Someone Even Don Imus Can Call "Dumbass"

I can't believe the Duane "Dog the Bounty Hunter" Mess. Months ago, I wrote about how he impressed me as a person, and how moved I was by some of the things he said on his show. And here he is on tape, calling his son's girlfriend a nigger.

Lordy.

My opinion of him started to decline some time ago. Even when I was writing the piece praising his show, I wondered if I was being taken in by a jailhouse con artist. After all, this guy admits he used to be a dirtbag, and prison inmates are known for the quality of their BS.

One thing that bothered me was his Mexican situation. He was supposedly in danger of being extradited to Mexico and forced to serve time for kidnapping an American scumbag hiding in that country. It sounded like a genuine predicament at first, but the lawyer in me took over, and I started to wonder if he fully expected to be excused (he was), and whether he ginned the whole thing up as a publicity exercise. There was no way for me to find out without doing legal research, and that's work, so you can guess what my decision was.

Also, I was put off my his merchandising approach. I bought a T-shirt from him, and I kept getting spam after spam, pleading for money and pushing me to buy more crap. It just didn't jibe with his image as a sincere guy.

Now we have him on tape, telling his son he can't work for him because his girlfriend is threatening to tape him using racial slurs (he was clearly right about that; she's obviously the source of the tape). If he had said, "I can't keep some of the employees from talking that way, and this girl will get us in trouble," I could understand, but Dog himself calls her "a f___ing nigger," which is proof that he thinks that term is acceptable.

One the one hand, I had my doubts about this guy already, and this doesn't help his case. On the other, I tend to suspect that this has more to do with a lack of class than intense racism.

A lot of people in this country who are probably not hardcore racists use the word "nigger" all the time. Their excuse is that some black people deserve to be called niggers. It works like this. Oprah is a black person or an African-American or whatever she wants to be called, because she obeys the law and has morals. OJ Simpson, however, is a nigger because he murdered two people.

I don't understand it. It's a stupid, stupid position. Idiotic. You don't call people that. It's dehumanizing, not just to the person you're talking about, but to their entire race. It implies that there are human beings, who deserve one standard of treatment, and then there are subhumans who are presumed to deserve a lower standard of treatment, until they prove they deserve the same regard as humans.

It's a lower-class thing, mainly. Something to help lower-class people feel like there is someone out there lower than they are. "I may clean a rich white guy's toilet, but at least I'm not black. In fact, I'm a complete piece of crap. But I'm still special and important. Because...I'm not black."

I think people with this attitude don't see themselves as hostile to black people, and they're willing to accept the fact that many black people are fine individuals as good as themselves. I suppose they're fairer than many racists, and it's probably not correct to judge them by the same standard as a Hitler or a Farrakhan. But they're wrong, and it's not a trivial thing. There is never a good reason to call anyone a nigger. Never, never, never. I don't care if he shot your whole family. Bad acts can't turn a human being into a nigger. Regardless of what people like Chapman and Senator Robert Byrd say.

I have relatives with this attitude. Sadly, I consider it an improvement over their previous stances. I am from Eastern Kentucky, and I have never seen racism anywhere--not ANYWHERE--as bad as it is in Appalachia. You can walk into a room there and say, "Let's go kill all the niggers!", and chances are good that everyone will think that's a pretty funny joke. North Carolina is the same way. Many areas in the South are not.

Anyway, my guess is, Dog Chapman was born into a certain class, and he's stuck there. Everyone around him has always talked this way, and maybe he doesn't see the word "nigger" as inherently hostile and poisonous. Maybe he's not a horrible guy. But he needs to knock it off. Not just when the cameras roll. All the time.

His career is over for at least five years, and it will never be what it was before this incident. Look what this stupid, worthless word cost him. And the crazy thing is, it would have cost him nothing to quit using it, and the use of the word carried no benefit. Did he need to use the word? Was he paid a fee every time he used it? Did it convey an important meaning he couldn't get across any other way? No. So why work so hard to hold onto it? Why fire your own son in order to be allowed to keep saying something trashy and evil and useless?

The odd thing about this is that it looks like he was right about the girlfriend's character, because you don't handle a family problem by destroying the family. And if she's as slimy as it seems she is, she's probably a gold-digger, and she just killed the goose that lays the eggs. Duane Chapman's son probably made big money up until now, with a high school education and no skills other than chasing bail violators. How is he going to make money from now on? It seems like there is no good guy in this story. No victim.

My Save the Dog T-shirt got bleach on it, and I had to throw it out. I guess that was all for the best. I'll buy another one. Right after I see Al Sharpton selling them on infomercials.