Papa John Schnatter Says He’s Spent The Past 20 Months Trying To Learn How To Not Say The N-Word

There was a time when John Schnatter was simply eating pizzas as penance for his lack of racial awareness and using a slur on a conference call while at the helm of Papa John’s. A few years later, though, and he’s apparently an expert witness when it comes to cancel culture.

The former CEO of the pizza chain is back to doing interviews, and on Monday he made a wave of media appearances on far-right news outlets to talk about cancel culture. The first came with OAN, where he accused the Papa John’s board of framing him for racism.

The interview was, well, very OAN. One question asked Schnatter how he reacted when headlines started coming out that “smeared your good name,” which is an interesting way to describe a situation where not only did Schnatter use racist language, but he used it while at a corporate sensitivity training. Apparently, he’s trying to figure out how he was labeled a racist, but also working really hard not to say anything racist while he does.

“We’ve had three goals these last 20 months: get rid of this N-word in my vocabulary and dictionary and everything else. Because it’s just not true,” he said. “Figure out how they did this, and get on with my life.”

The thing is, well, he did have that racial slur in his vocabulary because he said it during a conference call, which is what caused all of this. The framing or whatever happened with the board that followed was clear damage control from a large corporation, and amid the controversy it decided the best way to do that was without the John in Papa John’s. But Schnatter insisting that he’s the victim of anything but his own words is certainly a stretch here.

In another appearance, this time on Newsmax, he talked more clearly about cancel culture. There were a lot of puns, because pizza.

Despite the welcome audience he may get from far-right news outlets that love to support imaginary things like widespread voter suppression that stole the presidency from Donald Trump, the rest of the internet certainly didn’t react well to his media appearances.