Casting Stones

Southern chef Paula Deen’s attitudes about race, as expressed in a court deposition, are offensive to most of us, but there’s something not right about all the commercial entities associated with her heading for the exits.

Certainly, a celebrity with backward views should be called out on them. But hey, this woman, after all the discussion about her “empire,” is a chef. She writes cookbooks. She’s on TV. What do her views on race have to do with cooking?

Those interested in karma should have been satisfied enough to learn that a guru of what many consider to be unhealthy cooking should be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. But at least that has a relationship to what she does for a living. Do you think the lily-livered corporations that are now throwing her under the bus are all doing so simply out of moral outrage, and that their own bottom lines had nothing to do with it?

A few years ago, a city councilman in a Southern California town near where I lived came under fire for a term he used during a meeting. As I recall, the council was talking about the use of gasoline-powered leaf blowers by the overwhelmingly Latino population of gardeners. The councilman, again as I recall, was trying to point out that these gardeners needed these devices in their jobs -- but he used the term “wetback” in talking about his own gardener. The thing was, this council member was an older man, and he didn’t use the word as a slur at all. For him, in his woeful ignorance, it was simply a term of description. He should have known better -- but he didn’t.

Nevertheless, local racial activists, as well as many from L.A., descended on the town and hounded the councilman into resignation. Even the gardener who had worked for this fellow for many years tried to defend him, but to no avail.

If we applied the same principle to the work of the late Dr. William Shockley, we might not be using any of the electronic devices that interconnect us today. Dr. Shockley expressed notoriously unorthodox and offensive views about race – but he was the inventor of the transistor, the basis of the modern semiconductor industry.

Hitler is credited with making German trains run on time and building the autobahns. Should good Germans be walking to work?

Paula Deen herself made a tearful apology on TV, saying that she hoped anyone who had never used a racial slur would cast a stone at her and kill her, paraphrasing the famous Bible story. You may or may not accept the apology or even believe it was genuine.

Maybe mercy and compassion just don’t work in this case. She should have known better, and at least kept her backward views to herself.

But shouldn’t punishments fit crimes?