(Warning: adult content) Robert Hervey
LOS ANGELES (TNA) – There’s no telling what will come out of Duane “Dog” Chapman’s mouth.
There are times, as loyal “Dog the Bounty Hunter” viewers know, when he’ll say something magical, sharing one of his trademark “Dogisms,” a soundbite-friendly turn of phrase that’s often deceptively profound.
There are times when he’ll relate a heartfelt personal story of Christian faith and redemption, one that has the power to change lives.
There are times, in heated moments, which are many in the life of a professional manhunter, when the poetry is replaced by profanity, language that, in turn, is edited out by network censors.
And there are times – as we know now, thanks to a secret recording of a phone conversation that was posted online – when he’ll resort to using the “N-word,” the granddaddy of dirty words, the ugliest racial slur of them all.
Now that we’ve seen – and heard – this side of Dog Chapman, what’s next?
Are Dog’s days as a beloved reality-TV icon numbered?
Or does everyone forgive, forget and move forward as if nothing of any real consequence has happened?
This much we know: Dog Chapman, the charismatic Hawaii-based bounty hunter and star of A&E’s hit reality show, was recorded making blisteringly harsh comments about his son Tucker’s black girlfriend during a phone call. Tucker subsequently sold the audiotape to the National Enquirer.
Then, amidst a wave of bad publicity, it really hit the fan. A&E suspended production on season five of “Dog the Bounty Hunter” and pulled all the episodes, more than 50 hours of reruns, off the November/December schedule. A&E promised on its Web site to take “appropriate action” after the smoke clears.
But the short-term scuttling of the show sparked a firestorm of hysterical protest.
A&E has been inundated with e-mails, phone calls and petitions from Dog lovers who want their hero back on the air. Many stress that it was a private conversation, one that had no business being taped or shared with the world, and that Dog shouldn’t be penalized for that; others have vowed never to watch the network again unless their favorite show returns; and some have naively proposed finding a different TV network for Chapman and his bounty-hunting “posse.”
Interestingly, this all comes at a time when disgraced radio personality Don Imus, fired earlier this year after his clueless “nappy-headed hoes” remark about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, is preparing to return to the airwaves.
With Dog, A&E is trapped in a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t situation. But the network is complicit in creating its own PR nightmare.
It wasn’t so long ago that A&E still celebrated the “A” – as in “Arts” – in its title. But to combat viewer flight (and hoping to reverse the graying of its remaining audience), the network dove headfirst into the waters of reality television. The lineup in recent years has included such unscripted trash as “Growing Up Gotti,” “Inked,” “Rollergirls,” “Spying on Myself,” “Sons of Hollywood” and “The Two Coreys.”
But “Dog the Bounty Hunter” is far and away the biggest ratings-grabber, the surest moneymaker, which is why shelving it is killing A&E.
Mind you, there have always been a few headaches, large and small, connected with the show’s production. There’s a first-season episode, for example, that was set aside long ago for legal reasons.
There’s at least one reported instance of Dog and his team, with a film crew in tow, trying to bust the wrong man.
And there have been times when the camera crew narrowly avoided extreme danger, like when rioting broke out while they were filming arrests.
A&E execs also have a history of trying to whitewash the full extent of Chapman’s criminal past, and seeking to muzzle the Dog in interviews.
For instance, while speaking with journalists for A&E’s own Biography magazine, as well as for the network’s Web-site exclusives (particularly after he was arrested by U.S. Marshals and faced extradition for illegally bounty-hunting in Mexico), A&E’s producers and legal advisers vetted his every word and cut his statements extensively.
The network wouldn’t even allow Tim Chapman, a fellow bounty hunter (but no blood relation), to include his inspiring story of surviving an abusive childhood at the hands of a pedophile father in his own official A&E bio!
Not surprisingly, when Dog hired an outside PR firm, the network’s publicists were almost completely cut out of the loop.
Meantime, Beth Chapman, Dog’s wife and co-star, often feuded with the network over money (claiming the family was grossly underpaid), while griping about how some episodes were edited, as well as how the series as a whole was marketed.
Yes, the relationship between A&E and the Chapmans was sometimes rocky. But they rode it out because, ultimately, each benefited from the other: A&E’s carefully edited episodes glamorized Dog to the point that his fans now see him as a modern-day Paul Bunyan, a larger-than-life figure. The network, meanwhile, turns a huge profit from a show that, even in reruns, brings in heftier ratings than many of A&E’s first-run telecasts.
That’s likely why, even though A&E quickly distanced itself from the “N-word” incident, the network only shelved the show “for the foreseeable future,” as opposed to “forever.”
So has Dog Chapman’s 15 minutes of fame finally expired?
Probably not, provided A&E can manage to extend it without being accused of condoning racism.
After all, like most corporations, for better or worse, A&E really is interested in only one color – the color of money.
(Warning: adult content)