'Shop' Guys Discuss Duane 'Dog' Chapman

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MICHEL MARTIN, host:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.

Just ahead, BackTalk, where we hear what's on your mind.

But first, it's time for our weekly visit to the barbershop, where guys talk about what's in the news and whatever's on their minds. Sitting in the chairs for us to shape up this week are freelance writer and reporter Jimi Izrael, sportswriter Terrence Harris, syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette, and online reporter George Kelly.

A lot to talk about. I may jump in now and again. But for now, take it away Jimi.

Mr. JIMI IZRAEL (Columnist, AOL Black Voices): Hey. Hey. Hey, fellow. Welcome to the shop. How you living?

Unidentified Man #1: Hey. Hey. (Unintelligible) man.

Unidentified Man #2: Yo, man. What's going?

Unidentified Man #3: What's going on?

Mr. IZRAEL: All right. Well, check this out. You talk about scary now. Confirmation for acting Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Julie Myers - whew - may be in question after report she judged the Halloween costume contest, where one of the winners wore black face, a dreadlock wig, and a prison jumper. Now, reportedly, he praised the contestant for his originality.

Ruben, The R, how troubling is this?

Mr. RUBEN NAVARRETTE (Syndicated Writer, The Washington Post Writers Group): Very troubling, and for two reasons, really. First one was, as you mentioned, you got to understand. This was not just a case of somebody showing up to a Halloween party in a very distasteful, racist costume but, actually, when they went further and actually had a judging contest and they actually awarded him a prize for originality, that got even worse because it suggested that the supervisors knew about this, actually approved of it. And they didn't think it was a problem until there was an outcry. Secondly, when this finally hit the fan, their spokesperson came out and says something really dumb like, you know, we couldn't even tell if this guy was wearing makeup because, normally, his face is so dark. So you had the scandal, initially, and then you had a really bad reaction. This is really bad news for ICE.

Mr. IZRAEL: So Terry(ph) what do you think about this?

Mr. TERRENCE HARRIS (Sports Writer, Houston Chronicle): Man, you know what this says. I mean, it just says that, you know, there's a lack of diversity there. I mean, because if there was an African-American person in the room, they would immediately been able to say, hey, there's a problem here. I mean, this isn't funny. This isn't original. This is offensive.

Mr. IZRAEL: Wow. Well, isn't so funny, you mentioned that. George, in the air, where we're seeing all these black face and we have black-faced Jesus last year and now we got nooses, we got n-bombs just flying out of the air. You know, is this a push back to diversity or just clear hipster fun?

Mr. GEORGE KELLY (Online Reporter, The Contra Costa Times): It's not clean hipster fun. It's just a lack of thinking. This is a situation where I don't think there necessarily needs to be black faces at the top. I'll settle for smart white faces. This is a law enforcement agency with more than 15,000 employees; second largest investigative agency in the federal government. There really needs to be some intelligence.

Mr. IZRAEL: Right.

MARTIN: Can I just add one thing, guys? I will say that the head of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, went out publicly and said this was a bad idea. He said that, you know, the people in question had apologized. He made it very clear in a public statement that this was just not acceptable behavior. He's the head of the agency in which ICE is a division. I just thought I'd ask - does that help at all?

Mr. IZRAEL: Ruben?

Mr. NAVARRETTE: Well, now, people are looking to Chertoff to see if he's going to punish Julie Myers. A little bit of background here. Julie Myers is the niece of retired General Richard Myers, who is the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She's also married to somebody who's very well-connected, who used to be the chief of staff for Michael Chertoff. So if Chertoff were to reprimand Myers for this, it would hit pretty close to home for all concerned.

Mr. IZRAEL: Terry, what should he do?

Mr. HARRIS: I think that - he needs to roll in this situation because you have to be smarter. Clearly, Myers, she wasn't offended by this because it did not affect her or her background. And we're all guilty of that to some degree. If it had been a Latino joke or something like that, I may have been in the room and not been offended and may have not recognized that this was problem immediately as well.

Ms. IZRAEL: Right.

Ms. HARRIS: It's a societal thing that we all have to deal with.

Ms. NAVARRETTE: Jimi, I think there's something going on here that you're talking about. It came up when the Dog Chapman stuff started happening and you said the n-word was flying and all the stuff. There's a lot of folks who think that Chapman and Imus got a bad rap because they are just tired. Every time they hear you or me or somebody else spout off word like racism, they dig in and they fight you on it. They don't want to admit that there's any racism anywhere. I think there is a sense that maybe, for this generation of folks, they are tired of being raked over the guilt coals. They don't want to play that game anymore.

Ms. IZRAEL: Speaking of the Dog - Duane "Dog" Chapman. He was on CNN's Larry King, Wednesday night, talking about his use of the n-word in reference to his son's girlfriend. Now, he says he thought he was cool enough to use the word. Michel.

MARTIN: Do you guys want to hear a short clip?

Ms. IZRAEL: Please drop that.

MARTIN: Okay. Here we go.

(Soundbite of show, Larry King Live)

Mr. DUANE CHAPMAN (Bounty Hunter): I'm still alive.

Mr. LARRY KING (Host, Larry King Live): Other than that.

Mr. CHAPMAN: Not very - not very good. I've been here several times, sitting in front of you. Tonight, I felt like I was coming to electric chair.

Mr. KING: Really?

Mr. CHAPMAN: I'm sorry to tell you personally, and first of all, I'm very sorry. You know, you had also a lot of faith in me. I'm very sorry for using that word. Please don't think any less of me and I'm going to fix.

MARTIN: So you can hear the voice breaking there - very emotional appearance from Mr. Dog Chapman. His son was also there and there were some tears flowing at various moments, if you guys saw the whole thing. But, back to you.

Mr. IZRAEL: Yeah. It was a real Oprah moment (unintelligible).

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. IZRAEL: Terry, once and for all, tell us. You're the man. T. Harris, who's cool enough to use the n-word?

Mr. HARRIS: Only black people are. I mean, I'm sorry. I mean, you know…

Mr. NAVARRETTE: Only rapper.

Mr. HARRIS: If it's used, you know, you can use it within the community. But (unintelligible) around here. I'm about to jump out here, say something else though. I think that this was wrong…

Mr. NAVARRETTE: Touch the pearls.

Mr. HARRIS: …and that I don't blame Duane. This was a private conversation, you know, held in his house over the telephone with his son. This should not be made public. This was a private conversation. So I don't - I'm not upset with him about this.

Mr. IZRAEL: Wow. I'm totally on. I'm with that.

Mr. NAVARETTE: I knew that.

Mr. HARRIS: I'm not upset with him on this one. I'm sorry. I mean, you know, me and my friends and me and my family, we may say a lot of things. I mean, I may say a lot of things that I don't want publicly put out there. This was just wrong. I mean, how it was gathered is just wrong.

Mr. NAVARRETTE: I hear that.

Mr. IZRAEL: Ruben.

Mr. NAVARRETTE: Put yourself in their shoes and think about conversations you may have had, in-house, with your family members about - you name it - about gay people, about Mexicans, about immigrants, about who ever.

Mr. IZRAEL: Right.

Mr. NAVARRETTE: And whether or not you would feel comfortable if that were aired out. But when something like this happens, people jump on this as sort of their definition of racism. And I prefer a conversation about racism at the margins, where the next time we're having a conversation about affirmation action and about efforts to repeal it. I don't want to hear a bunch of liberals saying, yeah, maybe we should do away with that because I want my kid to get into Berkeley and I'm afraid some black kid is going to take his spot. And then, well, I say, well, that's racist. And they'll say, no, no, no. The only thing that's racist is Dog Chapman using the n-word.

Mr. IZRAEL: So right.

Mr. NAVARRETTE: Now, when people come forward like this and they sort of jump on an n-word situation like this, I get suspicious because those are the easy questions. We should have that conversation about racism at the margins and some of those gray areas.

Mr. IZRAEL: George, what about that?

Mr. KELLY: Conversations at the margins can be useful. We do have to see about developing a lower threshold for getting excited and getting mad. I mean, you have to deal with these differences in opinion more rationally and thoughtfully. What caught me about what this guy had to say was the idea that he wanted to speak to his son in a way that would be shocking to his son and that would get across the extent of his displeasure. The use the word was very much about power and that's the point. That's the stigma that people want to get out of the way - that idea that the word is used to denigrate and to insult and to call someone out as being weaker or lesser than.

Mr. IZRAEL: Well, yeah. I saw him on Wednesday. And I was impressed by his contrition. But I'm wondering, is he sorry or is he just sorry he got caught our there?

Mr. HARRIS: Oh, he's sorry..

Mr. IZRAEL: Is he sorry - go ahead, Terry.

Mr. HARRIS: He's sorry he got caught. I mean, that was obvious. I mean, it was almost comedy too. I mean, you know, this guy - his publicist is great, though. I mean whoever…

Mr. NAVARRETTE: Right.

Mr. HARRIS: …you know, prepped him for the Larry King last night, I mean, a lot of people need to check in with that guy. But what killed me is when he said he graduated from seventh grade. I mean, I was like graduated from seventh grade? When does that happen, you know?

Mr. NAVARRETTE: Right. Right. Right.

Mr. IZRAEL: But I see his racial sensitivity in the eighth grade so he didn't get there.

Mr. NAVARRETTE: I haven't had a moment like this since - I have not had a moment like this since Jimmy Swagger got caught with a prostitute and then came forward and cried and said, I have sinned before thee. Help me. Forgive me.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. IZRAEL: You know what? But - right, yeah. And there are pieces that I hear. I mean, what I liked about Dog is that he didn't try to give us like a KKK Kramer moment when he's like going on some Zen search for wherever this comment came from. I mean, he caught to it. He said, you know what? This is from where I'm from. This is how I get down. And you know what? I messed up and please forgive me.

You know what, Dog? Far as I'm concerned, apology accepted.

MARTIN: If you're just joining us, it's our weekly visit to the barbershop. You're listening to Jimi Izrael, Ruben Navarrette, Terrence Harris and George Kelly.

Jimi.

Mr. IZRAEL: All right. Well, check this out. You know, Pennsylvania has authorized a new pseudo-hip-hop recruitment video where they got to rappin' ground hall who stalls the virtues of the career in health care.

MARTIN: Would you guys like to hear a little bit of that clip of the recruiting health care PSA, the G-hog. The groundhog. Let's hear it.

Mr. IZRAEL: M and M, drop it.

(Soundbite of health care PSA)

Unidentified Man (Rapper): (Rapping) (Unintelligible) hibernation. I think you should give health career some consideration. So check this once you're out before you're done with school. Health careers help people and help with people's cool.

Unidentified Woman: Go g-hog. Go g-hog.

Mr. IZRAEL: Oh, boy.

MARTIN: I wasn't…

Mr. IZRAEL: I'm doing a running man right now.

MARTIN: I don't even know where to go with that. I mean - anyway, I'm sorry. Back to you guys.

Mr. IZRAEL: Michel, thanks so much for that. Ruben, I know this offends your hip-hop since sensibilities, bro, such as they are.

Mr. NAVARRETTE: Such as they are. I guess my standards are a little low in that regard. You know, I - this kind of general silliness. Is it meant as a parody? I'm not sure.

MARTIN: No. It's not meant to be a parody. It's a recruiting…

Mr. NAVARRETTE: I know. I was afraid of that.

MARTIN: Are you persuaded?

Mr. NAVARRETTE: I was afraid you were going to say that.

MARTIN: Do you want to go be a phlebotomist because of it? Does is make you want to go into nursing?

Mr. IZRAEL: Right.

Mr. NAVARRETTE: There's just the rules about not appropriating somebody else's lingo in a way that is cheesy and disrespectful. But I kind of feel the same way every time somebody takes Spanish and butchers it into little pieces.

MARTIN: Like when?

Mr. NAVARRETTE: Like when people run for president and starts speaking Spanish on the stump.

MARTIN: Oops. Ouch.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. NAVARRETTE: Sometimes they speak it well and sometimes oh, not so bueno. I'm like, just chill out. Have two chimichangas(ph) and call me in the morning. Don't call - don't, you know, don't hit me with that.

Mr. IZRAEL: Michel brings up a grate point. Terry, is this ad too cheesy to be effective?

Mr. HARRIS: Yeah. My problem with it was, man, is it used an out-of-date beat. I mean that beat was like from the early '90s.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HARRIS: First of all. That's the thing that just killed me. But then I'm sitting there looking - I'm watching the - see, just listening to it don't really get it for you. You have to see this G-hog. You have to see the dances. I'm like, where do these people come from? Where did they get these people who would degrade themselves like this? I just - I'm like, come on now. But I mean, the beat just killed me guys. I mean…

Mr. IZRAEL: Yeah, I hear you.

Mr. HARRIS: You know, that's cool (unintelligible) right there.

Mr. IZRAEL: It was more of Bell Biv DeVoe, bro.

Mr. NAVARRETTE: Where do you get people who degrade themselves? Oh, I don't know. Maybe BET and Univision?

Mr. IZRAEL: Ooh.

Mr. HARRIS: Ooh.

Mr. KELLY: Oh.

Mr. IZRAEL: Hold on.

MARTIN: I guess you got to see the video to really get the full effect. It is the chain that got me - the big heavy chain with the medallion in the shape of the State of Pennsylvania. I'm sorry.

Mr. IZRAEL: And the headband.

MARTIN: Why did he have to have the big chain?

Mr. HARRIS: But they have the governor in it, though. That's the other thing that just knocked my socks off right there.

Mr. IZRAEL: But George, it doesn't have the ingredients to be a vital video.

Mr. KELLY: It has the ingredients. It just was really launched poorly. The annoying thing for me is that I think health care is just too serious an issue to be spending $5,000 on, you know, goofing off.

Mr. IZRAEL: George, you know what it actually is? It's just another sign of the apocalypse. And with that, bro, we got to call it a rap.

Fellow, thanks so much. I got to kick it back over to the lady of the house. M and M - Michel Martin.

MARTIN: I guess I just don't need a big furry rodent to encourage me on my career aspirations. I guess that's kind of the problem. I don't know. Maybe it's me. I don't know why but big furry rodent come to career and tell you what to be.

Anyway, thanks guys.

Jimi Izrael joined us from the public radio partnership in Louisville, Kentucky. He's a freelance writer and reporter. Ruben Navarrette writes for the San Diego Union Tribune and CNN.com. He joined us from member station KPBS in San Diego. Terrence Harris is a sports writer for the Houston Chronicle. He joined us from member station KUHF in Houston. And George Kelly is a blogger and online reporter with The Contra Costa Times. He spoke with us from the Sports Byline Studios in San Francisco. You can find links to all of our Barbershop guest at our Web site, npr.org/tellmemore.

Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us today.

Mr. NAVARRETTE: You bet. Hey.

Mr. KELLY: Thank you.

Mr. IZRAEL: Yup. Yup.

Mr. HARRIS: Anytime. Anytime.

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