Shooting Up With Paula

Today, 7,300 people 20 or older will learn that they are diabetics. Three years ago, the hugely popular cooking queen Paula Deen also got the word. Paula went home to think about it. She told her immediate family and no one else. Paula was just feeling too private to share.

I know, getting hit with a serious health diagnosis can rattle you to the core. You pretend it isn’t real. You wonder how you caught this thing. But when you begin treatment, it’s hard to avoid the reality. Your change in health begins to define you. You take medicine twice a day, maybe more. You may have to give yourself shots. In the case of a diabetic, you must begin to eat differently if you want to stem the advance of the disease. Surely Paula woke up. After all, she has something pretty damned important to stick around for. Something far more important than protecting her health records. Paula is a BRAND. A high fat, high sugar, food-hawking multi-media brand. And that brand is worth millions.

Now Paula was confronted with a bit of a complication. As she struggled with her personal health, she surely realized that her brand reinforced all the things that promoted diabetes. But did she challenge herself to adapt her style to reduce the risks inherent in her food? Nope. But I suppose that expecting Paula to reflect on her lifestyle, to take responsibility for her negative impact on other people’s health, is like expecting Royal Dutch Shell to reduce drilling when they noticed the Arctic melting. Shell didn’t stop. And Paula kept cookin’.

Suddenly, three years in, Paula decides to come out of the kitchen closet. What provoked her sudden desire to reveal all? How about a promotional gig with Novo Nordisk, one of the largest purveyors of diabetic drugs. Suddenly, Paula is giving interviews, pushing a web site, and speaking on behalf of the drug, Victoza, a Novo Nordisk injectable (did I mention that she gets the drug for free?). She’s a one-woman diabetes educational machine. She’s telling everyone about her disease.

What is the meaning of all this? Who the hell cares about Paula Deen? I care. Because Paula Deen is a cultural icon, like it or not. It matters what she says and does, to millions of people, most of them women.

I think Paula was too embarrassed to take any responsibility for herself and her devoted fans. She was utterly clueless about what to do and too stupid to make the connection between what she ate and those shots she gave herself every day. She admitted that she didn’t want to tell anyone until she could offer something positive. But even if you give her the benefit of the doubt, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Paula is a self-centered, unethical fraud. Paula has almost certainly gotten the best diabetes care money can buy. She knows damn well where diabetes comes from. Yet when an interviewer asked her how people develop diabetes Paula answered: Age, genetics, race and (mumble, mumble) lifestyle. No mention of obesity. Forgot to say that high carb, high fat food is lethal. Emphasized that her cooking was fine, “in moderation” (she really did say that). Seriously? Should any diabetic eat Paula’s food in moderation? Not if they like legs, eyes and kidneys -- and I don’t mean the kind you fry in butter and cover in cheese. But rather than risk her millions, she found an easy out -- promote drugs and even better, get paid for it!

You just know that Paula’s fans won’t abandon her. They’ll run to their physicians and nurse practitioners and ask about that new drug Paula is using (which is very expensive). They will ignore any diet teaching that challenges their beloved Paula since Paula says that her crap is fine, “in moderation.” They will continue to serve this poison to their families, ensuring that their kids will get to hear those terrible words: “you have diabetes.” Then they’ll blame it all on genetics. In 2010 there were 1.9 million new diabetics. And now Paula has 1.9 million new customers.