Paula Deen's 'brownface' flub: 'It wasn't me'

You would think deep-fried food queen Paula Deen had learned her lesson about blowback when she admitted to using racist epithets like the N-word. But no.

On Tuesday, the celebrity chef tweeted (and then deleted) a picture of herself and son Bobby dressed as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, the zany 1950s comedy couple from I Love Lucy.

It would have been an amusing homage except that Bobby's face was painted brown, apparently to make him look more Cuban, as was Lucille Ball's then-husband and co-star, Desi Arnaz.

But wait, was it really all her fault? Deen blamed her social-media manager and fired the firm, according to an email from her publicist, Jaret Keller.

"This photograph is from a Halloween episode of Paula's Best Dishes that aired in 2011. Paula immediately had this picture taken down as soon as she saw the post and apologizes to all who were offended. As such, Paula Deen Ventures has terminated their relationship with this Social Media Manager. "

Why would a social-media manager tweet this four-year-old picture now? Not clear.

The caption accompanying the photo reads, "Lucyyyyyyy! You got a lot of esplainin' to do!" with the hashtag "#TransformationTuesday."

Now it's Paula, who has a lot of "esplainin' to do," as Ricky used to say back in the day — and a load of tweets repeated.

When white Anglos don blackface — or brownface — it never ends well in the 21st century, even if it was considered thigh-slapping hilarious a century ago.

Outraged tweeters made sure Deen understood she crossed a line.

Recall that Deen already had crossed a line in 2013. In the course of a deposition in a lawsuit, she admitted she had used racial slurs in the past, including the N-word.

When the National Enquirer published a story about what she said, a huge furor broke out and Deen's carefully constructed empire of restaurants, cookbooks and kitchenware, strategic business partnerships, endorsement deals and TV cooking shows began to crumble.

She apologized repeatedly, she cried, she begged for forgiveness, she tried to repair the damage in interviews.

She was having some success, until Tuesday.

Some tweeters used the opportunity to get in digs against Deen and against billionaire Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate and reality TV star who's been roundly slammed by voters and his business partners in the last week for saying what many took as offensive things about Mexican immigrants.