut ties with Deen -- oh, wait, it's actually Caesar's Palace and Walmart. When did they become part of the liberal conspiracy?
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