Paula Deen Is a ‘No-Show’ on ‘Today’

Paula Deen, the self-proclaimed queen of Southern cooking and a sugary mainstay of both the Food Network and the “Today” show, failed to appear on “Today” for a scheduled exclusive interview Friday morning with Matt Lauer, citing exhaustion.

Ms Deen had agreed to the interview, extensively promoted by NBC News on Thursday night, to address the uproar generated this week by her statements in a deposition for a discrimination lawsuit by a former employee. In the deposition, she admitted she had used racial epithets, tolerated racist jokes and condoned pornography in the workplace.

Clearly upset by her absence on Friday, Mr. Lauer told viewers that Ms Deen had spoken with him on Thursday, agreed to an “open and candid” discussion, flown to New York City — but in the morning, had her representatives cancel. “We just found out she’s a no-show,” he said. On Twitter, he added, “Hoping to get more info on the Paula Deen situation soon. Very confusing.”

She posted a Twitter message at noon saying, “I will be releasing a video statement shortly.”

Ms. Deen, 66, commands a small culinary empire, having produced numerous cookbooks, starred in cooking shows and served as a spokeswoman for Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Smithfield Foods. She and her sons own and operate a restaurant in Savannah, Ga. Her magazine “Cooking with Paula Deen,” has a circulation of nearly 1 million, her Web site says.

But Ms. Deen has managed to offend even her most uncritical fans before, most recently in January 2012 when she announced her diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes on the same day she endorsed the diabetes drug Victoza and a lucrative collaboration with Novo Nordisk, the drug’s manufacturer. Because she had built her career on a no-holds-barred approach to sugar and fat (creating recipes like a cheeseburger patty sandwiched between two doughnuts and a Better than Sex cake made with cake mix, pudding mix, and heavy cream), she was roundly criticized for encouraging an unhealthy diet for others, hiding her illness and then trying to profit from it.

On Thursday, criticism of her statements about race mounted on Twitter — even spawning a sarcastic hashtag, #paulasbestdishes — and on Ms. Deen’s own Facebook page.

The lawsuit against her was filed in March 2012 by Lisa T. Jackson, the general manager of Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House, a restaurant that Ms. Deen owned with her brother, Earl (Bubba) Hiers. Ms. Jackson, who is white, said that her father was Sicilian, with dark skin, and that she had suffered prejudice as a result.

In the deposition, Ms. Deen said that she had used a racial slur in the past, though not in the restaurant, and that she and her family did not tolerate prejudice. “Bubba and I, neither one of us, care what the color of your skin is” or what gender a person is, she said. “It’s what’s in your heart and in your head that matters to us.”

She also stated that “most jokes” are about Jews, gay people, black people and “rednecks.”

“I can’t, myself, determine what offends another person,” she said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/dining/paula-deen-is-a-no-show-on-today.html?partner=rss&emc=rss