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Celebrity chef Paula Deen poses for a portrait in New York on Jan. 17, 2012. Deen says she has used racial slurs in the past but insists she and her brother, who are accused of racial and sexual discrimination in a lawsuit by a former manager of their restaurant, don tolerate hateful behavior. (AP Photo/Carlo Allegri, File)

(MCT)Paula Deen went viral Wednesday, first for her alleged use of the N-word and then as she was lampooned in a social media blitz tartly spoofing her popular show, Paulas Best Dishes.

The hashtag #PaulasBestDishes exploded on Twitter, used to riff on made-up dishes such as Confederacy Cupcakes. #PaulaDeen was also a hot term on Google+, where College Humor weighed in with: #pauladeen admitted to telling racist jokes. Now all she needs to admit is how stupid some of her recipes really are.

According to court documents, the queen of Southern cooking has admitted using the N-word but said it was used many years ago, and said it is now a word she and her relatives no longer use. She also admitted that once, when she was planning an upscale wedding party, she was inspired by a restaurant in which the entire staff was made up of black men costumed in white jackets and black bow ties. The idea was quickly dismissed because some might have misinterpreted it, according to the documents.

The story broke early Wednesday morning when reported by the National Enquirer, among other media outlets. Deens attorney released a statement that said in part: Contrary to media reports, Ms. Deen does not condone or find the use of racial epithets acceptable.

The documents included a transcript of Deens deposition, taken as part of a lawsuit filed against her, according to the Associated Press. The lawsuit was filed by Lisa Jackson, a former manager at Uncle Bubbas Seafood and Oyster House, a restaurant owned by Deen and her brother. Jackson, who is white, says she was sexually harassed while working at the restaurant, and said the environment was rife with innuendo and racial slurs.

The controversy comes as Deen, 66, has been making something of a comeback after a fall from grace in January 2012 when she announced she had Type 2 diabetes. She admitted that shed kept the condition a secret from the public. At the same time, she had continued to plate up Southern dishes that many say is the very cause of Type 2 diabetes. Critics said Deen was putting her career ahead of the health of her fans.

Since then, Deen seems to have been making her way back into public favor, most recently by rolling out her own line of butters. These latest admissions are devastating, said Mike Paul of MGP & Associates PR, a New York-based crisis management firm.

This goes to the core of what a reputation is a persons values, beliefs, and how they treat other people, Paul told the Los Angeles Times. He said the damage is done not only to Deens career, but also to her son, Bobby.

Bobby Deen has been creating a niche for himself on Food Network with Not My Mamas Meals, a slim take on Southern favorites. He said Bobby Deen will no doubt be dogged by questions such as, What do you think about what your mother had to say?

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Paula Deen goes viral amid ‘N-word’ controversy

"Professor Dawkins' speech transmutes into an auto-tuned song about internet memes..." is not a sentence you expect to read in a press release about the evolutionary biologist. However, it's precisely what he signed up for at Saatchi & Saatchi's New Directors' Showcase at the Cannes Advertising Festival this week.

Richard Dawkins coined the word "meme" in his 1976 bestseller The Selfish Gene. The word -- which is ascribed to an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture -- has since been reappropriated by the internet, with Grumpy Cat, Socially-Awkward Penguinand Overly-Attached Girlfriend spreading virally, leaping from IP address to IP address (and brain to brain) via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.

In recognition of this, advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi has recruited Dawkins to participate in the theatrical piece alongside installation artists Marshmallow Laser Feast. The aim is, presumably, to create a piece of content that will itself become a meme, as happened with last year's performance involving 16 flying robots. Within the piece, Dawkins explains how an "internet meme" is a hijacking of the original idea and that instead of mutating by random change and spreading by a form of Darwinian selection, they are altered deliberately by human creativity. Unlike with genes (and Dawkins' original meaning of "meme"), there is no attempt at accuracy of copying; internet memes are deliberately altered.

In advance of this extraordinary performance, Wired.co.uk caught up with Dawkins to talk about his own favourite internet memes, Twitter, molecular genetics, false memories and, er..., Celebrity Big Brother.

Wired.co.uk: How did you get involved in the New Directors Showcase? Richard Dawkins: I was approached by Saatchi & Saatchi, who had this idea of centring the event around the theme of memes, so they asked if I would get involved and I was rather pleased with the idea.

I hear you are going to be playing a musical instrument on stage... I might be playing the EWI(pronounced e-wee), which is an electronic clarinet. I used to play the clarinet and saxophone and I find the new electronic version rather appealing. It not only plays the sound of the clarinet and saxophone; it also does the trumpet, cello, violin, tuba, sousaphone and the oboe etcetera.

Dawkins playing the EWI in rehearsals for the New Directors' Showcase

How do you feel about your word meme being reappropriated by the internet? The meaning is not that far away from the original. It's anything that goes viral. In the original introduction to the word meme in the last chapter ofThe Selfish Gene, I did actually use the metaphor of a virus. So when anybody talks about something going viral on the internet, that is exactly what a meme is and it looks as though the word has been appropriated for a subset of that.

Do you see many internet memes? I suppose I do. It's viral. I get infected by viruses as much as anybody else, so yes I pick them up from time to time.

Have you seen ones in which you feature? There are quite a lot of YouTube clips of me that have gone viral. One that I think of is of a young woman at a lecture I was giving -- she came from Liberty University, which is a ludicrous religious institution. She said "what if you are wrong?" and I answered that rather briefly and that's gone viral.

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Richard Dawkins on the internet's hijacking of the word 'meme'

DGAP-News: 4SC AG / Key word(s): Strategic Company Decision/Restructure of Company Press Release: 4SC announces restructuring associated with recently declared strategic shift

20.06.2013 / 07:30

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Press Release

4SC announces restructuring associated with recently declared strategic shift

- Corporate and personnel changes being made to focus on recently announced changes in 4SC's development strategy

- Main focus on further clinical development of key products, in particular on the cancer drug resminostat in liver cancer (HCC)

- 4SC Discovery, 4SC's subsidiary, will continue pursuing its successful course of growth in marketing early-stage research

Planegg-Martinsried, Germany, 20 June 2013 - 4SC AG (Frankfurt, Prime Standard: VSC), a discovery and development company of targeted small molecule drugs for cancer and autoimmune diseases, today announced its decision to implement measures to adjust corporate and personnel structures to the company's new, focused development strategy. These measures are aimed at enhancing the company's market position in the long term, further improving the efficiency of cost structures and enabling 4SC to utilise its funds and resources with a clear focus on the company's main products and value drivers.

4SC recently announced it will put greater emphasis on the development of projects that have the greatest potential in 4SC's pipeline and in return to scale back or discontinue specific development activities for other programmes. As a result, the personnel structure, mainly concerning aspects of preclinical and early clinical development, as well as in administration, will be adjusted and the berlingen-Bonndorf office will be closed. This will reduce the number of employees from 84 (as at 31 May 2013) by 13 or 15% over the course of 2013.

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DGAP-News: Press Release: 4SC announces restructuring associated with recently declared strategic shift

Paula Deen lawsuit: A former Paula Deen employee has filed a lawsuit saying she worked in a hostile environment rife with innuendo and racial slurs. Asked if she ever used the 'N' word, Paula Deen said "Of course."

Celebrity cook PaulaDeen said while being questioned in a discrimination lawsuit that she has used racial slurs in the past but insisted she and her family do not tolerate prejudice.

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The 66-year-old Food Network star and Savannah restaurant owner was peppered with questions about her racial attitudes in a May 17 deposition by a lawyer for Lisa Jackson, a former manager of Uncle Bubba's Seafood and Oyster House. Deen and her brother, Bubba Hiers, own the restaurant. Jackson sued them last year, saying she was sexually harassed and worked in a hostile environment rife with innuendo and racial slurs.

According to a transcript of the deposition, filed Monday in U.S. District Court, an attorney for Jackson asked Deen if she has ever used the N-word.

"Yes, of course," Deen replied, though she added: "It's been a very long time."

Asked to give an example, Deen recalled the time she worked as a bank teller in southwest Georgia in the 1980s and was held at gunpoint by a robber. The gunman was a black man, Deen told the attorney, and she thought she used the slur when talking about him after the holdup. "Probably in telling my husband," she said.

Deen said she may have also used the slur when recalling conversations between black employees at her restaurants, but she couldn't recall specifics.

"But that's just not a word that we use as time has gone on," Deen said. "Things have changed since the '60s in the South. And my children and my brother object to that word being used in any cruel or mean behavior. As well as I do."

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Paula Deen lawsuit: How often does she use the 'N' word?

Putting a Signature in a Word Press blog that has selling opportunities
Putting a Signature in a Word Press blog that has selling opportunities http://prosperityvideos.net/prosperity/?id=mdahlc http://youtu.be/uD7SidFH5HU.

By: Mary Hunter

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Putting a Signature in a Word Press blog that has selling opportunities - Video