A Dozen Mea Culpas and A Pound of Butter

I don't know why everyone thinks you need to stay on top of current events. Personally, I'm terrible at it. Everything I know is usually second or third hand from conversations I hear about the topic. The only content that actually filters down to me are the celebrity issues. Yes, because the celebrity affairs, of people I will never meet, will impact me more than the immigration reform bill. Or because it's just beat to death in the media until even I hear about it in my cone of silence: Kimye's dumb ass baby name, who dumped Taylor Swift this week, and poor Paula Deen's infamous racial slur episode.

Now, as I just mentioned, I'm awful at keeping up with current events. So I'm not sure exactly what the deal is other than the salient point: 27 years ago Paula called a black person the "N" word. How it's just coming to light now, I don't know. She did an interview on the Today show and was basically persecuted by Matt Lauer. He "lawyered" her and asked quite a few different ways whether or not she was racist. As if phrasing it just right would break her house of lies and she'd admit to being the devil's own instrument in spreading discord and racism? "Well, Matt, when you asked outright if I'm a racist, I said no. But when you asked 'By birth, by choice, by osmosis, you don't feel you have racist tendencies?' by golly, that's a different story. Yes, I'm a big ol' racist pig, Matt. I'm glad you cleared that up because for awhile I was thinkin' I was a good person."

Let me go on record saying I do not, in any way, condone any sort of racism. People can be assholes no matter what color their skin is, what country they come from, or what parentage they have. But you cannot tell me that people haven't made inappropriate comments before. Am I to assume that Matt Lauer never once laughed at a joke that began with: A priest, a cowboy, and a black man walk into a bar....? Because if he did, surely he has racist tendencies. What about my grandma who hates rap music because she thinks it's all "noise" and "Back in my day, we actually made music, not this junk that's on the radio." Well, grandma, that man who is rapping is African American. Congratulations, you're a racist.

In an ironic twist, if a white man calls a black man the "N" word, he's racist. If a black man calls a white man a "cracker", he's funny. (And I STILL don't understand what that means. I get that it's offensive, I just don't know why.) We can pick and choose what to be offended about I guess. Personally, I can't imagine not calling someone who tried to rob me at gunpoint a very nasty name, no matter if he was white, purple, or polka dotted. It's not as if she was just walking down the street calling out blasphemous names at people. I think we can rule that the extreme circumstances give her a little verbal liberty. If I was robbed at gunpoint and survived to tell the tale, I'm sure the names I would call that person would make a sailor in a whorehouse blush. I'd have to walk around with an FCC censor attached to my mouth for at least a month or two.

(All the while, there's something big going on in the Middle East. Huge, life altering decisions are being made by those in charge. But sadly, we'll never know because it was pre-empted by Lindsay Lohan's high speed, drug induced, car chase.)

The point is: Stop beating a dead horse people. Paula Deen made a mistake, owned up to it, and apologized. Do you know how rare it is for a celebrity to admit to anything? She's got class. With a pound of butter. And she's not afraid to use it.