Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given (2010) (9 page)

Leland, Duane Lee, Beth, and I left for Texas a few weeks after my
last conversation with Tucker. We were headed there to shoot our show for three weeks. Tucker was left behind with no positive influence in our absence. Since he was no longer working at the T-shirt shop, I heard he’d found work with a local construction company. He continued seeing Monique, falling further into a bad place. In addition to the drinking and drugs, Tucker slid even further sideways by listening to his mother and girlfriend say nasty things about me and Beth all summer long.

While we were gone, I heard a story about Tucker and Monique going to Lulu’s, a club that on some nights allowed underage kids in to dance, but they couldn’t drink. The underage kids have to wear wristbands so the bartenders know they aren’t of the legal drinking age. Allegedly, Monique and Tucker had brought some underage friends to Lulu’s with them one night and were giving them alcohol. One of the employees caught them in the act and they were asked to leave. While being escorted out, Monique began taunting the bouncer, saying, “It’s because I’m black and he’s white, right?”

There was a police cruiser sitting outside the club. When Monique saw the cops, she started yelling—throwing down the race card the second she saw them.

“It’s because we’re an interracial couple. You’re just doing this because we’re interracial!”

The officer overheard the ruckus, got out of his car, and asked if everything was all right.

“You kids need to move along now,” the officer commanded. And then he realized he recognized Tucker, and he said, “Aren’t you Dog’s son?”

“Yeah. He’s my dad.”

“Well, I got a copy of his book in my car. Would you get him to sign it for me?”

Tucker rolled his eyes at him and said, “I don’t really see him that much.” Then he turned and walked away. The cop let them off with a warning but filed a report on the incident documenting the racial accusations. I could see a troubling pattern developing. Even so, I had no idea how bad things were about to get.

Lucy Pemoni

W
hen I was a young boy, my mother would often remind me of an old saying that goes, “Sticks and stones might break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” I was trained from an early age that no matter what names someone calls you, you have to have a thick skin because they don’t really mean what they’re saying. From the time I was a little boy, I’ve been called a lot of bad things by people from all walks of life. When I was a boy, people called me Prairie N***er, Injun, Chief, Glue Head, Flatfoot, and all sorts of other names. As I got older, the names got worse, but they never cut me deep enough to hurt.

I grew up in a home with a father who never used a swear word. I remember being at work with him one day when I heard him curse for the first time. In a way, I was relieved to know he had it in him, but still I was shocked to hear Dad curse. My mother used to warn me to watch my language. She’d tell me if I wasn’t careful, I’d end up like John the Baptist, eventually being handed my head on a platter if I wasn’t thoughtful with my words. I tried to reason with her that curse words weren’t literal, that it was no big deal to swear and call people names if you didn’t mean it. Mom disagreed with me, trying to tell me I was wrong and that someday I’d understand what she meant when she warned me to watch my mouth.

My mother had warned me since I was twelve years old that my day of reckoning was coming, and it turned out that I should have listened to her.

I always tell people that the tongue is the most unruly part of the body and the hardest to control. To me, it is the most dangerous weapon we all possess. It can cut a person down in unimaginable ways, causing more pain than my bare fists. Now, anyone who knows me also knows I wouldn’t purposely hurt someone in such a manner. My intentions are genuinely pure. So when the
National Enquirer
story broke about me using the “N” word, I truly didn’t understand what I had done wrong.

Even though I am white, up to that point I honestly believed that I was a “N***er” too. For as long as I can remember, at least since my days back in Huntsville, I always thought of myself as a brother. I thought the word meant “I’ve been enslaved, but now I’m free” and “don’t mess with me.” I believed that a “n***er” was someone who had gone through a lot of controversy, had endured a lot of troubles, and had survived. A “n***er” won by succeeding at something he wanted to do. For me, going from an ex-convict to becoming a successful bounty hunter and television star made me a “n***er.”

People have called me their “n***er” for years. I never once thought that either of us was being disrespectful or derogatory. I viewed it as brotherly love. I thought I was cool enough to use that word too. There were always circumstances where I felt it was safe to use the word without fear of offending anyone, especially among friends in Hollywood. Because of my past experiences, I thought I had a pass to use the word without issue. When I did, it was always used as a slang term of endearment—never a racial cut-down.

I’ve been looked down on and discriminated against my whole life. Not just because I’m part Native American, but also because I’m an ex-convict, a seventh-grade dropout, an outlaw, and a biker too. From the bottom of my heart, I thought all of those things made me a “n***er.”

The use of that word was never about color for me so much as it was about culture. It was more of a “been there done that” way of thinking.
I know sophisticated people might not be able to understand how I felt. But they haven’t walked in my shoes. I lived with thirty-six thousand black inmates in Huntsville. I chase and capture criminals for a living. The use of language that is offensive to so many people is simply a part of the culture I live and work in. I have a limited education. I was in a Texas state penitentiary until I was twenty-two years old. I spent my first year out of prison high on Valium while trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Where would I have been taught that using the “N” word was wrong? Of course, as I got older, I realized that using that word in a public place is never acceptable.

How we talk is dependent on where we were brought up. For example, there’s a perception that New Yorkers use the “F” word all the time. Rappers use the “N” word without having to worry about accusations of racism. In some communities, that language might be deemed acceptable, while it would be reprehensible in others. I was called a “half breed” most of my young life and never once thought it was wrong, because it describes who I am. If you’re a white or Hispanic guy raised in South Central Los Angeles, you may sound more black than not. When Madonna moved to London, she began speaking the Queen’s English even though she was born and raised in Michigan, and Eminem sounds more street even though he’s a white guy from the suburbs. It’s an effect more of culture than of the color of your skin. That’s how I always viewed my use of the “N” word. It was never, ever about race.

Many of my most valuable civics lessons weren’t learned growing up. They were picked up along the road of life. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was going to turn out to be one of the greatest lessons.

About a year or so before that story hit the tabloids, I was at the MSNBC studio doing an interview with Dan Abrams. I used the “N” word off the cuff in between segments. My mic was still on, so everyone in the studio heard me say it. Dan Abrams asked me if I had heard about what happened to Don Imus. I knew who Imus was, but I never listened to his show. I asked Dan if Imus was the redneck guy who wore the big white cowboy hats. He said that was him.

“Well, I’m not surprised he would use that kind of language. I figured a guy like that might make a derogatory reference to black people from time to time. What was the big deal?” I asked. “You know, if I used the ‘N’ word to that guy right there,” I said, pointing to one of the stagehands who was black, “I don’t think he’d care because I’m the Dog.” Abrams looked shocked by my statement, but it was true. So much so that the stagehand agreed with me. “That’s right, Dog,” he said. He was treating me like we were equals, as if I was a brother and my using that word was not a problem for guys like him. It had never been an issue in the past.

I looked back at Dan Abrams, shrugged my shoulders, and opened my hands, as if to say,
You see? My point exactly.

I never gave the use of that word a second thought because I believed everyone felt the same as that stagehand.

I kept thinking,
Why on earth would anyone care if I used that word?
Strangely, Abrams took issue with the word more than the stagehand that day. My best assessment was that the stagehand understood I wasn’t being rude or disrespectful, so he was never made uncomfortable by the exchange. I don’t think Abrams could possibly understand where I was coming from because he has never been in my shoes. He’s a newsman, not a bondsman. He’s not in the field chasing down punks. As far as I know, he’s never done time. It didn’t make either of us right or wrong. It made us individuals with very different backgrounds.

So when the story hit, I personally didn’t think it was very newsworthy, at least not to me. But I knew it could be damaging. I assured Beth everything would be OK and that she didn’t need to spend one minute worrying about the fallout. Of course, I was being naïve, because the story was growing by the second.

Now, telling Beth not to worry is like telling a food addict not to touch that platter of homemade cookies. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell that person to back away from the plate, those cookies are goners.

I had already survived the screaming phony headlines of the tabloids for years:
DOG SMOKES CRACK, DOG AND BETH TO DIVORCE, DOG BARES
ALL
! The tabloids’ sole purpose in life is to devastate and destroy people. Not long after Barbara Katie died, a reporter from the
Enquirer
called to tell me they had photos of the crash. They were planning on running the graphic pictures along with a story about my dead daughter. I was furious. I threatened the man, saying I’d hunt him down and kill him with my bare hands if they printed those photos. Her lifeless body splattered all over the pages of a tabloid magazine was more than any parent should endure after losing a child. How far will these reporters go before it is too far? As humans, we can only take so much before we reach a breaking point. I have been tested so many times in my life, but this was one time I didn’t feel like I had to turn the other cheek. Up until then, it was never the lies the papers printed that bothered me so much as the people who were telling them. But, then the “N” word story broke and I thought,
This time, they just might beat me,
because that was definitely my voice they had on tape. There was absolutely no doubt it was me.

As the day went on, the story grew into something much bigger than I could ever have imagined. I went from thinking it would all blow over to worrying that I was done. I couldn’t believe that, of all people, I was about to go down for something like this. It seemed impossible. I thought I was invulnerable from the enemy, the devil, the guy who robs you of everything if you give in to the temptations of his world. I didn’t think I had done anything wrong, but with each passing hour, the story blew up faster than a deer tick on a dog. By mid-morning in Hawaii, a six-hour time difference from New York, it was one of the lead stories on the news—around the world.

Larry King, Sean Hannity, Greta Van Susteren, foreign press, CNN, MSNBC—everyone called Beth wanting a comment from me. By the end of the day my manager called to say life as I’d known it was done—over. He said I was the plague.

Poof.

Gone.

It was all gone.

An irreversible cyclone began to spiral my life out of control. Even
though I went back to bed that morning, I never actually fell back to sleep because Beth kept me up with her constant updates of what was happening. I was getting Google alerts on my iPhone about it every fifteen seconds or so. Within hours, Beth was on the phone doing what she does best, dealing with the media and handling the drama. She fielded calls from news organizations, producers, the network, our publicist, lawyers, my manager, friends, family, and everyone else who has a hand in my daily life. “We can help, we can help” was the general message. Everyone had thoughts on how to handle the fallout. My life had gone nuclear, and I never even heard the bomb drop.

Hollywood spin doctors warned Beth that I could never recover from this mess. Some of them wanted to help us turn things around but suggested that it might be futile at best. Their job is to help get celebrities out of trouble, but many thought this job was too big, would take too much manpower, and ultimately we’d never survive it anyway. The ones that did say they could help said it would cost me a minimum of
twenty thousand dollars
a month. And for that money, their advice was to deny everything. They suggested I make a statement claiming it was not my voice on the tape, which, of course, was absurd because it was so obviously me.

One particular publicist suggested I should make a public statement that I was drunk and didn’t know what I was saying. Then I’d have to make a beeline for the Betty Ford clinic or some other rehab center for thirty days while the news died down, despite the fact that most everyone knows that I don’t drink.

“Exactly!” she said. “That’s why it’s a perfect excuse for you. Since you don’t drink, you can say the alcohol had an unexpectedly weird effect. Easy as pie, Dog. The public will believe you.” But I didn’t have it in me to deceive everyone about what had really happened, not even to save my reputation.

Have you ever wondered why so many celebrities go to rehab after some big news story breaks?

Isaiah Washington went to rehab after making a disparaging remark about one of his coworkers’ sexual preference.

Mel Gibson made an anti-Semitic remark to a cop during a DUI bust—off to rehab.

David Duchovny and former ESPN host Steve Phillips—off to rehab for sex addiction.

Pat O’Brien left a voice mail for a stripper telling her how he wanted to do cocaine off her naked body all night: Go directly to rehab. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.

Now you know the truth!

Since this Doggie don’t run, fake rehab wasn’t going to be my out.

When yet another spinmeister suggested that I look into my family heritage because there had to be some African-American blood in the line since I was part Native American, the only thing I could say in response was a confused “Oh…is that right?” I was dumbfounded.

None of these “solutions” made a whole lot of sense to me. Going underground wasn’t my style. Hiding out until the dust settled isn’t who I am. There had to be a right answer, one that worked for me, one that was reflective of how I live and one where the learning experience I was going through could serve as a positive example to others as it played itself out. I prayed God would give me the right answer and show me the way, because I was coming up short.

Later that night, I had a dream that I was going to judgment in front of God. Three people were standing in front of me acting crazy. As they turned around, I realized that they were the three Hebrew children who wouldn’t bow down in front of King Nebuchadnezzar. In Daniel 3 in the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar ordered that all those present bow down before the golden statue, but these three children refused to follow his direct command. They defied the king and remained standing. Angry and enraged, the king ordered they be thrown into the fiery furnace. Miraculously, they survived. When they emerged, the king’s soldiers looked at each other in total disbelief. There were four people standing before them. They ran to tell the king they saw the three Hebrews and a fourth man standing there too, the son of God. Confused, the king ordered the three men be brought to him so he could see this miracle for himself. When he saw with his own eyes that they were
alive, he publicly praised the God of Israel, saying, “He sent his angels to rescue his servants who trusted in him. They defied the king’s command and were willing to die rather than worship any god except their own God” (Daniel 3:28, New Living Translation).