After being dislodged from the heart of the Food Network, penitent poundcake Paula Deen has announced that she’s launching her own network—a network that’s located wholly online, where one can be assured that making racist statements will never lead to real-life consequences. “Guess who’s gone digital, y’all!” Deen brays rhetorically in the below trailer, a non-question whose folksy affectations mean the answer could only reasonably be Paula Deen or Foghorn Leghorn. And seeing as the face that then fills the screen is not technically a cartoon, we know that it’s Deen who’s goin’ digital. Come get your laptop out of the deep fryer, y’all; it’s time to eat the Internet.
The Paula Deen Network is expected to launch this September, though fans who spent last summer filling comment sections with the words “LIBERAL WITCH HUNT” can begin subscribing as early as next month. Their continued show of support could even win them a trip to Savannah, Georgia, where they can attend a live taping and maybe even make a pilgrimage to the recently shuttered nexus of the Deen scandal, Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House, where they can lay some flowers for the First Amendment (or whatever). Anyone who’s still hesitant about signing up can also catch a sneak preview at one of Deen’s Paula Deen Live! tour stops, where Deen will presumably put her head inside a hollowed-out computer monitor for a little bit, just so they can get used to it.
According to a press release that hilariously insists Deen was “always bigger than a 30-minute television show,” and that this decision is “one more example of Paula doing things her own way and taking control of her brand”—and certainly not an example of someone taking the only available recourse after being fired and dropped from numerous endorsement deals—the Paula Deen Network will feature both cooking and lifestyle content. This content will be structured around themes, such as “Leftover Mondays,” “Taco Tuesdays,” and “Not Dwelling On The Past Fridays,” and promises to highlight “the best of Southern living,” such as shopping and decorating tips, and embracing your rich heritage of ingrained racism.
Subscribers will also be able to use apps like a Meal Planner that will allow them to plot out all their Paula Deen-created meals for as long as “an entire week or month,” depending on the length of time they’re planning to live. And as they are being relegated to the fringes of online media, they’ll also be able to claim that they know what segregation feels like now, though hopefully not in any magazine interviews.
The Paula Deen Network will also be easily accessible on tablets and smartphones, except where covered in butter.