Now come comments by Duane (Dog) Chapman, the Hawaii-based bounty hunter famous for capturing Max Factor heir and convicted serial rapist Andrew Luster, in which he used the “n-word” to describe his son’s girlfriend in a heated, private conversation. Comparisons to the Don Imus flap are inevitable; a high-profile media figure utters an offensive racial slur and sets off a firestorm. But where Don Imus’ comment was on public airwaves, Chapman’s was a private conversation. As objectionable and ill-advised as it was for him to refer to his son’s black girlfriend by the n-word, doesn’t the fact that it’s a private occurrence, which he did not make public, undermine the rationale to punish him by suspending his show?

If the Don Imus flap revealed anything, it is that a) people fall victim to the power they themselves assign to words, and b) instead of listeners simply exercising their freedom to listen to someone who is not Don Imus and, by extension, causing Imus’ ratings to drop, people demand that other people intervene. It was a response worthy of hysteria, and the shrillness stifled a more meaningful conversation on how, in cultural terms, we talk (badly) to each other. By reacting with such force, Imus received more attention than he deserved, more notoriety (always good for sales, as hate-mongering right-wing commentators demonstrate), and no measurable progress on the civility of public discourse (something that can only work in a voluntary, bottom-up fashion). At least with Isaiah Washington, the hoopla could be framed in terms of on-set tensions that affected work.

Privacy Makes a Difference

If an example of stupidity in public speaking sparks an overreaction, what does that say about the reaction to Chapman’s private conversation? Without defending Chapman’s use of the n-word, none of us were there during the conversation and none of us have any direct, meaningful knowledge of the situation. Perhaps he used the word because using the n-word is a sure-way to provoke offense; you want to hurt somebody, push that big red button. Or maybe he really is a bigot or a racist. Or maybe he just was so mad he didn’t really think about what he was saying, which goes back to using language known to be offensive as an argumentative tactic. Whatever the reason, instead of being turned into a public spectacle, this is something that should have been left for Chapman, his bounty hunting team, his son and, given the apparent use of the n-word with his team (he was apparently afraid of this going public), his show’s producers.

Of course, leaving the show on the air may send mixed signals. Would it mean that A&E approves of Chapman’s choice of words? Do media producers and distributors have a responsibility over the nature of the content they offer? There’s certainly a case to be made, but it does raise the issue of cultural hypocrisy. We punish people for what they say. We punish people, like Michael Vick, for the horrifying cruelty they inflicted on animals. But why, as John Ridley recently pointed_out_ (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ridley/why-i-hate-animal-lovers_b_69552.html), is there no career-ending outrage over the football player Pacman Jones, just a “measly” one-year suspension? A better question: Why is it that people are so afraid of investigating, of impeaching (the political equivalent of taking off the air) an administration that supports torture, encourages war, supports war profiteering, spies on Americans, operates with unrestrained secrecy, and has nothing to show – not Osama Bin Laden in custody or success in Iraq – for all its brutality and neo-conservatism? Our culture has seriously warped, even corrupted, priorities.

But there is a rather disturbing underpinning to the Chapman brouhaha stemming from the revelation that Chapman’s son, Tucker, actually sold the recording of the conversation to the National Enquirer. Just as with Alec Baldwin, or even those celebrity sex tapes, for that matter, a private conversation was recorded and publicly shared. In an era where police and intelligence service surveillance is on the increase, the notion that private individuals also can record conversations and reap benefits from said recordings is profoundly chilling.

Privacy is a necessary element of freedom because monitoring explicitly implies control – not only with criminal behaviour, but non-criminal behaviour as well. (However vile Chapman’s comments were, they were not criminal.) We are wary when government does it under the so-called flag of security (see _here_ http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-558046 for an example), so why is there no outrage when private individuals violate privacy out of considerably less well-intentioned, money-grubbing opportunism?