Worry about the biting, not the barking

That is the advice of radio/TV host and columnist Larry Elder, who is black. In the wake of the brouhaha over "Dog" the Bounty Hunter getting caught using the word "nigger" in an unknowingly-taped phone call, Mr. Elder had a few things to say about it in his latest column.

The gist of what Elder had to say was to say, "So what?" in response to Dog's racial outburst. What can Dog - or other people like him - say or do to keep Larry Elder from earning a living? Elder used a personal anecdote in his column to illustrate his point:

Does an outburst from a man like Dog truly affect one's self-esteem and self-respect? When I worked for a law firm as a young attorney in Cleveland, I once took the deposition of an orthopedic surgeon. The white opposing attorney and I sparred aggressively during the depo, but we respected each other's professionalism. So when we finished, we stood chatting in front of the doctor's office. Soon a raggedy car full of young whites slowly drove by, and one yelled, "Hey, n---er! It's almost sundown! Get out of town!"

The jaw of my opposing attorney nearly hit the pavement, and he said, "Did you ... did you –?"

I said, "And you were saying?"

The attorney again stammered, "Did you ... did you hear?"

"Sure, I heard," I said. "But, look. I'm standing here, making [in today's dollars nearly $150,000], wearing a three-piece pinstripe blue suit and carrying a leather briefcase. And those punks, who didn't even have enough guts to stop before calling me n---er, probably couldn't even get a job working the deep-fry at McDonald's. No, it's going to take a lot more than that to ruin my day. Now, as you were saying ...?"

Elder also took Dog to task for kissing the ring of Al Sharpton in the hopes of being granted forgiveness. Yes, Al Sharpton - the man who has used such epithets as "white interlopers" and "diamond merchants" to describe Jews. You see, Al Sharpton has bite. There are seven dead people lying in their graves, and many lives ruined as a direct result of his "intervention" into racially charged situations.

Good Day to You, Sir