Words Have Actual Meaning

I do not watch cooking shows and have never heard of celebrity chef Paula Deen until this week.  While her televised apology for racist remarks she made years ago might be sincere, that conclusion is clouded by the fact that she is clearly (as this article notes) scrambling to save her crumbling empire. 

 

At the same time, I would not want to held forever labeled on the basis of something I said years ago, since like most of us I was once a teenager, which means I have a long history of saying incredibly stupid things. 

That being said, something else about the Deen story caught my eye.  The Beacon always tries to find the local angle on any story, and in this case, while Wal-Mart and Caesars and the Food Network and Smithfield foods have all dropped Deen (and Target is ‘evaluating the situation’), Medina-based Sandridge Food Corp is standing behind Deen.  Okay.  Seems like an odd place to draw your line in the sand, but when Sandridge took the time to prepare a statement for the press they noted that in her apology Deen “reaffirmed what we already knew to be true—her genuine equality for everyone.”

This makes no sense.  She reaffirmed her equality?  This is what you came up with after sitting with your leadership team and crafting a public statement?  This statement demonstrates either a complete failure to communicate clearly or a complete failure to understand the controversy here, instead choosing to just say words that sound ‘nice’ without regards to what they might actually mean.