CAREER KILLERS: Aaron Hernandez and Paula Deen

UPDATE June 24, 2013: As Paula Deen graciously accepts the Food Network's axe, Aaron Hernandez elusively allows his home to be searched again. This time with a team of K-9s.

That search now includes the waters of a nearby pond, although precisely what the divers are looking for in there, investigators haven't said.

The embroiled chef and footballer are still garnering major media attention this week as everybody wonders what stunts the pair of self-saboteurs will pull next.

For Deen, there was nothing else to do in the aftermath of her career meltdown but publicly and humbly bow out from the TV gig she's held for most of decade. Except, perhaps, to pry her foot out of her mouth when nobody's looking.

She's rescheduled last week's abruptly canceled interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show for this Wednesday ... we'll see then how she's progressed.

Hernandez on the other hand is a total wildcard still, and the investigation into the execution-style murder of his pal Odin Lloyd -- once the New England Patriots' most diehard fan -- enters a full week now without the threatened arrest being realized.

Police acknowledged days ago that they've issued a 'paper warrant' to bring the star athlete into custody for at least obstructing justice, although it's clear he had some role in the killing itself, too. But they haven't done even this much yet.

Of course, any average Joe would be in handcuffs by now, sitting his felonious butt in jail. And that's something which would've happened in only a matter of hours, as everybody also knows.

But fame has many hidden perks, obviously. Together with a price.

[find these 2 original breaking stories for June 22, 2013 below]

Top awards for killing one's lucrative career go to Aaron Hernandez and Paula Deen this week. Two celebrities who've made the headlines by demonstrating they're not only their own worst enemies, but unworthy of endorsements too:

 

 

For the talented but troubled Hernandez, the Patriots' famed tight end who's now hopelessly mired himself in murder, Mayhem has evidently been his middle name, both on and off the field, ever since boyhood.

 

But like many other jocks with similar tendencies he's always managed to wriggle out of past offenses, mainly because of his knack with a football.

 

This time, however, the 23-year-old has gone too far and Massachusetts police have confirmed they've issued Aaron Hernandez  a 'paper' warrant for his arrest, in an effort to get him to cooperate with them.

 

Detectives have been trying to question the stonewalling star athlete all week in connection with the homicide of his drinking buddy Odin Lloyd, 27, who was found shot to death execution style in a park less than a mile from Hernandez's North Attleborough mansion.

 

The two men had been partying throughout the weekend and were close friends, so it's not clear exactly what went wrong between them, although Hernandez has long been known for a short fuse, rash behavior, and a gun fetish.

 

Making matters even murkier are the criminal acts  he's said to have engaged in immediately following the killing -- destruction of a home security video system and a smashed cell phone -- for which he'll now have to answer to obstruction of justice charges.

 

Police issuing an arrest warrant on those preliminary counts say Hernandez also hired a cleaning crew to do a major scrub down of his lavish residence shortly after Lloyd's dumped body was found by a jogger.

 

Hernandez's suspicious conduct has placed in jeopardy a multi-million-dollar contract he just signed with the Patriots team, and at least one corporate sponsor has backed out of their lucrative arrangement with him as well...

 

Paula Deen and Southern discomfort

 

It's not a crime to use the N word, unfortunately, but, as the hospitality hostess with the mostest has just learned, it's not very prudent either.

 

And in Deen's case her much too frequent use of the racial slur is nothing she can easily refute, since the source of these career-careening revelations is none other than her own sworn deposition.

 

That's just cost the world-renown meals maven, famous for her down-home cooking and distinctive Southern drawl, a cushy job with the Food Network.

 

To Deen's credit, however, she did profusely apologize and beg forgiveness, both on television and via social network accounts. Still, for her aghast employer and many millions of disgusted fans worldwide that PR move proved too little too late.

 

It's not known what motivated these damaging disclosures about Deen's less than appetizing prejudices, but usually 'outing' someone in this manner is retaliatory -- the ex-TV chef and cookbook author is currently entangled in a discrimination suit brought by a former employee, and that litigation is where the damning documents originate...

 

Fame can be fleeting, many in the limelight have sadly discovered. But for a few, like Hernandez and Deen, when that status is justifiably yanked away, infamy takes its place.

 

 

EPONYMOUS ROX