“It’s just not a part of who we are,” Paula Deen asserts, which is also a clear lie, and rather than apologize for who she is and make an effort to change, Deen insists that she has never “in her 66 years” used that word but once, and that she’s offended by others’ use of it. Anyone who grew up in the South knows this to be a lie, and while many of the people who know she is lying are winking right along with her tear-streaked face, the rest of us know.

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Sears, J.C. Penney, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, Novo Nordisk, Smithfield Foods, Caesars Entertainment and The Food Network have all parted ways with the disgraced celebrity chef as well.

On the bright side, Deen might be going on more cruises this year.

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It was more than her food. It was her voice, with that easy Southern twang, her megawatt smile, her self-deprecating sense of humor, and her feistiness. She embodied the best of the White South. Her home base may have been Savannah, Georgia, a city with a history of discrimination, but I never saw any indication of the racism so stereotypical of Southerners. She often had black guests on her show, and she was on Oprah more times than I can remember. I cursed Anthony Bourdain when he attacked her fat-laden recipes -- calling her “the worst, most dangerous person to America” (a little extreme, no?). So last week, when I read that she admitted to using “the N-word,” I was more than a little disturbed.

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1. KitchenAid's Twitter incident

KitchenAid insulted Obama's dead grandmother during the presidential debates in October, tweeting "Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president’ #nbcpolitics." To its credit, the company stemmed the bleeding by deleting the tweet and immediately issuing an apology on Twitter and later to news outlets.

2. Lance Armstrong's interview with Oprah

After several missed opportunities to admit that he took performance enhancing drugs, a USDA investigation charged seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong with doping. Only then did Armstrong try to come clean in a tell-all interview with Oprah -- but by then it was too little, too late.

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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.

Wal-Mart 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.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said Deen had called him and he agreed to help her, saying she shouldn't become a sacrificial lamb over the issue of racial intolerance.

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"I am here today because I want people to know who I am, and people who have worked beside me walked beside me, know what kind of person I am. I am so distressed that people I have never heard of are experts on who I am," a weepy Deen told Matt Lauer on the "Today" show this morning. "I'm not a racist."

When Lauer pushed Deen to talk about her use of the N-word, Deen maintained she used it only "once," 30 years ago. "The day I used that word was a world ago," she said.

"So reports that you were asked in that deposition, whether you had used the N-Word on other occasions and said 'probably' or 'of course,' are inaccurate?" asked Lauer.

However, Deen then said, "No. I answered the question truthfully."

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According to Beck, the Food Network's decision not to renew Deen's contract (because allegations of racist discrimination against employees and a litany of racially impolitic remarks are, apparently, bad for business) has "contributed to the growing un-American atmosphere of fear and silence."

Then he said: "Hello, Joseph McCarthy!"

Then he said: "We need more speech, not less speech!"

Then he said: "You will be next!"

h/t Right Wing Watch

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“Everybody in the South over 60 used the N-word at some time or the other in the past.”

“I don’t understand why some people can use [the N-word] and others can’t.”

“We have lived with each other and loved each other here for a long time. Sometimes I think there is more prejudice in the North than there is in the South.”

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Like Lauren, most Americans just want to enjoy life and get ahead. But her reasonable and innocuous fears over her future are being hijacked by conservatives to stoke larger fears: that there is a finite ability for us all to thrive together. The George Zimmerman trial, the overturning of the Voting Rights Act, Paula Dean's flare up, angry debates over citizenship in immigration reform: This week, we’re seeing any idealist’s hope of a post-racial future disappear the way of the floppy disk.

The Supreme Court just punted a decision on affirmative action, but it cannot indefinitely forestall the bracing questions driving many people’s interest in the practice. By a 7 to 1 decision, the Court allowed affirmative action to survive in college admissions, but imposed a tough legal standard on schools—“strict scrutiny”—that the policy’s long-term viability has been neutered.

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The celebrity cook, whose butter-laden recipes have come in for much critique over the years (not least when she admitted to Type II diabetes right before promoting a pharmaceutical product), is particularly open to criticism now that she's been fired from the Food Network for her racist comments.

But a New York Times photo of Deen's supporters, private citizens who disagreed with her firing and were visiting her Georgia restaurant, prompted plenty of commentary online about how those supporters looked. One example, from the New York Times's media critic, is below:

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Rice, the "Interview with a Vampire" and "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt" author, took to Facebook on Friday to ask whether it's "fair" that the media has roasted the star for her overt racism. As a writer who is (presumably) precise with her diction, Rice's defense of Deen may be the most offensive one, yet: Her note draws disturbing parallels between Deen and martyrdom, calling the public outcry a "crucifixion" against Deen. Rice then displays an appalling lack of racial sensitivity and calls the uproar a sign of "a lynch mob culture," alluding to the very violent lynchings of blacks in antebellum and Jim Crow south:

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While waiting to gain entrance to Deen's "Lady and Sons" restaurant, a mostly white group of men and women discussed the network's decision, Deen's comments and their take on race relations in the U.S, as the New York Times reports:

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One option for celebrities who have fallen so far from grace, of course, is reality TV. But what show would be a fit for her? A few ideas -- TV producers take note:

The Amazing White Race

So You Think You Can Discriminate?

America's Next Top Racist

White American Idol

Trading Races

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Deen's use of racial slurs, her rep's response to the fiasco, and her bizarre apology have been indefensible. But Fox News, stalwart defender of civil liberties that it is, has come to her rescue. Fox News Radio host Todd Starnes said that the "liberal, anti-South media is trying to crucify Paula Deen."

"They accuse her of using a derogatory word to describe a black person. Paula admitted she used the word -- back in the 1980s -- when a black guy walked into the bank, stuck a gun in her face and ordered her to hand over the cash. The national media failed to mention that part of the story. I'll give credit to the Associated Press for telling the full story."

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Paula Deen will no longer be a part of the Food Network:

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Updated: Friday, 4:18 p.m.

Things get stranger as Paula Deen releases another version of her video apology Friday afternoon, explaining that she canceled her morning interview with Matt Lauer because she was "physically not able" to do it.

"The pain has been tremendous that I've caused to myself and others," she says before asking that people understand that "my family and I are not the kind of people that the press is wanting to say we are. I've spent the best of 24 years to help myself and others. The color of your skin, your religion, your sexual preference does not matter to me," she said.

"I will continue to work and continue to do good things for good people," she concludes.

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Through a rep, she issued a meek, problematic apology to TMZ (Deen was "speaking largely about a time in American history which was quite different than today") on Thursday, but was a no-show for her first real opportunity to address the controversy -- a "Today" show interview scheduled with Matt Lauer this morning.

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On Friday morning, Deen was scheduled to appear on the "Today" show, but at the last minute, Matt Lauer announced, "We just found out she's a no-show." He added that everything had seemed a go for an "an open and candid discussion, no holds barred" interview when he'd spoken to her Thursday, but now her representative had simply said she was "exhausted."

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"But don't worry," explains Williams. "These days, racism is rarely fatal depending on who you express it in front of."

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Paula Deen, who lives in Savannah, Ga., revels in Southern culture and her shows on the Food Network pay decadent and unapologetic homage to all manner of Southern cooking. She is a proud daughter of the South and, apparently, she carries the effects of the South’s complex and fraught racial history.

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Here are some of the best:

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