Cats and Dog (Friday Night blogging)

IN what passes for tradition in the Blogosphero, you’re supposed to put up a cat picture on Friday nights.
So… being Friday, here’s “Illegal Alien Cats”:

Now, going to the Dog.

Duane Lee Chapman (the kind of name that if it’s not on a country music singer, is on either a serial killer or the guy whose family is covered in your local paper’s county police report). Dog the Bounty Hunter.

Duane Lee is in a heap o’ trouble. He’s a bailbondsman, and famous for bringing bail jumpers to justice. In a “man bites dog” story, the Dog was arrested in Hawaii by U.S. Marshalls on Thursday morning … on a Mexican warrent charging him with very, very serious crimes. Seems our boy… the famous bail jumper stopper … jumped bail.

Although something of a pariah among “respectable” bailbondsmen “Dog” has his admirers. They seem to overlook the obvious, things you can find, say, in Wikipedia:

Chapman … joined a motorcycle gang, the Devil’s Disciples, that reportedly had a distaste for blacks… According to Chapman, another gang member, Donny Kirkandall, murdered pimp and drug dealer named Jerry Lee Oliver a crime for which Chapman was found in complicity by a Texas judge. Chapman has reportedly been arrested at least 32 timesIn 1977, Chapman was sentenced to five years of hard labor on murder charges, he served just 18 months before being paroled in 1979. Before his sentencing, Chapman had married, and fathered at least one child. His wife Lafonda filed for divorce while he was in prison on the murder charges. Because Chapman owed money for child support, the judge in charge of handling the child support case asked Chapman to catch a fugitive for $200. This is considered the beginning of his bounty-huting career.

That last sentence doesn’t sound like anything that would stand up even under the laxest possible intrepretation of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct.

“Dog”, out of prison, moved to Hawaii and set up shop as a bailbondsman… how, with his prison record, is never quite clear. Somehow. He’s a master showman.

When Andrew Luster, heir to the Max Factor cosmetics fortune and serial rapist, ended up in Puerto Vallerta, the Mexican police knew he was there. PV has its share of shady gringos. Intespersed amongst the retirees, the old queens, tthe eurotrash and the gay vacationers are the retired marijuana dealers, ponzi schemers keeping a low profile, the occasional mobster on the wrong side of a family disagreement. Not nice people, but not any particular concern to the Mexicans. Andrew Luster though. A serial rapist, already convicted in California, and facing a 124 year prison term?

Mexican prosecutors had already prepared extradition papers and were waiting for the FBI to come in and quietly pick the guy up in June 2003 when … and if this seems a tad “convenient”, you’re not alone in thinking so, but newspapers reported that a couple spotted Luster, called the FBI… and the DOG.

The Dog showed up — with a TV crew in tow — in time to get into a barroom brawl with the fugitive heir. Mexican cops threw the whole lot of them into jail. Where someone paid “bajo fianza” to spring the Dog from the pound. Luster somehow also was out of jail — presumably as a courtesy to the FBI, allowing the G-men to put Luster on a plane and fly him back to the U.S. without going through an extradition hearing.

That would not make for great drama. Or tacky television. DOG kidnapped Luster, put him on a private plane and … the rest, they say, is history.

Lest we forget, DOG is a bailbondsman. Somehow he managed to get bajo finanza for this very serious charge… and promptly fled the country. Sort of like… oh… Andrew Luster?

Dog milked that “capture” for everything it was worth. He’s a master showman who manages to appeal both to his white trash roots and to the sophisticated. In Mexican terms, he’s a naco — rich white trash, with excreable taste in jewelry and a ridiculous haircut that was a joke even when it was semi-fashionable 15 years ago. But, then, American culture since WWII has been defined by a lot of poor boys who never passed through the middle class. Though those boys had talent — Warhol, Liberace, Elvis.

Dog had…? Good publicitiy, basically. Somehow the biker and his big-boobed foul-mouthed wife became de rigor television viewing in the U.S. While no one with any taste or culture would want to BE THOSE people — there’s a weird fascination with the Chapman family (maybe due to the fact than we’re lucky none of us know anyone remotely like them). For people who DO know people like them, there’s the satisfaction of seeing themselves as the “good” people against the bad guys.

The bad guys, more often than not, are darker skinned than Duane’s fan club. I don’t think that’s quite coincidental, as the amazing posts from The JAWA Report article on his arrest indicate. I’ll leave their names off to protect the moronic:

Fuck Mexico!! How dare those assholes take our number one well known american hero and imprision him aftrer all the crimes they committ here..Screw Mexico..Let’s go to war and blow em like we did in Iraq!!

I guess two wrongs make a right, or something like that. As to getting blown in Iraq, ok… but what does that have to do with Mexico.

he is not a criminal and he did not break any laws, because mexico has no laws, just revenge for taking out a rich man, who was pooling tons of money into mexico. i agree with military action, take the illegal mexicans out of our country or the people will one way or another.

Uh… kidnapping gets you 30 to 50 years in Mexico. Murderers only get 20. Duane was a very, very bad boy.

And, the one I love…

What is wrong with this sick world is it not bad enough we have so many mexicans taking our jobs and and their spanish on every recording and instruction mannuel we have ever gotten! Dog and Beth are good family people Bush step your sorry but in on this one.They have gotten so many bad people off the streets and helped many that would be nowhere without Dog And Beth’s and the whole Chapman family, I will be praying for them all, we can’t let them get away with this!!!!!!!!

“Instruction mannuel”… wasn’t he the translator I used to work with when I was a technical writer?