The quintessential liberal act: son turns in father and ruins his career for saying “nigger”

The Duane Chapman “n” word story is much worse than indicated in the brief blurbs I posted the other day. It was Chapman’s own son who taped the phone conversation, and sold it for a lot of money. Wow—right out of Nineteen Eighty-Four, where a couple who are neighbors of Winston Smith live in terror that their young son will turn them in for thoughtcrime.

I still don’t have the whole picture on this, but it’s even more incredible than I thought. It seems that Chapman was starring in a very successful tv “reality” show, and the show was canceled because of this incident. A successful tv series was killed because its star said “nigger” during a surreptitiously taped private phone conversation and said he didn’t want to his son to marry a nonwhite woman.

So this is up there with the James Watson event. A single wrong statement about race, and boom! Watson is fired from the institute he’s headed for 40 years. A single wrong private conversation about race, and boom! Duane Chapman’s successful tv show is taken off the air.

I wonder if Charles Murray still thinks that The Bell Curve helped lower the boundaries of political correctness on race.

- end of initial entry -

Jeff in England writes:

I had never heard of this story before I read this. But I will say this on first glance:

Watson was stating a view about intelligence without any malicious intent. He should not have lost any employment due to that. Chapman seems to be making extremely nasty and malicious (and hurtful) remarks about his son’s girlfriend with intentions to wound and insult based solely on her colour. There is a world of difference as I am sure you will acknowledge.

As for the son turning the father in, well, he (the father) shouldn’t have behaved like that in the first place.

However, if he is sincerely remorseful the son should consider forgiving him.

I would say the same thing about the TV people. Just as I said in reference to Mel Gibson.

But you can’t expect indecent behaviour to have no consequences and claim it is politically incorrect for employers to act in the way they do. What if Chapman had said (in private) that all Jews are scum, should he be allowed to keep his acting role? Of course not. He must learn a lesson and then, if he is remorseful be let back into work.

As for the private angle, did he expect no consequences at all just because it was in private? Did he expect his son to play clean after he (the father) was so nasty? Another son might have taken more violent action. Should Chapman be a martyr because what he said was private? Give me a break!

This sort of incident has NOTHING to do with any intelligent debate about race nor political correctness. The Watson affair did.

LA replies:

Jeff makes good points. I have not seen quotes of what Chapman actually said to his son. I was looking at this from the angle of the issue of the forbidden “n” word, the way white people lose their employment and are otherwise punished for using a word that blacks use constantly. Of course if a person said really vile and hateful things, even in a private conservation, and this came out, then, yes, we would expect that person to suffer consequences.

Larry G. writes:

Jeff in England is wrong. He is endorsing thought crime.

If one cannot speak one’s mind in private without being subject to public punishment for having “incorrect” views, then one cannot speak at all. Should we now also be required to make public the magazines and books we read, the TV and radio stations we listen to, the blogs and web sites we frequent? Should we list our friends and the people we admire? (I see guilt by association is all the rage these days.) Should we be forced to turn them over to the police, or should the government just form a permanent agency to investigate and prosecute us all? All of these things can be used to determine our thoughts, opinions and feelings, which would now be subject to public judgment and punishment for being “incorrect” or “offensive” to whoever holds political power or favor.

If we cannot speak publicly without fear of punishment, and we cannot speak privately, and we dare not even think “forbidden” thoughts, then our surrender to totalitarian repression is complete. I’m sure Orwellian England is planning such things right now, but there’s no reason for the rest of us to follow them down the black hole.

LA replies:

Of course the invasion and elimination of the private realm are central to leftism in general and PC in particular. But there is no society in which the private and the public are entirely separated. I doubt that at any time in American history, not just the PC present, if a person in a public position said really vile, offensive, and shocking things in private, and this came out, that that would not be considered objectionable, and would affect the way people saw him publicly.

I’m speaking of general principles here, as I haven’t seen the comments Chapman made.

Sebastian writes:

I think Jeff is missing the point of the Chapman incident. The persecution of a person for comments made in private to a member of his immediate family is by definition worse than any fallout from public statements, whether based on scientific research or not (let us not forget Watson’s coda, “as anyone who has black employees knows”). Chapman was expressing his desire that his son not marry a black woman, something he is as free to do as any religious Jew who wishes his son not marry a Catholic. He made some nasty comments about blacks in a phone conversation. A man may have private opinions that do not form the basis for his public behavior, like Lyndon Johnson, always using the “n-word” in private but launching the Great Society as public policy, or Hillary Clinton, who also ran afoul of the Thought Police for private comments taken as anti-Semitic only be to defended, admirably, by more reasonable Jews like Dennis Prager.

The public vs. private distinction is what moves a faux pas from bad manners to crime think. All societies have parameters of taste in public matters. One does not make Nazi jokes in the presence of German in-laws, as Basil Faulty (John Cleese) hilariously demonstrated in Faulty Towers. But to go into someone’s head, into his private world and have his son denounce him to the public authorities, this I think is much worse than what happened to Watson. Can a person’s career now be destroyed because an ex-wife comes forward and says “Mike made racist comments during our years together,” even if Mike has never publicly demonstrated bigotry, treats everyone fairly and is otherwise a good man? Apparently so. Watson was persecuted (unjustly) for public statements; Chapman is being persecuted ultimately because he does not want his son to marry a black women, something, by the way, which black actors and celebrities state on Oprah every month about themselves. The private vs. public distinction is what moves this from a transgression of manners into a 1984 thought crime: you must not only fear Big Brother, you must also love him. Are we still free to have private preferences even if we treat everyone publicly as equals? I thought that was the mark of a civilized person: keeping one’s pesonal preferences from influencing our public behavior. Chapman never DID anything to a black person.

Tim W. writes:

Just a little more info on Dog Chapman. He’s a reformed ex-con who became a successful bounty hunter using his “street smarts” knowledge of criminal habits and behavior. His reality show is based on this. He isn’t educated, and often uses strong language which has to be “bleeped” out. He’s been criticized some for professing his Christianity (he often prays on his show) and then cursing like a sailor It’s generally explained that it’s just a habit he can’t break because of his rough background.

Dog’s son Tucker has done prison time for drugs. He began dating a black girl and apparently Dog believed that she was after his money. He demanded that Tucker dump her, and used the “N” word in the process. Dog’s explanation was that he was using the “N” word not in the racial sense, but as a reference to her poor character. He noted that he attends a church with a black pastor and has black friends, which is true.

Tucker secretly taped the conversation and sold it to the National Enquirer, which led to Dog’s show being cancelled.

I’m not a fan of his show and I frankly don’t buy the argument that he can’t stop using vulgar language. I think he uses it because it boosts ratings, even when the most vulgar words get bleeped out. His wife also comes across on the show as the proverbial “trailer trash” female of the type you’d see on the Jerry Springer Show. Dog’s clearly making big money doing this. But in fairness he’s also caught some pretty rough customers, including a serial rapist who fled to Mexico, using his bounty hunter skills.

This doesn’t clear up the debate over whether or not his show should have been canceled. It’s just a little more on his background. I do hate seeing him grovel, though.

Laurium writes:

Jeff said: “As for the son turning the father in, well, he (the father) shouldn’t have behaved like that in the first place. However, if he is sincerely remorseful the son should consider forgiving him.”

It is interesting what people project onto the blank slate of the liberal press reports, even though they know the MSM spins everything nastily. It would be helpful to read the transcript, AND the comments by his lawyer. It puts a whole different light on things. For Chapman, his family, and his crew, there are “blacks” and then again there are “niggers” (as Chris Rock explained). Chapman’s minister is black, his workout partner is black, and his hairdresser is black. Jeff’s response, clearly based on MSM reports and nothing substantive, is ill-founded.

LA writes:

If, as appears to be the case, Chapman said in effect: (1) “I don’t want you marrying a black woman,” and (2) “I particularly don’t want you to marry this woman, as she is a nigger,” meaning a low-class type of black person, which is the same sense in which black people routinely use the word, then I don’t think he’s done anything publicly wrong that deserves any public punishment. Yes, he has offended his son, but that’s a private matter. First, people have the right not to want their children to marry people of a different race. Second, sorry, but the word “nigger” is part of our language. Generally it does not refer to all blacks, but to no-account blacks. That doesn’t mean it’s a word that should be used. But it is used, and for society to treat its private use as the reason to kill a television show or destroy a man’s career is wrong. This is especially the case as the show is a trashy show to being with. And it’s even more the case given that Chapman evidently has many black friends and associates, which strengthens the assumption that he was using the “n” word in the black sense of a no-account black person, not of a black person as such.

James W. writes:

The essence of the issue is that Dog’s son knew exactly what he was doing, which was to set up his father for a tirade to be taped for sale. Dog, as do we all, let his love for something or someone color his judgement about the truth of the matter. He saw the black girl as a low-life user looking to capitalize on something she hadn’t earned, and she was. What he didn’t see was that this described his son as well. They are a matching set.

He is tasting the bitter fruit of a true reality show of which his son is the degraded producer.

A reader writes:

Incredibly, he mentions being turned in to the Enquirer in the conversation itself, and that’s exactly what his son does.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 07, 2007 04:04 PM | Send