*John H. Schnatter, the man who founded Papa John’s Pizza and who was forced to resign as chairman earlier this week after using the N-word during a company meeting, is now claiming that he was somehow pressured into doing it.
He made the comment in an interview with Louiville radio station, WHAS:
“The agency was promoting that vocabulary […] And I made it real clear: ‘Listen, we’re not gonna go there. We’re not gonna talk about this,’” Schnatter told WHAS. “They pushed me and it upset me, and I just said, ‘Listen, other people have used that word. I don’t, and will not use that word and people at Papa John’s don’t use that.’ And that was the comment. But they actually wanted to get into that vocabulary, and I said absolutely not.”
Well, there you have it, Schnatter claims he only used the word because he was trying to distance himself from shameless bigots who use the word. This is where you might want to say, “yeah, right.”
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In another interview with WLKY (see it above), Schnatter accused the marketing agency of trying to blackmail him after he was “pushed” to use the N-word. He said he turned down their demands.
“They wanted $6 million to make it go away. I’m like, ‘I’m not paying you $6 million,’” he told the radio station. “And they made it pretty clear […] the words were ‘If I don’t get my (bleep) money, I’m going to bury the founder,’ said one of the executives. So, I’m not for sale. They can take the $6 million and whatever, they’re not getting it. So, yeah they tried to extort us and we held firm. They took what I said and they ran to Forbes and Forbes printed it and it went viral.”
As we said at the top, in the wake of the fallout, Schnatter tendered his resignation as chairman of Papa John’s board of directors. He stepped down as company CEO last year after criticizing the NFL national anthem protests.
Meanwhile, according to The Blaze, in an letter to Papa John’s customers on Friday, CEO Steve Ritchie said the company will work to “regain trust” with its customers moving forward.
An open letter from Steve Ritchie, Papa John’s CEO https://t.co/YwKzIIjyF1 pic.twitter.com/ldTnxJ7DzZ
— Papa John’s Pizza (@PapaJohns) July 13, 2018
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