The never ending racist soap opera that Paula Deen’s life has become took another turn today, as she is now the victim of an extortion plot.
The details come to us from NBC News, “FBI officials announced Friday that they arrested Thomas Paculis, 62, in Newfield, N.Y., in connection with an extortion scheme targeting Deen. Paculis, who previously resided in Savannah and Augusta in Deen’s home state of Georgia, has been charged with attempting to extort Deen by requesting $250,000 in compensation in return for not releasing “true and damning” statements to the media made by Deen, according to a federal criminal complaint filed on June 24.”
Mr. Paculis revealed that he probably won’t be winning IQ contests when he tried to extort Paula Deen by using “true and damning” statements against her. However, it would be virtually impossible to top the true and damning statements that Deen made in her own deposition. Unless someone has video of Deen burning a cross, it will be impossible to do more damage to her than she has already done to herself.
Secondly, if you are going to extort someone, the time to do it is before their multimillion dollar empire has been reduced to a pile of flaming rubble. Coming up with the idea to extort someone after they have already destroyed their own career is a day late, and a dollar short. Thirdly, extortion is a crime. Why extort anyone when the tabloid chasing media will pay money for any bit of information whether it is true or not? In the 21 Century, extortion is just plain dumb.
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I am far from a Paula Deen defender, but she has shown herself more than capable of creating enough problems on her own without fools coming out of the woodwork to scam her out of money.
In less than a month, Deen has gone from celebrity chef to racist pariah. The fallout has been so severe because she has constantly bungled the damage control by insisting on playing the victim in her videos and media appearances. Paula Deen could have transformed the news of her racial intolerance into a teaching moment, but instead she chose to follow the Sarah Palin self-victimization and pity path. Her bungling of the post-scandal fallout has possibly ruined her brand, and her name, for the rest of her life.
Her career as a high profile celebrity chef might be over, but the extortion plot twist to her story shows that the Paula Deen circus has just begun.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
