America’s Test Kitchen gets failing grade

While Cook’s Illustrated Magazine touts itself as not having advertisements, its TV show America’s Test Kitchen has serious commercial underwriters.

What’s cooking with America’s Test Kitchen? A lot of home cooks really like this PBS cooking show as well as its offspring Cook’s Country and Cook’s Illustrated Magazine, the publication that spawned them.

But many of these same fans believe they’ve been burned by the company’s overly aggressive marketing campaign which they claim floods them with spam and solicitations and dupes them into spending money on products they don’t want.

Paula Deen: The Popeye defense

FURTHER UPDATE: 7 p.m., Wal-Mart Stores just announced they are dropping Paula Deen’s products from their stores.

UPDATE: 9:32 a.m. Based on her Today show appearance, it was announced Paula Deen lost another endorsement – from Caesar’s Entertainment.

With her two apology videos going bust, Paula Deen took to the airwaves on the Today show this morning to apologize for her use of the N-word, which she admitted to in a deposition she gave in a court proceeding.

The tears were flowing as PR sound bite after PR sound bite emanated from Paula’s mouth.

“Every creature on this earth was created equal.”

“He who is without sin cast the first stone.”

“If God led us to it, he’ll get us through it.”

“There is something evil out there…”

“If you’ve never committed a sin, pick up a rock and throw it at me as hard as you can.”

And then there was the Popeye defense: “I is what I is and I’m not changing.”