Sad to learn that TV chef Paula Deen has diabetes. Excerpt:

A chorus of “told you sos” sprang up on the blogosphere.

“No wonder she has diabetes,” tweeted Jennifer Eure, who lives in Franklin, Va., during “Paula’s Home Cooking” on Monday as Ms. Deen discussed what kind of breadsticks to pair with bacon cheese fries.

More than 25 million Americans, or about 8.3 percent of the population, are believed to have diabetes, most of it Type 2 or “adult onset” diabetes. Like those other cases, Ms. Deen’s illness was probably caused by any of a number of forces, including excess weight, high blood pressure, lack of exercise and high blood levels of sugar, fat and cholesterol. But unlike her fellow patients, Ms. Deen is now enduring an epic public scolding because of her cooking and eating habits.

Heredity, according to the American Diabetes Association, always plays some part. “You can’t just eat your way to Type 2 diabetes,” said Geralyn Spollett, the group’s director of education. But, Ms. Spollett added, Southern cooking, as often practiced, can be particularly hazardous to those predisposed to the disease. “There’s no denying that Paula’s food has a lot of what we call the deadly triangle: fat, sugar and salt,” she said.

I appreciate that the American Diabetes Association points out that diabetes cannot be seen as just desserts for a TV chef whose food is notoriously unhealthy. My cousin has had diabetes since childhood, and she has always been thin. Genetics play a role too. Nevertheless, this is an opportunity to learn about the connection between what we eat and how sick or healthy it makes us. Doesn’t look like Paula Deen is determined to learn much of anything, except when to take the diabetes drug she’s now signed up to endorse. But in terms of changing her cooking? Not so much:

I can’t stand Paula Deen’s cooking and that Southern shtick of hers. I don’t think her food is especially Southern. True, you see a lot of that in the South, but it’s also something I associate with the Midwest — all that sugar and starch and fat. In fact, says J. Bryan Lowder, her food isn’t particularly Southern — it’s working-class comfort food. And that’s why so many people dump on her:

With regard to the Southern thing, I’ll start just by pointing out that Deen’s food is not so much Southern as it is working-class American. Hers are recipes with ingredients that you can easily and cheaply pick up at your local Super Wal-Mart, make in bulk, and satisfy a large swath of palates. True, it’s not particularly healthy; but if Deen has committed any real crime in her rise to fame, it’s been her conflation of what we might call a class-based style of cooking with a regional one. Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten’s chic Hamptons preparations, meanwhile, don’t skimp on the heavy cream or lardons; but, presumably because she’s classy and kind-of-French-since-she-has-the-money-to-go-there-a-lot, we give her a pass.

Same great point made in the NYTimes piece:

Virginia Willis, a food writer in Atlanta, said that criticisms directed at Ms. Deen often reflect sexism and stereotyping about the South, in addition to food snobbery. “No one vilifies Michelin chefs for putting sticks of butter in their food,” she said. “But when a Southern woman does it, that’s tacky.”

Seriously, I don’t know how much food writing you read, but the secret to lots of expensive restaurant food is gobs and gobs of quality butter. And who is ex-dope addict and self-styled bad boy Anthony Bourdain to dump on Paula Deen for unhealthy living, especially when he’ll eat anything porkalicious that they put in front of him. Still … come on, Paula’s Krispy Kreme bread pudding? Seriously?:

Paula Deen comes off as someone who is hard to dislike. But  very little I’ve seen her cook on that show looks appetizing to me, and as a Southerner, I’m allergic to that Dixie-fried shtick (I also get the hives walking through the gift shop at Cracker Barrel). All that is beside the point. I agree with Lowder: the big thing that ticks me off about the way Paula Deen is handling her diabetes is that she’s apparently not planning to scale back much on her overindulgent food (though she has given up sweet tea), but rather has signed up as a celebrity spokeswoman for a diabetes medication — thereby sending the message that there’s no real reason you should change your diet, just take a pill and keep right on eating food that’s making you sick. It’s the American way, I guess.

Well, that’s irritating, and equally so is the fact that she’s known for three years that she’s diabetic, but only decided to disclose it when she signed a deal to promote a diabetes drug. Had people known she was a diabetic, and was promoting food that can promote diabetes, it would have stood to hurt her brand. It’s opportunistic, no matter how you look at it.

Vanity Fair says it’s exploring “the dark side of Mitt Romney.”  I thought, what, that his servomotor was made by slave labor in the evil Chinese Foxconn factory? Well, let’s see what dirt they have on Romney…

The Romneys’ Mormon faith, as Mitt and Ann began their life together, formed a deep foundation. It lay under nearly everything—their acts of charity, their marriage, their parenting, their social lives, even their weekly schedules. Their family-centric lifestyle was a choice; Mitt and Ann plainly cherished time at home with their children more than anything. But it was also a duty. Belonging to the Mormon Church meant accepting a code of conduct that placed supreme value on strong families—strong heterosexual families, in which men and women often filled defined and traditional roles. The Romneys have long cited a well-known Mormon credo popularized by the late church leader David O. McKay: “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.”

Dear God. He’s a monster. More:

Then Mitt put his sons on notice: there would be pre-determined stops for gas, and that was it. Tagg was commandeering the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, when he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. “Dad!” he yelled. “Gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the rear window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours. As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Mitt coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the road with the dog still on the roof. It was a preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management. But the story would trail him years later on the national political stage, where the name Seamus would become shorthand for Romney’s coldly clinical approach to problem solving.

He made that poor animal leak poo. Is there anything this Nazgul of Nauvoo wouldn’t do? It does not stop there:

“He wasn’t overly interested in people’s personal details or their kids or spouses or team building or their career path,” said another former aide. “It was all very friendly but not very deep.” Or, as one fellow Republican put it, “He has that invisible wall between ‘me’ and ‘you.’”

Wait, are they telling us that here is a national politician who doesn’t have a million best friends? Whoever heard of such a person?!

Michael Brendan Dougherty nails this stuff:

As Mitt Romney advances closer and closer to the Republican nomination, the media is attempting to “vet” him for anything negative in his past.

And, so far, the attempt is pathetic.

This cannot be good for leaders of the Religious Right. A new CNN poll among South Carolina Republicans shows that the anti-Romney vote appears to be moving in Newt Gingrich’s direction.

“Gingrich appears to be the only candidate with momentum as the race in South Carolina enters the final few days,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Support for Romney and Santorum appears to be slipping, and Paul and Perry seem flat. Gingrich, however, has gained ground and cut Romney’s lead in half since early January.”

“All of Gingrich’s increased support comes among tea party movement supporters, where he’s at 31% support, up ten points from early January,” adds Holland. “That suggests that Sarah Palin’s remarks urging South Carolina voters to choose Gingrich may have a receptive audience.”

Among voters who oppose the tea party or are neutral towards it, Romney holds a commanding 30 point lead over Gingrich and the rest of the field of candidates. The survey indicates that born-again Christians are divided, with 26% supporting Romney, 23% backing Gingrich, and 20% saying they’ll vote for Santorum. Among those likely primary voters who don’t identify themselves as born-again, Romney has a large lead.

Note that a few days after national Evangelical leaders endorsed Rick Santorum, Santorum’s poll numbers have declined in South Carolina. More South Carolina Evangelicals support Mormon Mitt Romney and mistress-having Newt Gingrich than support Santorum. What does this tell you about the power of the Religious Right old guard to move voters?

In the comments thread to the Bobby Lounge post, Yankee Sam M. raises a question, or series of questions, that I cannot adequately answer, and I sure have tried:

A few weeks back you had another post about how people cannot really comprehend “southernness” and its seemingly odd embrace of raunch and perversion, juxtaposed against the religiosity of the place.

It’s still an interesting topic for discussion.

Is it the level of raunch and perversion? Is it the medium? Is it the audience?

When to harrumph? When to embrace?

I really don’t know, and there’s no hard and fast rule. Here’s an audio clip from Bobby Lounge’s song “Ten Foot Woman,” his lengthy pining for “a 10-foot woman to keep me satisfied.” The lines in that clip really aren’t raunchy at all, but either you laugh hard at the thought of a woman 10 feet wide, not tall, coming out of the women’s restroom and presenting herself to the searcher, or you don’t. Bobby’s directive not to pity him for wanting to turn the garage into a sauna because “steam and terry cloth bring out the best in people, especially teenagers away from home” (or something close to that) almost made what I was drinking come out of my nose. Others would listen to that and think, “Oh, he’s disgusting.”

When to harrumph? When to embrace? I don’t know. I think “A Confederacy of Dunces” is utter genius, as does my friend Ken, who turned me on to Bobby Lounge last evening. Both of our wives think Ignatius is disgusting — he is — and that there’s nothing funny about him.

I can’t explain any of this. Nor can I explain why where I live is a religiously and politically conservative small Southern town, but folks here love the local drag queen who has her own float in the Christmas parade, and who always wins the “Dude Looks Like a Lady” charity fundraiser contest. It just … is. People down South don’t seem to have the urge to make life conform to theory and logic. It looks like hypocrisy to some people, and maybe it is. But it makes life more interesting, and tolerably human.

Anyway, I would like to hear from folks who can explain this better than I. Why are Southerners, despite the political, religious, and social conservatism of the place, also rather tolerant of various forms of freakery? 

One possibility was suggested, kind of, by Flannery O’Connor, who said Southerners are about the only people left in this country who still recognize a freak when they see one. If this is still true, then it could be that people feel it safe to embrace the local freaks, or at least tolerate them, because the freaks are not perceived as being a threat to the moral order. Freaks — and by “freaks,” I mean people who might be thought of as outlandishly nonconforming — are by definition so far outside the mainstream in their behavior that they are not candidates to be “affirmed” in their behavior, and because of that, can be “welcomed” as one of us, despite their eccentricity.

That’s the best I’ve got. What do you say? Let’s work toward a Unified Theory of Southern Freakery.

When’s the last time you thought about the possibility of global economic meltdown this year? Funny how when the European crisis left the front page, it seemed like the worst had passed. Probably not. The World Bank is just out with its 2012 forecast, and it’s pretty gloomy. Excerpt:

However, even achieving these much weaker outturns is very uncertain. The downturn in Europe and the slow growth in developing countries could reinforce one another more than is anticipated in the baseline scenario, resulting in even weaker outturns and further complicating efforts to restore market confidence.

Meanwhile, the medium-term challenge represented by high debts and slow trend growth in other highincome countries has not been resolved and could trigger sudden adverse shocks. Additional risks to the outlook include the possibility that political tensions in the Middle East and North Africa disrupt oil supply, and the possibility of a hard landing in one or more important middle-income countries.

While the situation in high-income Europe is contained for the moment, if the crisis expands and markets deny financing to several additional European economies, outturns could be much worse, with global GDP more than 4 percent lower than in the baseline. Although such a crisis, should it occur, would be centered in Europe, developing countries would feel its effects deeply, with developing country GDP declining by 4.2 percent by 2013.

In the event of a major crisis, the downturn may well be longer than in 2008/09 because high-income countries do not have the fiscal or monetary resources to bail out the banking system or stimulate demand to the same extent as in 2008/09. Although developing countries have some maneuverability on the monetary side,they could be forced to pro-cyclically cut spending – especially if financing for fiscal deficits dries up.

Well, hell. You know what Bobby Lounge says, don’t you? “Get out the tick spray, baby, don’t pity me.”

I’m beginning to think that there’s no sorrow in this world that Bobby Lounge doesn’t have the balm for. That’s my theory today. This may change. Probably not by sundown, though.

Robert Wright, a fallen-away Baptist and science writer, explains why it’s dumb for secular liberals to mock Jesus and Jesus-lovers. Excerpt:

Prominent among the political adversaries of secular liberals are religious conservatives, the more extreme of whom consider themselves to be at war with the prevailing culture. They may homeschool their kids (though not all homeschoolers share this attitude) or in other ways try to wall themselves off from this culture. When secular liberals who shape the culture fulfill the religious conservatives’ stereotype of them as threatening–by, say, seeming to ridicule Jesus, or seeming to ridicule Tebow’s faith–conservatives will be more inclined to stay within their walls, avoiding engagement with the secular world. So they’ll find it easier to reject the entire liberal agenda, ranging from gay rights to uncensored science education in the public schools. (Don’t get me started on the damage that I fear Richard Dawkins is doing to science education in the heartland by embodying a false equation between Darwinism and a militant, contemptuous atheism.) In short, when liberals are seen as ridiculing Christianity, they’re energizing their adversaries and making it harder to turn adversaries into allies, or at least neutral parties, on particular issues.

It’s hard for me to emphasize how correct Wright is here, from my own experience. When people believe you despise their God and them for believing in God, they will listen to nothing else you say. Richard Dawkins and his devotees are the best friends anti-evolution Christians have. They make Christians who are persuadable about the ability to reconcile their faith with evolutionary biology believe that to reject Biblical literalism is to take the side of nasty snots who hate Jesus. For so many people on the Dawkins side, it’s more important to publicly register their utter contempt for Jesus people than to persuade others to join their side, or to show a decent respect for others, even those you believe to be foolish.

I’m a little late to this, but a Ron Paul fan e-mails to complain about something he saw on NRO the other day:

This poll says it all, from the National Review:

Putting aside Paul, who won the debate:

+ Gingrich
+ Perry
+ Romney
+ Santorum

[The reader’s comment follows:] Yeah, let’s “put aside” Paul, but not put aside the guy who got less than 1% in N.H. (Perry), the guy who got 4th place in Iowa and N.H. (Gingrich), and the fifth place finisher in NH (Santorum). No, they are all viable. Paul — the guy who got 20% plus in both — he’s not viable.

I tell you what, while Romney will likely win the nomination, Ron Paul could single handedly put a wrecking ball to the GOP’s chances in 2012. He holds the key to so many enthusiastic supporters. If these folks at NR and others in the GOP establishment want to snicker and make fun of the man garnering significant support in the primaries, they do so at their own peril. Paul, unlike any other primary challenger, won’t fall into line so easily (remember, he didn’t endorse McCain in ’08).

They want to divide this party and give Obama 4 more years? Go ahead — mock Ron Paul. See how that works for you.

Many apologies for failing to blog about Nietzsche and American funerals last night. When I got back from Baton Rouge, my friend Ken and I sat out on the front porch drinking and listening to some amazing music he brought up: the work of Bobby Lounge, a superlative Southern Gothic blues piano player from McComb, Miss. Listen to his “I Remember The Night Your Trailer Burned Down,” and marvel. Ken says he is a recluse, but when he plays Jazzfest in New Orleans, he is rolled out in a fake iron lung, climbs out, and plays. Bobby Lounge website here.

We must all change our lives to incorporate more Bobby Lounge into them. The man plainly has achieved a balance between theology and geometry that few mortals can hope to. I am telling you that because I love you.

UPDATE:NPR did a piece on him in 2006.

A longtime reader writes:

I don’t know if this is significant, but I think it might be. The other evening as my tech head teenage son, Luke, drove me home after work, he announced that he’s off Facebook.  I’ve been “Facebook” sober for ten days,” he said proudly.

“Why now?”  I asked.

He mentioned that he’d seen some Youtube videos recently that pointed out while you’re spending all your time on Facebook you’re missing out on a lot of real activities. It also is a lot of “me, me, me,” he added. “And that got me thinking.”

So my 18 year old is Facebook sober, and I wonder if the backlash is spreading, and some teens are beginning to realize that Facebooks friends are really no friends at all, and there is a life out there unfiltered by Facebook, their computer or smart phone.

By the way,  Luke’s Facebook usage is something we’ve always monitored and restricted. Unlike some of our friends who’ve don’t allow their kids access to the TV let alone an Internet-accessible PC, we’ve always thought that our job was to try and teach our kids the right online behavior, encourage self-control, and provide guidelines for safe net practices.  I think he’s finally beginning to “get” it.  Maybe other kids are, too.

Let’s hope. My niece Hannah disabled her FB account for this semester — this, after we had a conversation about the value of solitude (I don’t know that there was a connection in her mind, but the timing was interesting to me). I do have a FB account, but I almost never use it. I look at it as a hole that I could easily fall down.