Good ol’ Paula Deen. She was one of 2011’s great meme generators, and she’s been a headline queen since 2012 began.
I didn’t know who Paula Deen was until about 2008, when I accidentally saw a video of her making a dish that involved wrapping bacon around a square of mac ‘n’ cheese, then deep frying it.
Precisely the kind of thing Tim Berners-Lee was dreaming about when he and Al Gore invented the internet.
A little while after that, in 2009, I saw a video of Paula Deen being hit in the head with a ham. Not just any ham. News accounts called it a “flying ham” or a “charity ham.” But don’t blame the young fellow who good-naturedly lobbed it. Insurance companies regard flying charity hams as an Act of God.
Then Paula Deen made more money and in 2011 was the subject of the “Paula Deen Riding Things” meme. I saw things like this:
And, meme upon meme, here’s Paula Deen Riding Sad Keanu:
But 2012 had Paula Deen in the middle of an obesity flap. That is, a kerfuffle about her diet and what it does to your health. That’s because she announced she had Type II Diabetes, and that she’d known that for three years. During those three years, she was still selling fat and sugar delivery mechanisms known as “southern cooking.”
And the icing on the cake was her simultaneous announcement that she was going to cash in on her diabetic condition, by partnering up with Norvo Nordisk, a pharmaceutical company that makes medication to control diabetes. Instead of the public calling this a win-win, they reacted with indignation.
Until this news broke, nobody knew that a bacon-cheeseburger on a glazed donut “bun” might be bad for you.
Paula told Oprah she has a fear of death (both her parents died young). Some people thought that was a lame way to excuse her business deal, but elsewhere Paula Deen made it clear she’s not about to apologize for her deal with Norvo Nordisk, because “it’s the American Way.”
And she’s right. Pharmaceutical companies spend $4.7 billion dollars a year on direct-to-consumer advertising. That’s a lot of butter (another longstanding Paula Deen joke).
Just as this bit of news was dying down, Paula Deen made the headlines again in March, when she was the subject of a lawsuit filed by a former employee of her brother’s restaurant. The employee claims she had panic attacks because Paula and Bubba, Deen’s brother, used racial epithets, as well as a few other accusations.
Paula Deen denies all this, and in fact now say this former employee tried to extort them, asking for more than a million dollars in exchange for not filing a lawsuit. Oh, my.
This news only brought back the good ol’ Paula Deen days to my mind. I don’t want to read about her lawsuits, and I don’t want to read about her diabetes or her terrible fear of death.
I just want to see Paula Deen riding things, and I want to see more jokes about butter. Even better, I’d like to see a new Paula Deen meme.
Paula Deen Nursing A Piglet While Peter Dinklage Looks Slightly Stunned in a Shirt He Bought at Target:
