N-Word Mea Culpas Are Wearing Thin

Last week the National Enquirer went public with a taped conversation in which Duane Chapman, star of A&E's "Dog the Bounty Hunter," berates his son for having a black girlfriend and threatens to dismiss him from the family business because of her. The problem, he says, is not that she's black. It's that sometimes his team refers to blacks as "the N word," and following the high-profile tarring and feathering of Michael Richards and Don Imus, he wants to avoid a similar fate. "I'm not going to take a chance, ever in life, of losing everything I've worked for for 30 years because some f------ n----- heard us say n----- and turned us into Enquirer magazine," he says.

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Naturally, Chapman went into crisis mode. He assured the public that he has "the utmost respect and aloha for black people." A dubious claim, to be sure, but it beats the alternative: "I can't be racist: some of my biggest bounties were black." He sent the Rev. Tim Storey, his conveniently black "spiritual adviser" out to stump for him. Then, as is standard practice, he phoned the Rev. Al Sharpton. (At this point Sharpton's National Action Network has probably had to add a new voice prompt to its telephone system: "If you've been caught using the N word and would like to publicly atone, press star 5.") After the story went from tabloid fodder to national news, A&E announced that "Dog the Bounty Hunter" was being put on hiatus, and with that an unfortunate chapter of history was closed. Not unfortunate because it exposed racism, but unfortunate because it made Dog the Bounty Hunter a legitimate topic of conversation.

Is there anything else that could have catapulted Chapman into the spotlight as efficiently as racial slurring? How many can even claim to have heard of Chapman or to have seen his show prior to this scandal? Yet there he is, in all his D-list glory, sharing column inches with Musharraf and Bernanke. Dog the Bounty Hunter simply isn't worth that level of attention. Obviously, when a public figure like Chapman is put in such a compromising position, it behooves anyone with a formal connection to him to cut their ties. But our national effort to stamp out racism is beginning to look like a game of Celebrity Whac-A-Mole, and between the ex-Kramer and Dog the Bounty Hunter, we're not even taking out quality targets.

The danger in flooding low-rent celebrities with attention following their displays of hatred is the potential that it could create an environment in which people wield the power of such language to their own advantage. A desperate former star, whose rose lost its bloom long ago, might wonder, "What's the worst that could happen? Best case scenario: I take my licks, then rehabilitate myself and become a symbol of healing. Worst case scenario: I continue to not be famous anymore."

Hard to believe? Consider Ann Coulter, who has cultivated a healthy following by spewing hatred just in time for her latest book release, most recently with a comment that Jews need "perfecting." Isaiah Washington was fired for slurring his former "Grey's Anatomy" co-star T. R. Knight, who is gay. He was swiftly picked up in a recurring role on the new "Bionic Woman," a deal he said in a recent interview was initiated just hours after he was terminated from his old show. Shock jock Don Imus, of "nappy-headed hos" fame, is back at the microphone, reportedly to the tune of a $5 million salary. Rapper Nas has adopted the N word as the title of his forthcoming album, claiming that his goal is to take the power out of the word—a goal rappers have been aspiring to for two decades now, with no measurable progress. All Nas has accomplished is ginning up publicity for his record. Even Chapman's show is only on hiatus, and A&E spokespeople have made clear that they're leaving the door open to reviving the show at a later date. Though we'd like to do more, there's ultimately only so much we can do to punish people for having ideologies we don't approve of. Lavishing attention on every bigot and provocateur is counterproductive. The technique of exposing hatred to sunlight to kill the germs simply doesn't work, especially in the case of celebrities who can easily replace the fans who abhor their hatred with fans who secretly applaud it. The only thing we can do is accept that racism and homophobia exist and combat them institutionally, rather than playing the schoolmarm with semifamous people. In other words, pay no attention to that man slinging the N word.

© 2007