Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Everybody saw this coming.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Long Read: “The Eternal Paternal: Bill Cosby’s never-ending tour”

Long Read: “The Eternal Paternal: Bill Cosby’s never-ending tour”

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Throw Back Thursday special. (Do not let the Giant Chicken Heart inspire you to set fire to the couch.) Kelefa Sanneh, in the New Yorker:

A warm summer weekend was just beginning in Salisbury, Maryland, and cars were pulling into the parking lots that surround the Wicomico Civic Center. People had come to see Bill Cosby, who would remind them, that night, that he was “seventy-six and eleven-twelfths years old,” and who surely has neither the time nor the need to do anything he doesn’t want to do. What he does want to do, even now, is comedy: he performs about a hundred times a year, mainly on weekends, following an itinerary that often leads him into what promoters call tertiary markets, where fans are not just happy to be able to see him in person but surprised, too…

Cosby’s current tour is part of a long comeback. His most recent comedy special, “Bill Cosby: Far from Finished,” was broadcast on Comedy Central last year, and he is at work on a new NBC sitcom, tentatively scheduled for 2015, which would reunite him with Tom Werner, one of the executive producers behind “The Cosby Show.” At the same time, he is living through an extended retrospective celebration. In 2009, he collected the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and earlier this year Chris Rock presented him with a lifetime-achievement honor at the American Comedy Awards, calling him “the greatest comedian to ever live.” Now comes “Cosby: His Life and Times” (Simon & Schuster), a biography by Mark Whitaker, the former editor of Newsweek; the book, written with Cosby’s participation, is invaluable but not, of course, impartial. Unlike most of the lions of American comedy, Cosby is known for routines that aim to avoid giving offense, and yet he has proved surprisingly controversial: for decades, he was regularly criticized for being insufficiently attentive to issues affecting black communities; more recently, he has been passionately attentive, transforming into a culture warrior to deliver fierce indictments of what he diagnoses as an African-American social pathology. And, in the years since “The Cosby Show,” a series of revelations and accusations—including allegations of sexual assault—have jolted fans who had grown used to conflating his work and his life.

During Cosby’s nineteen-eighties heyday, though, he seemed untouchable, and younger rivals, especially African-American ones, bristled at his dominance. In the 1987 concert movie “Raw,” Eddie Murphy told a story about Cosby calling him up and urging him to use less profanity in his act, for the sake of his young fans, including Cosby’s own son. Murphy recalled being so offended that he telephoned Richard Pryor, who offered some defiantly un-Cosby-like advice: “The next time the motherfucker calls, tell him I said suck my dick.” Years later, the idea of rebelling against Cosby’s old-fashioned propriety has itself come to seem old-fashioned, making it easier to appreciate his persona as a sustained comic performance, one based on an uneasy tension between fondness and disgust. His virtuosity endures, even as his age begins to dictate not just the content of his comedy but its form….

In 1962, the Times introduced its readers to a Temple University student who was spending his summer telling jokes at the Gaslight Café, the prototypical hipster coffeehouse, on Macdougal Street. The headline was “Comic Turns Quips Into Tuition,” and the story portrayed Cosby as an accomplished athlete and a low-key provocateur: “a young Negro comic who is working his way through college by hurling verbal spears at the relations between whites and Negroes.” What followed was a warm tribute to an unknown performer of “considerable promise,” but Cosby wasn’t flattered. “He had opened up to the reporter, tried to show him how thoughtful he was, and he was pigeonholed as another angry Negro comic,” Whitaker writes. (The article had mentioned jokes about the Ku Klux Klan, neighborhood integration, and the first Negro President.) In the months that followed his appearance in the Times, Cosby began to reinvent himself, scrapping riffs on current events and instead describing for audiences a childhood that sounded more easeful than his own…

There’s a good video commentary at the link, too.

Reader Interactions

77Comments

  1. 1.

    JPL

    Since the bosses team is playing Rice’s former team, I have a feeling your blog is going to be lost. Of course, you could save it for later.

  2. 2.

    BGinCHI

    When I was a kid I was amazed by Fat Albert. I think that is one of the most underrated things Cosby has ever done. His suburban sitcom shit I did not care for.

    I also grew up listening to his comedy records obsessively.

    “Noah, I need you to build….”
    “Right.”
    “Noah.”
    “What?”
    “How long can you tread water?”

  3. 3.

    Bobby Thomson

    The rape allegations are disturbingly consistent. (Sudden light headedness, lying down on the couch, etc.)

    I grew up memorizing his routines. I don’t want those stories to be true. But.

  5. 5.

    big ole hound

    His old records were ten times the fun of his goody two shoes sit com. My family loved the LPs and his stand up but gave up on the Huxtables very early.

  6. 6.

    Trollhattan

    @Howard Beale IV:
    That the one where he sends his Shelby Cobra off to George Wallace, or somesuch?

    Recall one summer camp were by far our cabin’s most popular kid was the one who’d memorized Cosby’s albums. All of them, to the word and with sound effects. He spent the entire week doing our requests.

  7. 7.

    Schlemazel [was Schlemizel till NotMax taught me proper yiddish!]

    I love his work a lot. It was a huge part of my youth, like Newhart and Winters, they were the best of the best of the best.

    How shitty must it be to be a black performer? You can’t be angry like Lewis Black or you will be toasted by the blued eyed devil but if you are not angry than you are just a sell out Tom. FUck it, might just as well do what you do, take the money & run.

  8. 8.

    Schlemazel [was Schlemizel till NotMax taught me proper yiddish!]

    @big ole hound:
    That first year of the TV show was almost 100% from his stand up & really funny. It went to hell after that.

  10. 10.

    Brendan in NC

    Saw him at Radio City in 1984 or ’85. He was joking about getting fat as he got older…took a little kid out of the audience and had him pat his (Cosby’s) stomach and asked him what it was…the kid answers “Fat” into the mic. The entire place burst out laughing.

  11. 11.

    lamh36

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): I would NOT agree with that.

    But then again, I suspect the demogrphics that I belong too, absolutely love The Cosby Show coupled with A Different World. It WAS Thursday night viewing for my entire community.

    BTW, A Different World was completely shit with Lisa Bonet. Once she left the show and it was taken over by Debbie Allen, ADW was 9x better.

    I get though that a certain segment of the population just loves Lisa Bonet…meh. I’ve always been partial to Rudy and Vanessa

  12. 12.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Trollhattan: Yep-that’s how it ended. But not before he described how the speedomer went from 0-to 195 and then after that it said ‘Oh wow’. And then he started it up – Vroom VROOM! – he said it was in neutral – and it was killing people.

    Great routine.

  13. 13.

    David in NY

    One of the most revolting things I’ve every heard was a Howard Stern radio call-in show, not long before Cosby became a TV hit, the subject of which was, “Poor Bill Cosby, that Nclang is just a has-been, etc.” “Who’s Howard Stern?,” you might well ask.

  14. 14.

    Schlemazel [was Schlemizel till NotMax taught me proper yiddish!]

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
    It got a whole lot worse but it was headed down before that. To me when they brought that Raven kid, the little girl on was really the death knell. It was all cutesy smirking crap & ‘kids say cute crap’ after that.

  15. 15.

    David in NY

    He really disagreed with Murphy about one thing — he was adamant about not doing comedy about race. Not sure whether he was right, but he really was, is, strong in his beliefs.

  16. 16.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @lamh36:

    But then again, I suspect the demogrphics that I belong too, absolutely love The Cosby Show coupled with A Different World. It WAS Thursday night viewing for my entire community.

    My entire fraternity watched the whole NBC Thursday line-up every week. People didn’t go out until after Hill Street Blues.

  17. 17.

    Schlemazel [was Schlemizel till NotMax taught me proper yiddish!]

    @David in NY:
    He was very right for Bill Cosby. Pryor and Murphy were right for themselves. I don’t think a black comic can win at this game, they are going to be very wrong for some subset of potential fans.

  22. 22.

    Schlemazel [was Schlemizel till NotMax taught me proper yiddish!]

    @Rex Everything:
    The more I like someones work the less I want to know about the person.
    They all manage to disappoint.
    As far back as I can remember

  23. 23.

    GxB

    @BGinCHI: Loved the bit where he and his brother thinking they were named “Goddamnit!” and “Jesus Christ!” ’till their teens thanks to his dad’s vocabulary.

    “Goddamnit! I told you not to leave your bike in the driveway!”
    “But dad, I’m Jesus Christ!”

  24. 24.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    So, I have a dilemma. There is a 75% chance that my dad will be in town over the weekend and staying with me. This means I have to clean. There is about a 10% chance that my mom also will come. Should I clean to good enough for dad standards or to good enough for mom standards?

  26. 26.

    Mnemosyne

    @David in NY:

    Interestingly, he may have refused to do comedy about race, but he specifically demanded that any on-screen romantic interest always be a black woman, going all the way back to “I Spy.” So he didn’t ignore race, he was just more subtle about where he placed his emphasis.

  27. 27.

    Mike E

    @Brendan in NC: His riff on ’19’ was funny too, and bittersweet…talking about gearing up for a workout session at the local track, getting his speed up, feeling good and nostalgic, then, having his metaphorical doors blown off by some sophomore getting his sprints in. The guy’s a genius, really.

  30. 30.

    lamh36

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): @Howard Beale IV:

    The Cosby Show was def the reason for my Thursday night obsession, but the show that I can actually say REALLY had the most tangible impact on my life was A Different World. I remember every episode from Season 2 until the end.

    ADW was during my teen/high school years, and I can honestly say that it’s ADW that made me really want to attend a HBCU for college and I actually ONLY applied to HBCUs for my freshmen year.

    BTW, I’ve decided to forget Season 2 with Lisa Bonet, and apparently no one else watched it either, the show is on DVD, but only Season 1 and sales are so bad, that there was never a release of any other seasons…meh

  31. 31.

    Anne Laurie

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):

    Should I clean to good enough for dad standards or to good enough for mom standards?

    Channeling Cosby: Clean to dad standards. No matter how well you think you’ve cleaned, your mom will find flaws. So, as a good host, make it easier for her to run a finger along any flat surface and find dust…

  36. 36.

    eemom

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):

    Here’s what my late mother-in-law, RIP, would have said: “Do I need to remind you how many hours I was in labor?”

    My own mother would be less subtle.

    And as a mother myself, I’ll just paraphrase The Wolf from Pulp Fiction: Clean the fucking house.

    You’re welcome.

  37. 37.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @efgoldman: It’s not that bad. I just don’t notice dust and clutter the way other people do. It’s one reason I am leaning toward going for the higher standard. I means I can put off another deep cleaning for longer.

  39. 39.

    lymie

    Chicken heart is in your back yard.

    I played tennis with him once – against him – doubles – when he was doing his PhD at Umass. I was on the HS girls team. He would get you laughing so you couldn’t hit.

    Remember how his son was murdered? He should have better insight into young black male life, instead of telling people to be polite.

  41. 41.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @raven: There is a soccer tournament here that their granddaughter is playing in. If either or both come that will be where they are.

  43. 43.

    Schlemazel [was Schlemizel till NotMax taught me proper yiddish!]

    Do it to make yourself happy. Don’t kill yourself to make them happy. As long as they won’t pick up any strange diseases they will just have to accept that you are who you are.

    I used to worry about that sort of thing but then I thought if they really love me then this is who I am. I’d pick up & tidy, vacuum and wash floors & it was all OK.

  46. 46.

    PurpleGirl

    In the mid-1990s the educational non-profit I worked for contacted Bill Cosby and requested a donation. Sometime later we received back a letter declining to donate to us, explaining that Cosby and wife had made a large contribution to her alma mater. What pissed me off was the poor grammar and spelling of whoever wrote and typed the letter. I mean, BAD.

    A year or so later we received another letter from his office, again declining a donation but with no reason given. But we hadn’t requested anything that year. I figured that someone found the original letter and responded, without knowing or realizing that they had responded to us. Again, though, the letter was poorly written and the spelling was bad. I wondered what kind of standards he or whoever hired the assistant had.

  50. 50.

    PurpleGirl

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): The first Christmas in my then first apartment, I had a late afternoon buffet. Food, soda, coffee, tea, that kind of stuff. Later during the following week my mother told me that my (older) sister told her that my housekeeping skills and standards were lacking. I told my mother to tell my sister she had three (3) choices: (1) She could accept the idea that I cleaned to my satisfaction and that I had other things to do other than clean; (2) She could come over and clean for me, or (3) She didn’t need to come visit me at all. In the 26 years in that apartment, that was the only she visited me.

    ETA: I have compared my sister to Hyacinth Bucket and she was quite crazed about cleaning. Her daughters called their mother “Immaculate Mary”.

  51. 51.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Keith G: I keep meaning to just hire someone, but I keep procrastinating. I can’t get anyone in tomorrow anyway, so, this time at least, it is on me.

  52. 52.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @PurpleGirl: My mother wouldn’t say anything, but I know that she would be a more comfortable guest if the place is as spotless as I can get it.

  53. 53.

    rikyrah

    @lamh36:

    But then again, I suspect the demogrphics that I belong too, absolutely love The Cosby Show coupled with A Different World. It WAS Thursday night viewing for my entire community.

    That was Thursday night for me too…..there’s an entire generation for whom that was cannot miss Thursday.

    ICAM about Bonet leaving Cosby and especially ADW.

    I’m still pissed that the only season of ADW on DVD is the crappy first one with Bonet.

  55. 55.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @muddy: I don’t own a mop, so, if I am a slut, it is in the more modern sense of the word. Don’t judge me!.

  58. 58.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @muddy: As you can probably tell, I try to avoid doing it at all. But when I do, it’s hands and knees.

  59. 59.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Steeplejack: That is the way I am leaning. I have discovered that dusting is more fun if one has a drink in one’s hand. Less efficient, but more fun.

  61. 61.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @muddy: I never bought a mop. I am regretting the apartment with hardwood floors everywhere but the bedroom.

  64. 64.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Steeplejack (tablet): I’m also rather regretting the haircut I got on Monday. The back and sides are fine, but she took the top and front down to four inches (she took about 3″ off). I look respectable. The horror.

  67. 67.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Steeplejack (tablet): I currently have the haircut I maintained in the army. The “if your hair is longer than mine in any way, you need to get get a haircut” haircut. You can’t say I didn’t set an example for the troops.

    Oh well, it was a well done cut, and my hair will grow out.

  68. 68.

    Fred

    First time I saw Cosby was on…Tonight Show? He did “Noah”. It was the funniest thing I ever heard/saw.
    My friends and I used to listen to the Cosby records over and over. His stand up was always great. More than great, it was pure genius.
    I never cared for his TV comedy shows, “Fat Albert” or “The Cosby Show”. They were well done but just didn’t have the spark.
    Went to see his foray into the big screen. I don’t remember the title, what it was about (I think he went to Hell, maybe) but it was just so flat.
    Anyway, it is good news that the man is back in his element. I think he’s been lost in being an institution for too long. Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention and he’s been doing this all along. I’ve been to the Wicomico Civic Center and it would be easy to not be noticed there.

    p.s. I sure don’t begrudge the man making a bunch of bucks. And an awful lot of people loved his shows so what do I know?

  70. 70.

    Unsympathetic

    His son’s death says exactly nothing about young black kids at all.
    Enis was changing a tire late at night in Bel-Air in LA.. when a Ukrainian gang member drove up, asked for a cigarette, and executed him. Didn’t even rob him.
    You can say a lot of things about Bill, but don’t assert that his kid’s death was inevitable or otherwise a “product” of Bill’s bad parenting.

  72. 72.

    Jamey

    @Brendan in NC: Saw that tour, too–my parents of all people took me. Here, he explained his take on drug use, offering that a friend of his defended drugs by saying, “that [drugs] are cool because they intensify your personality.” Cosby’s retort was, “Yeah, that’s great … but what if you happen to be an asshole.”

    So the ‘Cos worked slightly blue, and could simultaneously play both the reactionary and the provocateur.

  73. 73.

    Jade

    Bill Cosby is a talented entertainer. As a person not such a talented role model.

    IMHO his black splaining to the poors does not work because with all of his connections and money his kids turned out average or worse (one fell prey to drugs, one was killed on his way to visit a mob princess).

    If Bill Cosby cannot product Ivy League educated, law abiding citizens with all of his resources, connections, and family background, how are parents raising ghetto kids with no money, no resources, and thirty year old grandparents supposed to do it?

    Unlike Harry Belafonte and Dick Gregory, Cosby watched the civil rights movement from the sidelines. Unlike Jim Brown he has no gang redemption program.

    Lead by example and I will follow. That said, I love his body of work but hate his lectures to “those who could do better: I always feel that he doesn’t really care if they do better, he just doesn’t want his rich friends to keep asking him what is wrong with his people.

  74. 74.

    Skipjack

    I also loved Richard Pryor’s other advice to Eddie Murphy- at least as reported by Murphy- “Tell Bill Cosby to have a Coke and a smile and to shut the fuck up!”

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