Paula Deen probably had her worst week ever. She admitted to using the n-word, issued a couple of awful public apologies, and then was booted from the Food Network. But a recent episode of Real Time With Bill Maher brought up an interesting question: Is Deen just a product of her time — and should she get a pass? The answers on the show trended toward "no."

But, as described at the Atlantic Wire:

…Maher stood his ground, and argued that the move to fire Deen was another instance of the outrage economy that dominates modern discourse claiming a new victim. "I also think that people shouldn’t have to lose their shows and go away when they do something bad," he said. Deen clearly did something reprehensible, that isn’t up for debate, Maher says. But he also thinks firing her maybe wasn’t the right thing to do. "It’s just a word, it’s a wrong word, she’s wrong to use it. But do we always have to make people go away?" Herbert argued that, yeah, you do have to go away if you’re going to throw "the N-word" around. "It’s a free country, she has the right to say that word. It’s not illegal to say that word. But her boss said, ‘you’ve gotta go if you’re gonna use that word.’"