Paula Deen, Racist Queen, Been a Scream

People are mad because Food Network dropped a racist pig. Well, too bad, so sad. I mean, seriously. What on earth was so important about a woman who cooks for a living? Why does anyone care what she does, where she goes, or how she gets there? She's disgusting. Every picture I've seen of that woman, she looks pink. I don't know why. She's not a Barbie doll, but somehow she's pink! Is it a bad make-up job, or self-tanners gone awry?

Anyway, that's hardly the point, is it? I wouldn't be prattling about her pinkness if she wasn't such a bigot. She must think that being pink is a step up from those sporting other shades of skin. Well, it just makes her look weird, and now she sounds like a moron. The people who are complaining because she's been fired for being a bigot need to get their heads examined. That's what really pisses me off about the situation. It isn't that she's a bigot - after all she did get fired for it, so all's well that ends well - it's the fact that people are actually mad about her being fired for being a bigot. That tells me a great deal about the mentality of those people. Either they're full-blown bigots themselves, or they're simply so privileged that they can't bring themselves to care about anything beyond the latest trend in canapes.

I was talking to a friend the other night about the whole thing with chefs being treated like they're something above 'ordinary' people, and it just isn't something I can understand. It's one reason I never bothered to watch Ramsay's tirades. If you feel like watching a two-year-old on PCP throwing a tantrum, then go ahead. I despise that kind of display of anger. Talking to people like they're dirt just because they're not cooking something right is just ridiculous in the extreme. It boils down to, "You're not doing it my way while I scream in your face, so I'm going to scream even more and call you names."

Sure, cooking is a skill. It's still something pretty much anyone can learn to do. Maybe not with the passion and attention to detail of a good chef, but guess what? It still turns to crap! That's right. I said it. We eat food, we digest it, and then we poop it out. It always becomes crap!! With the exception of food poisoning issues, it really doesn't matter in the slightest how it was made, or whether it was made by a chef, your mom, or you. The ingredients matter for health reasons - the person who makes it...not so much. When you really study food, nutrition and human anatomy, the fact of the matter is many of the foods we eat are healthier for us when they're not cooked. Oh my God! Did I utter a blasphemy?

Fruits and vegetables lose many of their health benefits when they're cooked. The more processed something is, the worse it is for us. Yes, that includes genetically modified foods, which is not the same thing as the hybridization that's been practiced by farmers for centuries, no matter what Monsanto would like you to believe. Grapefruits are a hybrid fruit. They're an Indonesian pomelo and Jamaican sweet orange combined. There is nothing unnatural in them, however. They weren't genetically modified or chemically altered. That's a whole other kettle of fishiness. Sadly, it's getting to be almost impossible to find seeds now that have not been genetically modified and patented by Monsanto. The truly scary thing about that is, it means they control a large part of the world's food supply.

When you control the food supply, you control everything. It's one reason I'll be having my own garden, along with some chickens for eggs. I can't get by without eating meat. I've tried. I get very sick from eating nothing but vegetables. They also cause me a fair bit of pain when I eat too many of them. It's the same with fruits. I have to have decent levels of meat protein in my diet, and since I do like eggs it's an option for me to have a cruelty-free food supply. I'm the one who would be looking after the laying hens, so I'd know better than anyone how well they're treated.

Yes, believe it or not I have experience raising chickens. I grew up on a farm. We had chickens and rabbits for meat. Sadly, my two pet rabbits were sacrificed to the dinner table. Flopsy and Mopsy were already old, so I noticed the meat was tougher than usual. That's how I found out. No, my grandparents were not nice people. Empathy was not one of their character traits, which isn't surprising to anyone who's read some of my previous blog postings where they've played a role in the festivities. They probably would have loved Paula Deen. I don't think my grandmother ever knew that I've dated outside my own race.

My grandmother certainly had a great deal in common with chef Ramsay. She used to throw tantrums, too. She'd hop up and down in one spot if she didn't get her way, and then clutch her chest in a bid for sympathy for the sudden attack of angina. What a woman!

My childhood wasn't all about pain and misery, of course, even if it felt like that at the time. There were some very good aspects to it. I learned to garden and farm. I was given an extremely healthy diet consisting of fresh, home-grown foods. I learned to despise white bread, and I'm not fond of white pasta either. They taste like glue to me. I was taught how to use a real lawnmower at a very young age, along with a table saw, drill press, wood-burner, and pretty much any other tool you would find in a workshop. That actually spawned my love for designing and building furniture, and enabled me to invent things that I've sold.

No, I learned pretty much everything I needed to know about self-reliance and survival as a kid. I knew how to survive out in the bush in the middle of winter. (No, that isn't a skill that every Canadian learns by osmosis. People die of exposure up here, too.) I even learned to cook and clean - to some extent. I'm actually pretty darn good at the cooking thing, but I don't actually give a crap. Sure, it's nice when people compliment my efforts - it's polite, after all. However, I certainly don't base my self-worth on a pot roast. No matter how juicy and tender it might be when it comes out of the oven, it doesn't make me better than anyone else. The golden skin of a turkey I've roasted isn't more precious than that of beef rolled in peppercorns, just because it's a lighter shade.

Paula Deen, just because you're pink doesn't mean you get to be a racist jerk. If you're still one of her fans, I'd seriously start questioning my morality if I were you. When you spend your hard-earned money on things that she's got her hand in, that money goes in her pocket and encourages her to continue being exactly the person she is right now - a bigot - you're paying her to be a bigot. It's no different than going to a Mel Gibson movie now, or buying a Chris Brown CD. As long as these people keep getting paid, it will never occur to them that they might be wrong about one or two things.