Hold My Butter While I Wreck This Career

It's pretty difficult to have a more disastrous week than Paula Deen in the "managing one's appearances" area as, to all appearances, it was revealed that she had some fairly shocking ignorance that she has to work through. The Daily Beast covers some of the worst from the deposition in the discrimination case filed against her, which includes not only admitting using the "N-word", but also referring to her former employee as a "piece of pussy" and describing an idea for a wedding with African-Americans as servers in as a reminder of a southern plantation, kind of missing the point that the antebellum black servers in those times would have been slaves, and that people might feel some kind of way about that. Deen capped this week off though with one singularly bad day, missing an exclusive interview this morning with Matt Lauer on the Today show (although actually doing that interview would probably have been more ill-advised, come to think of it) and issuing not one, nor two, but three video apologies. The day was ended with the Food Network deciding that they really could not go ahead and renew her contract, y'all.

What has been particularly bad about this is that Deen herself doesn't seem to have grasped that it really isn't a question of how awful "the media" has wanted to depict her, but how awful keeping ignorant opinions about people and using hurtful language really is. People can refer to the recoil at racist or sexist language as "political correctness", but at then end of the day, it's only simple correctness to treat people fairly and respectfully, to consider their feelings, and not making the effort to do that as soon as you realize that your prejudices and the real world are colliding is just foolish. It seems like Deen hadn't really come to that level of introspection about it, and her apologies as a result seem awkward and forced. She seems to realize that her wounds are self-inflicted, but she still doesn't quite see how she got them.  And that is a shame.

James Gandolfini, Dead at age 51

I'm fairly shocked at the sudden death of Gandolfini, best known for his role as Tony Soprano in HBO's award-winning series The Sopranos. As an actor, Gandolfini had a great talent for conveying the inner motivations of the characters he portrayed--a kind of presence where the viewer could imagine wheels turning, perceiving the complexity of the characters through the nuances and gestures his "read" lent them. This was probably best shown through the six seasons of his run on The Sopranos, where his Tony Soprano was a character of almost Shakespearean depth--in some ways amoral, and others, too aware of the unrighteousness of his criminal enterprise, a character as conflicted as a mafioso Hamlet. To make viewers sympathize with Tony, a monster who becomes aware of himself, took an actor who could make the horrible all-too-human. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention that one of my favorite movies that he was in was The Last Castle, which, if you haven't seen it, by all means, do. His Col. Winter is another character that is difficult to like (and you shouldn't, he's a weak man). But Gandolfini made him compelling to watch.


It's a damn shame--he died far too soon.

TV-based confession. I Survive on Reviews of Mad Men and Game of Thrones.

I don't have cable and I have not watched a single episode of either of these shows, but Mondays, I now hoover up reviews of the previous evening's shows because I need to almost kind of sort of know what is going on.

Can someone be addicted to a show based on television recaps? One day I should really bother to actually watch them.

Is this a normal people problem, or only me?