My Hero, Antoine Dodson! Bed Intruder Defender!

by Pat Brown

Now, if you don't know who Antoine Dodson is by now, you are living under a rock or your Internet provider is on the blink.

Last time I posted here on Women in Crime Ink, I wrote about how I was a bit peeved (I love that word. I wasn't bitter or bent all of shape; I was just a bit peeved!) that Colton Harris-Moore, the criminal called The Barefoot Bandit, had more Facebook friends than I have! After all, I do a lot of television and radio work, and since my new book, The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths, went on sale, I've worked hard to make my publisher happy. Part of that is keeping up with social networking, blogging, and doing all the television and radio I can. Then some lowlife piece of crap who has cost the taxpayers thousands and thousands of dollars, squandered police resources, and stolen citizens' possessions and their sense of security, gets a Facebook fan page written for him, huge publicity, and his poor-excuse-for-a-mother gets a huge book and movie deal.

Sometimes life just didn't seem fair, does it? The uncomfortable truth is that crime does pay at times, and it seems a lot of people support antiheroes more than heroes.

But hol' up now! Here comes Antoine! Heralding from the projects of Huntsville, Alabama, this young man ended up on local television for one of those short interviews, the type where a relative speaks on camera about a neighborhood crime, illustrating how horrible it was and insisting they hope the police will quickly catch the guy. The usual scenario is that the interviewee gets his 15 seconds (never 15 minutes) of fame, and his family and a few of his friends chortle over his appearance. By morning, the fellow and his run-of-the-mill statement are forgotten.

Not Antoine Dodson. He did his brief appearance in front of the camera and began a phenomenon. As I write this blog post (just after midnight on Tuesday morning), his new facebook fan page (put up by someone not connected to Antoine or his family) already has more than 18,000 fans! No, wait, that was 15 minutes ago. Now, he has 18,050! By the time you read this post, I can't even imagine the number.

Please understand that I'm not bitter about all his Facebook friends or that he'll probably have his own television show by the end of the week; envious as hell, but not bitter! In fact, I'm a huge Antoine Dodson fan. I want one of those mugs with his face on it and a t-shirt with his words. I even want the ringtone of The Bed Intruder song (which I tried to download twice and got scammed by two ringtone companies who only wrote in small print that THAT ringtone was not available). I admit it, I am caught up in the Antoine Dodson fever.

Don't know who I'm talking about? This is Antoine who rescued his sister, Kelly, from a rapist before he did her any damage, chased him out of the apartment. As one blogger noted, "Rape is never funny, except when Antoine Dodson is involved."

Well, even attempted rape isn't funny, but Antoine's warning to the community and to the rapist will just put you ROFL unless you ain't got no sense of humor!

Antoine let the people know: "Obviously, we have a rapist in Lincoln Park. He's climbing in your windows. He's snatching up yo people, trying to rape them. So you need to hide yo kids, hide yo wife, and and hide yo husband because they be raping errybody out here."

And he mocked the rapist (something I am always fond of) and threatened him, too (and I am really fond of that).

"We got your t-shirt. You left fingerprints and all. You are so dumb. You are really dumb. For real. You don't have to come and confess that you did this. We're looking for you. We, we 'gon find you. So you can run and tell that, homeboy!”

Reading the words just doesn't quite do it; you have to watch the video.

Now, at this point I was somewhere between laughing myself to death and being totally impressed that this man stood up and just told it straight. Then, someone had to come out with the music video called Bed Intruder Song. God help me, I cannot stop watching the video over and over. I sing along with it. Now I know what crack does to you. I gotta have the damn ringtone! "Hide yo kids, hide your wife, and hide yo husband because they be raping errybody out here!" Oh, Lord, stop me from hitting the replay button so I can get some work done.

I thank you, Antoine, for being a good man and just being you. We all love you for giving us one of the best cheerer-uppers of the year and reminding us that even when bad things happen and evil people cause misery, there are rays of hope and humor and happiness that shine through the dark clouds.

You go, Antoine! The millions who have seen the videos on YouTube thank you and so do all your facebook fans (I clicked the like button too), and all the crime fighters out there. And as soon as the Bed Intruder ringtone actually becomes available, I am sure your voice will be coming out of my telephone every time someone calls.

Sometimes someone just makes you feel good!