Fancast: Inside TV

The Dog cried. And cried. And cried.

Giving his first interview since the release of an an eight-month-old taped phone conversation with his estranged son during which he frequently and flagrantly employed the N-word, Daune “Dog the Bounty Hunter” Chapman told Sean Hannity on Fox News' Hannity & Combs that he made a life-changing error that he hoped to rectify.

“There is no excuse,” Chapman said as he wiped his eyes with tissues. “I am guilty, and I will take my punishment. But the end of what I said is I will do everything there is in my power to make sure people have forgiven me. I will not stop until they say, "Dog has been forgiven."

Last week the National Enquirer posted a recorded phone conversation between Chapman and his son Tucker in which the Honolulu-based bail bondsman explains that he doesn’t want his son’s black girlfriend around "because we use the word n---er sometimes here. I'm not going to take any chance ever in life of losing everything I've worked for 30 years because some drunken n---er heard us say n---er and turned us into the Enquirer magazine."

Yet that’s exactly what’s happened. After the tabloid posted its story, A&E pulled its popular Dog the Bounty Hunter series from the air indefinitely and Chapman, who served 18 months in jail on a murder charge in the 1970s, has found himself facing “the worst I’ve ever done” and vowing “never again" to use the word.

“This dog learns,” he said. “This dog learns. I've learned not to use that. I'm going to apologize till the day that I die.”

HANNITY: Why would your son do this to you?

D. CHAPMAN: You know, I don't know. I mean, I guess I would say I've been to prison, and I wouldn't do this to my father. I don't know why he would do it, unless you know, there's some kind of habit or something he needs the money for.

HANNITY: Habit? Drugs?

D. CHAPMAN: Well, absolutely drugs. That's the reason Tucker went to prison in the beginning.

HANNITY: And there's a 21-year probation that was part of the sentence?

D. CHAPMAN: Tucker has a 20-year parole. He's on parole for 20 years, so Tucker can't do any kind of drug. He can't drink. He can't do anything.

I had heard rumor that he had maybe failed a drug test at the parole department. And I'm like, "Tucker, what's going on?" I had heard rumor that she was buying things to beat the parole test, like I was freaked out.

It doesn't make an excuse for me to say that word, ever. Even if someone is dying, I cannot say that.