What’s more lethal then fried ice cream? Try foot in mouth disease

FRIED ice cream.

What a culinary concept. Contradiction in terms, and also a real and present health danger. More fats than any decent person should consume in a week, and those fats so saturated they’re positively sodden.

Deadly but delicious, I can confirm, having eaten it once. Just once. The disgraceful delight was as near as I ever got to Paula Deen-style cooking: deep south and deep-fat-fried. A warm, perhaps excessively but inevitably cuddly woman, Paula Deen, with grey hair and a general air of y’all.

In the States, no matter where you go, she’s difficult to get away from, if only because she’s up there with Martha Stewart when it comes to branded culinary items, starting with the frying pan.

Paula Deen was one of those women who push the notion that being curvy, not to say obese, is not a bad thing. Having assembled a following of empowered fat people, these women typically turn around and smack their followers right in the kisser by losing weight and getting the consequent media coverage. Deen’s version of this well-known sequence saw her developing diabetes and keeping mum about it until she had lined up a profitable endorsement deal with a pharmaceutical company that makes medication for type 2 diabetes.

This didn’t go down well, but the reduced-style Paula might have survived her move to more healthy cooking than was her norm were it not for the plantation wedding plans. Oh, and the N-word.

She thought, you see, that a plantation wedding would be a great way to celebrate her brother’s nuptials. All those little black boys formally dressed with bow ties, serving mint juleps to wedding guests dressed in full antebellum extravaganza gear. Sweetly evocative of how it used to be, back when the white wedding guests would have owned the little black boys, you understand. Who would have been slaves.

All this has emerged on foot of a lawsuit against Deen and her brother (he, improbably but perhaps inevitably named Bubba) taken by one of their former employees, claiming rampant sexism within her company and alleging that Paula herself used the N-word to describe African- Americans she employed. Despite her release of several filmed apologies, the TV network that had made money from and for her promptly dumped her, thereby proving that big, ostensibly moral decisions are rarely moral.

Remember, this TV network had turned Paula Deen into a superstar while colluding with her promotion of a way of eating everybody has known for a quarter of a century causes disproportionate death, disability, and economic cost. The same network had stood by her when, having developed a disease tightly related to that way of eating, she went on to make money out of pharmaceuticals designed to control it.

What made the network climb on to the high moral ground was something allegedly said by her in private to another individual.

In other words, doing something that can kill or maim people isn’t a problem, but saying something racist is.

WELL, of course it is, but what the episode illustrates is what might be called the Defining Statement; the overwhelming destructive power of a single remark or unfortunate phrase. If Charles Saatchi, in the days after photographs went global of him clutching his wife warmly by the throat, had come out and said he was shocked at what he’d done, sorry for doing it and would never do it again, that would not have been a Definitive Statement.

It was the description of the incident as “a playful tiff” that earned it immortality. In years to come, dictionaries of phrase and fable will carry “playful tiff” entries.

There is a case for a guidebook on how to avoid using phrases that are lethal, some in PR terms, others in real terms. Things you really, really shouldn’t ever say. Starting with the top 10:

* “When is your baby due?”

This one is always fraught with risk unless the speaker has it in writing that the woman involved is actually pregnant. When a face-reddening pause follows the question, the questioner knows they’re in deep trouble and have no way back.

* “I apologise if you feel hurt.”

This is the classic cowardly non-apology. The person at the receiving end gets the message. Loud and clear. The message is that there’s really nothing to apologise for, but it’s easy enough to express sorrow for them feeling hurt, same as if a 2x4 fell on them from a high roof. It’s a way of seeking credit for an apology without taking back what was said, accepting culpability or doing anything to rectify it.

* “Put it away, I’ve seen bigger and better.”

At one point, this response was suggested as discouragement for a man publicly exposing himself at the time. Don’t even think about using it. It’s dangerous and can provoke someone who already has weirdness in their sexuality to move beyond flashing to something worse. Avert your eyes, keep walking and find your way to a Garda station to report him.

* “I’m not good with names.”

People present this one as if it was a wheat allergy: just something that happened to them that’s completely outside of their control and un-fixable. Nonsense. Anyone who pays courteous attention when being introduced to new people can learn their names. Using this phrase is self-soothing with damn-all justification.

* “This is déjà vu all over again.”

No, it isn’t. Go look up déjà vu. On second thoughts, just bin the phrase.

* “I was joking.” Or the variant: “I was only joking.”

The person who uses either phrase is usually a passive-aggressive slimy toad who hasn’t the guts to state their case up front, and so sends out the message in sufficiently ambiguous terms to allow them to take it back after it has done its damage.

* “We’ll be dealing with changes to public administration, accessing pharmaceutical services, and emerging manpower issues. But first...”

The “but first” phrase is not illegal on radio programmes, but it should be. It assumes listeners smack their foreheads and make mental notes of the list of items. Not often, they don’t. Mostly, they’d prefer cutting to the chase.

* “Our people are our greatest asset.”

Right up to the point where the management introduce an involuntary redundancy programme, they are.

* “We appeal to the media for privacy to let us get on with our lives.”

Ordinary humans, caught in the media glare, should just say “please go away, we’re not saying anything more about this, ever”. Publicity pole-dancers who suddenly find themselves on the wrong end of the pole shouldn’t be silly enough to produce this cliche. If media made you, why should they now go all decent on you?

* “This is like the Nazis at Nuremberg.”

No, it isn’t.