Hoping to salvage a reputation damaged by the emergence of an audio recording in which he repeatedly detailed his racial preference for potential daughters-in-law, Dog the Bounty Hunter threw himself into the bony embrace of CNN softballer Larry King last night, trusting that the hurt he's feeling would dissipate to near nothingness by the end of the first commercial break.

Once King placed a liverspotted hand upon the party-end of the glorious mullet before him, pulled the hunter's weary head towards his welcoming, sunken chest, and gently whispered through the windchimes dangling from the apologetic guest's ear, "Everything's going to be OK. Now tell me who you are and why you're here? Some bad thing you did?," the healing process was underway. Soon, Dog would be explaining to a rapt America that a poor vocabulary was at least party to blame for the ugly incident, a trivial problem that's easy enough to correct: once better educated, his angry brain should have a much more varied selection of hurtful words to choose from, minimizing his reliance on any one slur.