Speaking up for Paula Deen (but not her food)

I’ll confess a bias: I find little to like about Paula Deen, and the public flap about her use of the “N-word” word (which she seems to think wasn’t really all that bad) makes it more comfortable to be what her ardent fans would call a snob. Like my colleague Alexandra Le Tellier, I find the pancreas-exhausting concoctions Deen charmingly hawks in her cookbooks and on her shows to be only slightly less dangerous than poison.

Need an example? Read her recipe for, yes, deep-fried butter balls, and tell me that such a matter-of-fact description of how to destroy your heart doesn’t have the same chilling effect as reading a lethal-injection checklist.

But while Deen has her many critics, she also has her defenders. Those who have written to letters@latimes.com so far haven’t defended her cooking (and thank God for that), but they do say the controversy over her remarks is way overblown.

Here is a selection of those letters.

Conrad Corral of West Hollywood says Deen is in a Catch-22:

“ ‘Damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ is what this Paula Dean mess has become, and the media are leading the way.

“Had Deen lied under oath during her grand jury deposition and the public became aware of what she said decades ago, we’d be having a very different conversation today. However, Deen told the truth and regrets using a racial slur, and yet somehow that’s not enough.

“Give me more proof that Deen is or has always been this racist person, and I’ll join the ‘Paula’s bad’ bandwagon. Until then, let’s step back and wait until know more about the lawsuit against her and until we have all the facts.”

Robert Gardiner of Albuquerque kicks out the soapbox from underneath Deen’s critics:

“Deen has made mistakes in her life just like all the rest of us; and some are now making the mistake of trying to appear better than Deen by exposing some of her mistakes and keeping all of their mistakes hidden.

“This is an example of the behavior that keeps us divided into warring camps unwilling to work cooperatively. We need to be more compassionate to each other.”

While not defending Deen, Palm Springs resident Gail Christian puts this controversy in perspective:

“As a black person, I often feel like I am living in a parallel universe. So Deen is now the face of racism in America? She had the nerve to admit to using the ‘N-word’ and wanting to dress up black men like servants for a party with a Southern theme.

“Black people in this country are overwhelmed with poverty, bad schools, awful neighborhoods, high crime, unemployment and poor access to healthcare. The media trivialize racism when Deen trumps those stories.

“This is like a black man tied to the railroad tracks with a boulder on his chest, and when a white woman comes by and throws a pebble at him, there is this immense outcry about what a racist she is. The racists in this country are those with the political and economic power to deny large segments of the population the ability to operate in society on an equal footing.

“What is sad about this farce, and the phony sense of outrage, is that it distracts from the real issues confronting African Americans.”

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