Despite ‘Today’ tears, Walmart drops Deen
NEW YORK — Paula Deen was dropped by Walmart and her name was stripped from four buffet restaurants on Wednesday, hours after she went on television and tearfully defended herself amid the mounting fallout over her admission of using a racial slur.
The story has become both a day-by-day struggle by a successful businesswoman to keep her career afloat and an object lesson on the level of tolerance and forgiveness in society for being caught making an insensitive remark.
Walmart Stores Inc. said Wednesday that it ended its relationship with Deen and will not place “any new orders beyond what’s already committed.”
Caesars Entertainment Corp. said it had been “mutually decided” with Deen to remove her name from its restaurants in Joliet, Ill.; Tunica, Miss.; Cherokee, N.C.; and Elizabeth, Ind.
At the same time, Deen’s representatives released letters of support from nine companies that do business with the chef and promised to continue. There’s evidence that a backlash is growing against the Food Network, which tersely announced last Friday that it was cutting ties with one of its stars.
During a deposition in a discrimination lawsuit filed by an ex-employee, the chef, who specializes in Southern comfort food, admitted to using the Nword in the past.
The lawsuit also accuses Deen of using the slur when planning her brother’s 2007 wedding, saying she wanted black servers in white coats, shorts and bow ties for a “Southern plantation-style wedding.”
Deen said she didn’t recall using the word “plantation” and denied using the N-word to describe waiters.
Deen told Matt Lauer on “Today” on Wednesday that she could only recall using the N-word once. She said she remembered using it when retelling a story about when she was held at gunpoint by a robber who was black while working as a bank teller in the 1980s in Georgia.
Her “Today” show appearance was a do-over from last Friday, when Deen didn’t show up for a promised and promoted interview. Deen told Lauer she had been overwhelmed last week. She said she was heartbroken by the controversy and she wasn’t a racist.
“I’ve had to hold friends in my arms while they’ve sobbed because they know what’s been said about me is not true and I’m having to comfort them,” she said.
Looking distressed and with her voice breaking, Deen said if there was someone in the audience who had never said something they wished they could take back, “please pick up that stone and throw it as hard at my head so it kills me. I want to meet you. I want to meet you.”
An uncomfortable Lauer tried to end the interview, but Deen repeated that anyone who hasn’t sinned should attack her.
Asked by Lauer whether she had any doubt that blacks consider use of the N-word offensive, Deen said: “I don’t know, Matt. I have asked myself that so many times, because it is so distressing to go into my kitchen and hear” what some young people are telling each other.