WorldNetDaily Tries to Cash in on Paula Deen's Racism

What else would one expect from a website that meticulously documents every instance of "black mob violence" but finds Paula Deen's history of racially charged behavior to be a money-making opportunity?
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For the past year, WorldNetDaily has hired Colin Flaherty to engage in a primitive form of race-baiting -- obsessing over every incident of "black mob violence" he can find, even if the "black mob" in question is made up mostly of dogs.

Thus, it probably shouldn't be a surprise that WND is rushing to the defense of celebrity chef Paula Deen over the racially charged behavior she has been accused of engaging in.

Chelsea Schilling asked in a June 29 WND article: "How did Paula Deen, a spunky 66-year-old TV chef, go from being the much-loved 'queen of Southern cuisine' to exiled pariah in just days?" Schilling wrote that Deen's only offense was "admitting in a legal deposition to use of the "N"-word many years ago," and that "Even Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson came to Deen's defense."

But Schilling is deliberately downplaying what Deen has been accused of. Several paragraphs later, Schilling admits that a former Deen employee "accused the chef star of using the racial epithet repeatedly, including at least once in reference to Obama." Contrary to Schilling's earlier claim, that alleged reference to Obama probably did not happen "many years ago."

Schilling also admits another key claim against Deen: "The former employee claims Deen said, 'What I would really like is a bunch of little [N-word] to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts and black bow ties. Now that would be a true Southern wedding, wouldn't it?'" But Schilling edited the most offensive part out, as Talking Points Memo reported (emphasis added):

"Well what I would really like is a bunch of little niggers to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts and black bow ties, you know in the Shirley Temple days, they used to tap dance around," the lawsuit claims Deen said. "Now that would be a true southern wedding, wouldn't it? But we can't do that because the media would be on me about that."

Amid all Schilling's whitewashing of Deen, she includes the phone numbers and email addresses of the networks and companies that have dropped Deen, stating that "Concerned individuals may contact the following partners who have dumped Deen."

Meanwhile, WND's columnists jumped on the pro-Deen bandwagon, joining Schilling in downplaying the nature of Deen's offenses by reducing them solely to a long-ago use of the N-word. Ilana Mercer lamented in her June 28 column that "Deen was forced to confess to using the "N-word" decades ago, upon which the Paula Deen Enterprises began to lose revenue. Now the poor woman is on that familiar, modern-day Via Dolorosa: the apology tour." Mercer then suggest that Deen's views of black people are justified because one robbed her:

Blaming Old-South culture - as the prototypical knaves of conservatism are doing - is, moreover, unlikely to help exculpate Ms. Deen in the minds of the morons who judge her for her words, rather than for her deeds. The bad Old South macro-narrative is as ineffective in mitigation as is pointing out that Deen misspoke because of a near-death experience. "A black man [once] burst into the bank that I was working at and put a gun to my head," recounted Deen. "I didn't feel real favorable towards him."

It is for the same reason that the young mother, seen here in a video gone viral being kicked and punched repetitively and mercilessly by a burly black man, should watch her words in the future. The home of the mom was invaded by the man, who delighted in brutalizing her in front of her toddler.

But then, Mercer also kinda misses apartheid, so she may not be the most objective person on racial issues.

Erik Rush laments even more in his June 30 column (while also working in a plug for his book):


Regarding the Deen debacle, some have criticized the inequity, capriciousness and mercilessness of the mob mentality, as well as the hypocrisy of the liberal media, which tolerates abject racism from Rev. Al Sharpton, Touré Neblett and other people of color, while queuing up to crucify someone who admitted to using a racial slur in private years ago.

The conditions to which I would call attention are those I have previously cited, and which were addressed at length in my book, "Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal - America's Racial Obsession." In general, they speak to liberals' imperative for portraying America as still being an institutionally racist nation.

[...]

Obviously I don't know what is in Paula Deen's heart, but that is hardly relevant to her predicament or to the argument at hand. What's really sad and unjust about this affair is that those pursuing the issue don't care what is in her heart.

In a July 2 column, Jesse Lee Peterson ranted that "I've been warning for the past 23 years that black racism is out-of-control - it appears black racism killed Trayvon Martin, and Paula Deen's career!" Like the other WND writers, Peterson reduced her offense to "use of the word 'N--er' decades ago," going on to complain, "By apologizing to all blacks, Deen and her former sponsors are unwittingly sending the message that just the accusation alone is enough to get whites to cave. This only encourages vultures like [Jesse] Jackson and [Al] Sharpton to swoop in and exploit these incidents for personal gain."

WND is so proud of Deen's racism, in fact, that it added her cookbooks to its online store. The move was announced in a July 1 article:


The rest of the media and corporate world may be running away from Paula Deen, punishing the celebrity chef for a 20-year-old remark for which she has apologized profusely.

But the WND Superstore is running toward her.

She's been abandoned by her TV network, Walmart, Target - even the publisher of her upcoming No. 1 bestselling book in the country, which decided not only to punish Deen but itself as well.

So what is the politically incorrect WND Superstore doing? Stocking up on everything Paula Deen.

The article goes on to list several Deen cookbooks now available through WND.

Apparently, WND hadn't thought of Deen as a moneymaker prior to the revelation of her racial remarks. But now that she's on record as a racist, she's become a suitable commodity for WND's online store. That doesn't make WND "politically incorrect" -- it makes WND the supporter of a racist.

In his July 5 column, WND editor Joseph Farah explained the tortured thought process that led him to add Deen's books to his online store. He decried "the vitriolic, unforgiving, ravenous wolf-pack reaction to her racial indiscretions," but "another side of me thinks she's getting just what she deserves" because she's an Obama supporter: "Paula Deen is a Democrat through and through - which really shouldn't surprise anyone given that her party was founded as the political wing of the Ku Klux Klan and fought desegregation and civil rights through the early 1960s."

Farah doesn't mention, of course, that the Democrats who weren't eager to give up their racism usually gravitated toward the Republican Party.

Farah expressed no criticism of her racism -- in fact, it appears he's more offended that Deen "had a 10-year affair with a married man after she was divorced" than an established pattern of racism. Ultimately, it all came down to which side he disliked more (and, of course, a money-making opportunity):

If they can do it to Paula Deen, they can do it to anyone.

And there is no accountability for these corporate Torquemadas.

They don't even care about their own bottom line!

Paula Deen's publisher had the No. 1 book at Amazon in pre-release - and decided to kill the book!

How far will people like that go to atone for their own guilty consciences? Whatever happened to the Christian notion of "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone"?

So it comes down to this: Whom do I like least - Paula Deen or her persecutors?

For me, it's an easy call. I despise her persecutors.

That's why I directed my company's retail division to offer all of Paula Deen's books to the public - and to promote them as well. Why? To stick a finger in the eye of those pompous, self-righteous publishers, TV networks, big-box chain stores and everyone else looking to raise themselves up by tearing down Paula Deen.

In fact, I'll go one further: If Paula Deen is looking for a publisher who still believes in free enterprise and the First Amendment to distribute her new book, I'm just a phone call or email away. I'm obviously not sugar-coating it. I'm not sucking up or making excuses for anything Paula Deen has done. I just believe to preserve a free society, we have to guard vigilantly against witch hunts like this.

Unless those witch hunts are conducted by Farah and WND, in which case they're perfectly fine.

You can almost hear the cash register ringing in Farah's brain at the prospect, however remote, that he might publish Deen's next cookbook.

But, really, what else would one expect from a website that meticulously documents every instance of "black mob violence" but finds Paula Deen's history of racially charged behavior to be a money-making opportunity?

(An expanded version of this column appears at ConWebWatch.)

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