Claims you can hear while watching Fox!

THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 2013

Claim: Paula Deen is a Democrat who supported Obama: You can hear the darndest things while watching Fox.

Last night, watching The Five, we heard a fellow San Matean make an intriguing remark:

GUILFOYLE (6/26/13): There's never enough time that passes to make up for something like that. Or you can say, I'm looking at my own life, there's things I have done or said I would like to take back—maybe not that bad, but nevertheless, you have to also look at the other things she's done in life, and try to balance it out. I mean, she's done a lot of things for charity as well.

GUTFELD: She supported Candidate Obama. I mean—

GUILFOYLE: That should be enough.

Gutfeld said it, but is it true? Most of his statements are larded with bunk.

Is Paula Deen a Democrat who campaigned for Obama?

This compound claim is now widespread on the right, driven along by The Daily Caller. The Caller rarely gets anything right. But in this instance, it can link to this post by Us Weekly.

We find no evidence that Deen actually campaigned for Obama, despite what Us Weekly reported. In September 2008, she had Michelle Obama on her show, and she gushed effusively, comparing her to Jackie Kennedy.

To watch excerpts from Extra, click here.

But she also seems to have hosted Sarah Palin and Cindy McCain. We find her saying in 2008 that she wants to keep herself out of politics.

That said, Deen has been identified as a Democrat in several lists of celebrity affiliations, including this list from 2010 by the infallible Buzzfeed.

Could Paula Deen be a Dem?

Everything is possible! In her recent deposition, she complains rather effusively know about people who discriminate against gays. She frequently prays for the end of racial discrimination, for which we Yankee liberals know we should harshly attack her.

One thing is clear. Deen is a vaudevillian southern clown, as we noticed last night while we sampled her entire session with the New York Times from last fall.

She didn’t just make those weird remarks about her assistant’s very dark skin. She also introduced her husband, saying he looks like Santa Claus. She said she may have peed on the floor due to her bad bladder. (This was a way of absolving Lulu, her dog.)

Near the end, she accepted the compliments of a black female fan, who told Deen that she is one of “my four vanilla mamas.”

Could Paula Deen be a Democrat? We don’t know, and she isn’t our cup of tea. Beyond that, we're fairly sure that she isn't as perfect as we are.

But we would be inclined to accept her pleas on behalf of acceptance and equality, especially when those pleas are voiced from way down deep inside the South.

At Salon, they know this instinct is crap. But then, the folk at Salon are at war, as we'll discuss more tomorrow.