I, personally, believe they are trying to get rid of her because of her enormous success. The media probably doesn’t even know that she’s pretty much a liberal Democrat.
And that’s the problem with today’s culture; people want “over the top” mega personalities and not necessarily real people. Paula Deen is a caricature of Southern and not any more representative of Southern than Snookie from the Jersey Shore is representative of all people in NJ. And the teenage moms on that MTV show have made a lot of money too, but I wouldn’t encourage anyone to follow in their path. Just saying.
But over the top and overly indulgent is what the media pushes and sadly what people seem to want to buy now days. And that’s a shame because Natalie Dupree, while not an over the top presenter and personality is actually a much better cook (not nouvelle cuisine) and knows a lot more about real and traditional Southern cooking than Paula Deen could ever hope to. But hey, Paula Deen “talks real funny” and she makes outrageous over the top dishes and lots of commercials where she sells a lot of crap products with her name on it, including now a drug for diabetes; a disease that in some ways her cooking contributes to (a win-win for her), so that must be better – right? Just because someone is good at marketing, doesn’t mean that what they are marketing is good, but I digress.
There is nothing wrong with “comfort food” and Natalie Dupree offers comfort food that is actually good food. She may not be an over the top personality but she actually knows how to cook and what good food is. Personally when I watch a cooking show, I actually want to learn about ingredients and cooking techniques and not about how over the top and outrageous the personality and the food is. Perhaps that’s just me.
As a culture we have now become all about the over the top and the “personality” rather than about their substance and value. Sad.
I could be wrong, but my guess is that you don’t like Paula Deen.
Sadly, there’s gotta be somebody out there who cooks Southern food that is not the dull as dishwater Natalie Dupree (who should stick to writing books). There was a time when PBS OWNED the cooking shows and we had to put up with a whole bunch of dull cooks (with a few good ones thrown in like the great Julia Child, Jacques Pepin and the jolly Chris Kimball). And watch what PBS did to transform Lidia from a snarling chef to a warm, grandmotherly figure! (Although they need to shake up that po-faced daughter a bit.) With the advent of the Food Network, even dozey PBS had to shake up their cooking “stars.”