Knight Ridder Newspapers

LEXINGTON, Ky. – He is celebrated in T-shirts, songs, music videos and oil paintings. Mythical tales of his exploits appear on more than a dozen Web sites – at least three are dedicated entirely to him.

Bloggers have called Lexington’s Henry Earl, 56, a real American hero.

Earl has become a genuine Internet phenomenon, a national and international cyberspace celebrity with a devoted online following.

Yet this Internet cult hero calls the Fayette County Detention Center his second home. He’s been there 969 times since 1992, mostly for drunkenness – and that is the warped root of his celebrity.

It could be said that Earl’s story is a uniquely American one, given his unexpected and perhaps undeserving brush with fame. But it’s hard to decipher a moral from it: He is famous only because he is a drunk who, by his own admission, has no desire to work, quit drinking or stop living off charity and taxpayers.

Generally regarded as a harmless eccentric, Earl has been homeless since 1969. His nickname is James Brown, after the famous soul singer, because he’ll shuffle for booze, money or, failing that, attention.

He became an overnight celebrity in January 2004 after the Lexington-based humor site Fark.com linked to Earl’s mug shots on the jail Web site. Suddenly, he was on the ABC late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live” (it showed local news footage of him) and was interviewed by Newsweek for an online article. The jail briefly closed down the Web site and started limiting access to online records because of the Earl traffic.

What’s surprising about the Henry Earl phenomenon – other than its absurdity – is its staying power. His 15 minutes of fame are far from over.

“It definitely has legs,” said Drew Curtis, who runs Fark.com. “Henry Earl is now at that point where he has become a staple of the Internet.”

In a jailhouse interview last week, Earl was amused by the attention. “I’m a famous man in the jail,” Earl said with a toothy grin.

He can’t recall the first time he was arrested, but remembers being a regular at the old jail on Short Street, which closed in 1976. His number of arrests actually far exceeds 1,000, but nobody has determined the exact figure. The jail’s computerized records go back only to 1992.

Earl did not care for some of the Web sites, particularly messedup.net, which used numerous racial epithets. “They didn’t have to do that,” he said. (The site’s operator has said he is a fan and is not making fun of Earl.)

Earl – who said he has never used the Internet, though he has seen pictures of it – is also upset that he has not been able to cash in on his fame. Indeed, he does not have a dime to his name.

Fans can’t get enough of Earl’s drunken jail mug shots, which have been posted online and feature a variety of poses and facial expressions over 10 years. Sometimes Earl grins ear-to-ear, sometimes he’s angry. Quite frequently he’s dazed. In one shot, he’s not pictured at all, as if he had fallen.

For a homeless man, he is remarkably stylish, often wearing leisure suits and turtlenecks. He has one other quirk: He often carries fried chicken in his pocket.

Bloggers have superimposed his face on baseball cards, magazines, album covers, historic photos and even the Mona Lisa. Web sites encourage readers to donate to Earl’s jail commissary account, though it wouldn’t help him because it would be credited toward the $5,000 he owes in booking fees.

One Lexington liquor store even sold autographed pictures.

So why is Earl so popular? Fans think he’s a lovable loser, Curtis explains.

“It’s a guy who has essentially hit complete rock bottom,” Curtis said. “You can’t get any worse. I don’t know, I think maybe part of the appeal is no matter how bad your life is, you’re not in jail 300 days out of the year.

“Part of the appeal too,” Curtis continued, “especially with the college-age crowd, is he is kind of living their dream, the frat boy dream: Being drunk all the time. When in reality that would be a horrible, horrible thing.”

Earl’s fame is ironic, notes sociologist Richard Lachmann of the State University of New York at Albany. After all, Earl is celebrated for self-destructive and even criminal behavior.

“This is a country that is harsh with criminals in a way that no other country except Iran is,” Lachmann said. “At the same time, somebody who commits mild crimes, people are amused by it. The mere fact that he can get arrested 900 times is a sign that police and the courts don’t take it seriously, too.”

But there is not much law enforcement can do, Assistant County Attorney Jack Miller said. “Maybe 20 years ago something could have been done,” Miller said. “But with him, it is a way of life. He wouldn’t want to change anything.

“Unless they want help, it’s almost futile to try to do anything.”

Even Bill Rhodes, a 38-year-old Silicon Valley software engineer who runs a blog dedicated to Earl, sometimes feels guilty about operating a site that claims to have Earl’s real-time jail stats.

“We are sort of fostering this guy’s degradation,” Rhodes said.

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