From The Sydney Morning Herald:
November 4, 2007
RHETORIC: A Dog of a day
In Australia your TV show gets cancelled because of low ratings. In the US your show gets cancelled because you use inappropriate language in a phone conversation with your son, who records you and sells the tape to The National Enquirer.
The speaker was Duane "Dog" Chapman, the star of Dog the Bounty Hunter (seen here on Foxtel), who was trying to persuade his son to give up his girlfriend.
This is what Chapman said: "I don't care if she's a Mexican, a whore or whatever. It's not because she's black. It's because we use the word nigger sometimes here. I'm not gonna take a chance ever in life of losing everything I've worked for for 30 years because some f---ing nigger heard us say nigger and turned us in to the Enquirer magazine. Our career is over! I'm not taking that chance at all! Never in life! Never!
"If Lyssa [Dog's daughter] was dating a nigger, we would all say 'f--- you!' It's not that they're black, it's none of that. It's that we use the word nigger. We don't mean you f---ing scum nigger without a soul. We don't mean that s---. But America would think we mean that.
"And we're not taking a chance on losing everything we got over a racial slur because our son goes with a girl like that ... So, I'll help you get another job but you cannot work here unless you break up with her and she's out of your life."
The Enquirer quoted the conversation on Wednesday, and on Friday The Wall Street Journal reported that Yum Brands, which advertises Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut on Dog the Bounty Hunter, had withdrawn its commercials because it found the reported language "despicable" . Then the network did exactly what Chapman was trying to avoid.