I need to say something about Paula Deen and this is it.

Screw you, Paula.

Okay, here’s how Paula Deen hurt me personally. All week long I have been hearing commentators on teevee say that using the N word should be expected from “Southern white women of a certain age.” I even heard one say it was “understandable.”

Hell, no. I don’t know where these commentators got that but they need to put it down right now and never touch it again.

I am Paula Deen’s age and I live in the South. I have not used the N word since I was 6 years old (I heard it at school) and my Irish grandma swatted my bottom for saying it. I was told that words like that do not come out of a lady’s mouth and that Jesus loves all the little children — red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. I was told to say “colored.”

I never said it again. I was 17 years old when Dr. Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize. So was Paula Deen. So, if she used that word after 1964, shame on her. She knew full well that she should not be saying that.

But now, when people look at me, they think I talk like Paula Deen, but should be forgiven for it based on my age and my birthplace. No.

Paula Deen knew for a damn fact that those words were hurtful and not acceptable. My grandmother, rest her precious soul, would have stomped her and said indignantly, “And she calls herself a lady?”

My friend Laura sent me this to read. You will feel far less sympathy for Deen after reading this.

So, Paula, screw you. Not all Southern women of a certain age are a bunch of classless witches.

That’s what I have to say about Paula Deen.