Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given - Duane Dog Chapman [39]
Almost immediately, Alan Nevins, my manager, and Beth were fielding calls from various groups who had booked me to do special appearances and were now saying they were canceling. I was scheduled to be the grand marshal at Mardi Gras in New Orleans—canceled. Grand Marshal of the Fiesta Bowl parade—canceled. I had a deal in place to launch my own line of slot machines in Vegas—canceled. All of my licenses went away. Online sales of merchandise tanked. Stores yanked my products off their shelves. My first book, which had been enjoying a long ride on the New York Times bestseller list, was pulled from almost every store and returned to the publisher. It was devastating. I suddenly realized that all of my eggs were in the A&E basket, something that I had been grateful for but was now quite concerned about.
I didn’t know what I would do. Bounty hunting was all I had. I could still do that, but the probability of doing it in front of the cameras ever again seemed to be quickly slipping away.
CHAPTER 8
Courtesy of Dog Corp.
Although we were already wrapped for the season, the network announced the same day the story broke that they were halting production on any remaining shows. They thought that by doing this they might appease civic leaders who were applying tremendous amounts of pressure on them to take the show off the air. We held our breath for two days hoping that the craziness would die down. No such luck. The debate was just getting started. Two days later, after two main advertisers pulled out from the show, A&E, under pressure from so many different sources, called us with the bad news. They were making the announcement that Dog the Bounty Hunter was off the network’s schedule for the “foreseeable future.” The wording of the announcement made it clear the show wasn’t being canceled, merely shelved. Regardless, that news impacted the lives of eighty-six people who depended on my television show to support their families. When A&E shelved us, every single one of those people indefinitely lost their jobs too.
Beth was angry about the network’s decision. She called Marty Singer, our entertainment lawyer, in Los Angeles to assess the situation and talk about our options. There was no way I would ever agree to bring legal action against my own son. Beth argued that Don Imus walked away with half the value of his contract when he was fired for racially insensitive comments and wondered if Marty could work out some financial arrangement too.
It’s funny when I think back to those first few days because money was the last thing on my mind. I didn’t care about contracts and felonies. Everyone was arguing that Tucker had recorded a personal conversation that we’d had in the privacy of our own home. I didn’t go on a public racial tirade like so many others before me. I was having a heart-to-heart conversation with my son. Yeah, I heard a lot of “justification” over those first few days on how I was victimized and getting burned. The more I heard it, the more I wanted to scream STOP!
I knew in my heart that I wasn’t the victim in all of this. Private conversations ought to still follow the path of right and wrong. And, in this situation, I was way wrong. No ifs, ands, or buts…I was out of line. Just because my words were used in private didn’t lessen the impact, especially coming from me, a guy who was supposed to be a role model for my family, friends, and fans. My sole focus was on figuring out ways to fix the damage, to repent, and then to heal.
The network begged us to lay low for a while and let some time go by. They made it pretty clear they had to back off and wash their hands of the mess I had created. Civil rights leaders weren’t satisfied with their decision to remove the show from the schedule. Several coalition groups sent letters to the network demanding our cancellation. The timing couldn’t have been worse since Citadel Broadcasting Corporation had just announced Don Imus’s return to radio the day after my story broke. This enraged many people because they felt that Imus had been fired and shown the