April 25, 2024

You are here: Home / Archives for discrimination lawsuit

Publisher Drops Book Deal With TV Chef Paula Deen

June 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment

But on Friday, its publisher, Random House, said it would not publish the cookbook, and would cancel a five-book contract it signed with Ms. Deen last year.

The book deal was one of the last remaining lucrative business relationships for the embattled celebrity chef. Its cancellation came on a day when Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney announced that they would stop selling products, including cookbooks, branded with her name.

Since last week, the Food Network, Smithfield Foods, Walmart, Target, Caesars Entertainment, QVC and the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk have decided to suspend or sever ties with Ms. Deen after her admission in a legal deposition that she had used racist language in the past and allowed racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic jokes in one of her restaurants. Ms. Deen was deposed on video as part of a discrimination lawsuit filed last year by a former employee.

Her frantic efforts to stanch the flow of negative opinion by defending herself on the “Today” show and posting apologetic videos on YouTube have rallied many of her admirers. They have threatened boycotts of Walmart, created a “We Support Paula Deen” Facebook page that has well over half a million “likes,” and started a campaign to flood the Food Network offices with empty butter wrappers, a symbol of Ms. Deen’s indulgent cooking style.

But these efforts have not, apparently, made a difference to Ms. Deen’s corporate partners.

Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, said in a statement Friday afternoon, “After careful consideration, Ballantine Books has made the difficult decision to cancel the publication of ‘Paula Deen’s New Testament: 250 Favorite Recipes, All Lightened Up.’ “

The book, co-written by Melissa Clark, a dining columnist for The New York Times, was to feature lighter fare than the fat- and sugar-laden recipes Ms. Deen has promoted in previous books and on her television shows.

A person with knowledge of Random House’s decision to cancel the contract said, “When Walmart, Target and J. C. Penney all announced they are discontinuing their Paula Deen business, including books, it is awfully tough to stay the course of a publication. It was a business decision.”

Ms. Deen has published 14 cookbooks, starting in 1998 with “The Lady and Sons Savannah Country Cookbook.” Together, they have sold more than eight million copies.

But many of the sales outlets that normally sell thousands of Ms. Deen’s books — like Walmart, Target, Kmart and QVC — would have refused to carry the new one.

Random House would not disclose the amount Ms. Deen was to be paid, but a person with knowledge of the contract said it involved millions of dollars. It is unclear whether Ms. Deen will have to return any of it, or whether a clause in the contract would allow the publisher to cancel the pact because of Ms. Deen’s behavior.

“That’s why God invented lawyers,” said Mr. Applebaum.

On Thursday, the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk said it was suspending its use of Ms. Deen as a spokeswoman for the drug. The company, which has the top-selling portfolio of diabetes medications in the United States, has reached out vigorously to black Americans in its marketing and medical sponsorships.

Ms. Deen began a multiplatform campaign to promote the drug on the same day last year she revealed she had Type 2 diabetes. That set off public criticism that she had misserved her audience. She had received the diagnosis two years earlier, yet had continued to promote recipes high in sugar and fat.

Didra Brown Taylor, the executive director of the Beautyshop Project, a national diabetes screening initiative that offers free blood tests in hair salons in low-income neighborhoods, said that Ms. Deen’s conflict of interest was noted by program participants at the time, and that the current crisis had confirmed many in their beliefs that Ms. Deen might be more opportunistic than honest.

“She was cooking food that a diabetic would not eat,” Ms. Taylor said. “And to profit from that and then to profit from a diabetes drug, that’s hypocrisy.”

She said African-Americans were unlikely to forget Ms. Deen’s more recent admission that she used racial epithets. “It’s more than a rumor,” Ms. Taylor said. “She can’t say that she didn’t say it.”

Leslie Kaufman contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/29/business/media/publisher-drops-book-deal-with-tv-chef-paula-deen.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

Paula Deen Is a ‘No-Show’ on ‘Today’

June 21, 2013 by Leave a Comment

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

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

Thomas E. Perez, Obama’s Labor Nominee, Faces G.O.P. Critics in Senate

April 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON — Responding to sharp criticism from Republicans for his work on housing discrimination and voting rights at the Justice Department, Thomas E. Perez, President Obama’s choice to head the Labor Department, on Thursday defended his record and said that if confirmed, his focus would be on tackling the nation’s high unemployment rate.

Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the labor committee, cited a scathing report from other Republican lawmakers as he questioned Mr. Perez about a deal he helped broker with officials in St. Paul for the city to drop a housing discrimination lawsuit in exchange for the Justice Department’s declining to join two whistle-blower complaints against the city.

“That seems to me to be an extraordinary amount of wheeling and dealing outside the normal responsibilities of the assistant attorney general for civil rights,” Mr. Alexander said.

He later added that he expected Mr. Perez to respond in full to a subpoena from Representative Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, for personal e-mails believed to contain more information about the deal.

Mr. Perez countered that not only had he sought the guidance of ethics experts on the agreement, his had not been the final word.

“The senior career people in the civil division kicked the tires on this case. They looked at it very carefully, they made a very considered judgment that it was a weak case,” he said.

Democrats were eager to voice their support for Mr. Perez, who, if confirmed would be the only Hispanic member of the cabinet.

Anticipating questions about the deal, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, the committee chairman, opened the questioning by leading Mr. Perez through a series of largely yes-or-no queries designed to rebut the Republican report.

“As I said, we have gone through this with a fine-tooth comb, with our lawyers, with our staff,” Mr. Harkin said. “And everything I can see is that you acted appropriately and ethically to advance the interests of the United States.”

Questioning the role of politics in Mr. Perez’s challenges to voting laws, Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, brought up the Justice Department’s move to block that state’s voter identification law in 2011 on the grounds that it would discourage minority voters.

“As I look at your management style, it seems to have a political perspective, a political bias in the management style,” Mr. Scott said. “It seems not to be open and not to be balanced and certainly not to be fair.”

Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, released a statement in March vowing to block Mr. Perez’s nomination pending a response from the Justice Department on his accusations of uneven enforcement of voter registration rights in his state.

As expected, many of the questions focused on job creation, with senators from both parties asking about his commitment to the Job Corps, a training program for young people, among others.

“Jobs, jobs, and jobs,” Mr. Perez said, summing up his top priority as labor secretary. “I believe it’s critically important to get Americans back to work, and I believe the Department of Labor can play a critical role.”

The committee plans to take up the nomination again next week.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/us/politics/thomas-e-perez-obamas-labor-nominee-faces-gop-critics-in-senate.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,