End of a buttered TV career

The post that will get me blackballed by the only game in town, conjure some harsh responses, and needs to be written…

Prior to 1999 most driven chefs in the United States had but one goal: get a Michelin star. Then came Tony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential” and books added to the list. And then, a scant few months later, Food Network re-invented itself, adding yet another goal: be on TV.

That was 13 years ago. In those years Food Network managed to do an awful lot of things. It developed a “language of food” with sentences such as “there is a lot going on in this dish” and “this is a flavor explosion in my mouth,” snippets developed by marketers in the bowels of Scripp’s Chelsea offices to turn something inherently based on taste, smell, and visual cues into something vaguely descriptive in words and images.

It also redefined “chef,” from the (experience and training notwithstanding) head of a brigade in a commercial kitchen to someone selling books and appearing on TV. In thirteen short years being a chef no longer meant to work harder and have more responsibilities, it meant “likes food” and applied to anyone, from stay at home moms in Montana to book authors in Boulder.

And it took in a number of trained, untrained, experienced, and inexperienced actors, made them “celebrity chefs” and gave them TV shows. Over the years some came, some left. Almost everyone was molded, groomed, and changed inside the Food Network apparatus - men into a weird mix of superhero and culinary craftsman, women into either “the girl I’d like to date” or “the mother I’d like to have.” Misogyny and stereotyping hard at work.

Some FN employees broke the mold. Cat Cora, a successful and extremely talented chef and restaurateur. Masaharu Morimoto, whose fame began long before Food Network began coughing shows into the ether, and others. Others became the mold. Front and center in that category stands one woman: Paula Deen.

Originally conceived by a Food Network handler as “Julia Child if she’d grown up a divorced single mom in a small town in Georgia.” Even though Deen had a career in hospitality, having just been named “International Meal of the Year” by USA Today the year she joined Food Network, her story, that of a divorced mother of two who, left with $200 and a small apartment, who started a catering service after some stints in odd jobs, was mostly neglected. Instead Deen became, from the get go, one of FNs new “molds.” the “mother you wish you had.”

Since then Food Network and Paula Deen have ridden each other’s gravy trains. From shows, books, and branded cookware to events and finding high strung investors to open more restaurants, Deen, TV advertisers, and the network benefited.

And then came 2012, a court date, a deposition, a question. “Have you ever used the N-Word?” she was asked. And, yes, she replied. Back then, sometime in the 80s, she’d been held up at gunpoint and, angry and confused, she’d used it.

A year later, court transcripts are now available and plaintiff alleges she also used that word during one of Deen’s son’s wedding.

Food Network groomed Paula Deen to be the Southern Queen. A fake down to earth personality, the polar opposite of the networks’ Hamptons lady, Ina Garten. Anyone expecting a middle class white woman from Atlanta, GA, not having used the N-word in the 60s spends too much time in wonderland. And while it wasn’t acceptable to reasonable humans then and should be even less so now, to presume the opposite is to presume against reality.

And this is where things get iffy.

So Food Network fired the Queen of Butter, not renewing her contracts. Which is, everything considered, the right thing to do. There is no place in this world - and even less so in its media - for racism. But one must ask: “why Paula Deen?”

TV needs colorful and expressive people. Deen is not the first to be sued by an employee of her restaurant. Bobby Flay remains a constant guest of America’s court rooms (or, rather, his expensive lawyers do), from stiffed tips to at-work injuries, down to people Flay had fired from other jobs for not wanting to disturb native grave sites with frivolous restaurant concepts.

Morimoto? Croc-clad former FN celebrity Batali? Own a restaurant, TV chef or not, and you will be sued. The more money there is to be made, the more likely you’ll be sued. And fame makes for a solid belief one can do what one wants. The restaurant industry being a weird combination of dedication and outcasts, allegations of less than savory personal misconduct are always in there.

Yet, Flay is still with Food Network.

So is Alton Brown, the Evangelical whose raging homophobia and unsavory humor on set is a pretty well known fact. His homophobic and racist quips at book signings and appearances are just as well known.

Or Robert Irvine. Who lied his way into Food Network, claiming to be an OBE, having cooked for Obama, Bush, and made (a/the) wedding cake for Price Charles. Between his stints as a SAS special ops combat operative, that is. A Master Chef, a PhD in food sciences from the University of Leeds? All crock. In the course of all this lying, Irvine hurt very real people, promising jobs in his restaurants in St. Petersburg, FL, or employing them as contractors, builders, and planners. When the scam became public, Irvine ran. Leaving behind unpaid employees, contractors, tax payers (cities lent him lots of cash) and those who had quit jobs thousands of miles away.Yet, after a brief stint away from Food Network he is back.

Or Guy Fieri who is all of the above:

“You have to protect Guy from all of his poop jokes,” Page says. “Anytime any woman mentioned ‘cream,’ Guy went into a sexual riff. When cutting the show, you had to tell the editors to watch Guy’s eye line, because it’s always on breasts.”

Fieri also needed protection from homosexuals, or at least advance warning. Early in the show’s run, Page got a phone call from Fieri, who’d just walked out of a restaurant in a huff. “Guy had decided that the two men running the restaurant were life partners,” Page remembers. “He said, ‘You can’t send me to talk to gay people without warning! Those people weird me out!’”

“[Fieri’s team] were demanding tremendous research from my people, and pictures, but they didn’t want to pay for them,” Page says. “Guy said to me: ‘You know, it’s true: Jews are cheap.’”

All of those are reasons, just as good as the Deen episode, to let go. To kick to the curb employees who create hostile work environments for others, who are bad apples and even worse examples. Individuals, thoughts, and behaviors who have no place in kitchens, on TV, or actually anywhere in the world.

So why Paula Deen? The right thing to do? Yes. Consistent? No. As I said above, being on TV and writing books is the highest goal for chefs these days. A game well controlled by Food Network. So excuse me while I bend over and kiss my aspirations at ever being on TV again good bye while saying this: Kicking Paula Deen out was the right decision, but it’s not because she used the N-word. It’s a convenient pawn, an aging, diabetic, TV diva, perfect as a sacrifice to appear at least somewhat concerned with human dignity while further shoving millions down the wide open gobs of similar or worse offenders.