Hacks, Hacks Everywhere

I wrote one of the first posts for this blog on Paula Deen. And wouldn’t you know it, she’s back in the news again. 

And I’ve decided, against my better judgment, that I’m going to try blogging some more. Why not? The folks at Dial M for Musicology are back after a three-year hiatus. What happened in the interim? A lot of things, clearly, but perhaps the most relevant to this conversation is the rise of Twitter. I think people used to complain that blogs were too fragmentary, ephemeral, and not conducive to real scholarly work. But in the age of 140 characters, blogs seem positively Dickensian. 

And if you don’t like the literary analogy, here’s a musical one. CDs seemed a big step up from vinyl records, right? No more pops and hisses, they could hold more musical time, you didn’t have to flip them. Well, it’s no accident that vinyl came back into fashion (roughly speaking) around the time that MP3s and streaming services became the more common way of listening to music. Vinyl has some annoyances, to be sure, but it’s got a certain charm that 1s and 0s don’t. So blogging at this late date is kind of like listening to vinyl records. Which I also do. For that, you can mostly blame the fact that I live only a few hundred feet from one of the unequivocally great vinyl record stores in the U.S. 

Deen’s in the news, of course, because she’s being sued. In the course of that lawsuit, some pretty sketchy behavior by Ms. Deen has come to light, including her usage of the n-word. There was a swift backlash against Deen, followed by a counter-backlash. And I think now there’s been a counter-counter-backlash. Of musical interest here is the fact that rap has been invoked as a possible defense for Deen’s choice of words. It’s not quite the Don Imus Defense, but it’s a variant on it. The line seems to be, “If it’s OK for rappers to use that word then it’s OK for Deen to use that word.” To which I would just reply, “Only if Paula Deen records a rap album.” 

In fact, I would pay money for a Paula Deen rap album. I’ve even got an idea for the first single. Call it, “Accidental Racist, Part 2.” 

I don’t know if Paula Deen is a racist. Given the behavior that’s being alleged in the lawsuit, it seems likely. But one thing is overwhelmingly certain: she’s a hack. And if this suit means that she retreats from or is forced from public life, I won’t complain. Besides, then she’ll have more time to work on her album.