As it turns out, the apology that Paula Deen cooked up earlier today, though slathered in creamy publicist sentiment, still didn’t sit well with her increasingly dyspeptic employers, food pun food pun, etc., she’s fired. Deen’s longtime home The Food Network has announced that it will not renew her contract when it expires at the end of this month, ending a relationship that began in 1999 and continued to spread across several series dedicated to showcasing the myriad flavors of Deen’s home cooking, all of them starchy.
Unlike Deen’s recipes, there was no cushioning fat to the network’s statement—just a lean notice of termination, delivered without further explanation or PR sauce. Though of course, you can likely ascribe it to the Food Network not wanting their channel dedicated to the celebration of cooking to be tainted by a woman who treats it like a suicidal dare, and also said “the N-word.”
Oddly enough, just before the network made its announcement, Deen released yet another video apology, this one longer, admirably completed without edits, and shot more on the fly for that arthouse, verité feel. In it, she addresses her Today no-show (she was “physically not able”), and says, “Your color of your skin, your religion, your sexual preference does not matter…to me, but it's what’s in the heart.”Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough to break through all that other Paula Deen stuff still clogging the heart.