The persons “we” choose to believe, the persons we don’t… Jelani Cobb, in the New Yorker:
Two weeks ago, Anita Hill, following an address that she delivered to a packed auditorium at the University of Connecticut, was asked how it made her feel to know that, despite her testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her, a solid majority of African-Americans still supported his confirmation. She dodged for a moment and then pointed out what she saw as one of the most egregious elements of the entire affair: Thomas’s deployment of the language of lynching to discredit her claims. The debacle of Thomas’s hearing—already suffused with stereotypes of black male sexuality and with questioning that teetered among sexism, voyeurism, and the kind of disingenuous tokenism that led to Thomas’s nomination in the first place—did not reach its nadir until the embattled nominee declared the proceedings a “hi-tech lynching.” Twenty-three years later, we know better than to be bamboozled so willingly by a powerful black man claiming racism, or at least we believe we do. Yet nothing better illustrates the enduring morass in these matters than the case of Bill Cosby…
For the past decade, Cosby has operated less as a comedian or a product pitchman than as a freelance scold of the black poor. The vitriol he heaped upon the perceived moral failures of the black underclass meshed with his role as television’s iconic father figure… Cosby eventually came to be seen, and adored, as the embodiment of black dignity, a walking refutation of the worst ideas about us. The benefits were not merely symbolic. His twenty-million-dollar gift to Spelman College, still the largest sum any African-American has bestowed upon a historically black college, was an example of self-help on an epic scale. For the first ten years of my career as a professor, I taught at Spelman on the top floor of Cosby Hall, a building named for his wife, Camille…
… For nearly fifty years now, Cosby has been selling us a vision of America as a place where a man like him—ostensibly benign, successful, unencumbered by the shackles of history—could exist…
cdmarine
OMG, this. It’s devastating that these women have had to wait so long for anyone to take them seriously, and I wish this had happened years ago, but God DAMN am I enjoying watching this man lose his place as White America’s Spokesblack, who conveniently makes us feel good about feeling better than the blahs with their welfare and their baggy pants and their T-Bones. Fuck Bill Cosby. Fuck him. Good riddance.
EconWatcher
Some celebrities are particularly talented at projecting an attractive persona. This gift is how they became famous in the first place. You feel like you know them. That’s what shielded Bill Cosby. But of course you’ve never met him, and you don’t really know him.
patrick II
Peter King said today that President Obama should invite Officer Wilson to the White House and tell Wilson that it is unfortunate that the slander against him happened and to thank him for doing his job.
I have no punch line for this.
Villago Delenda Est
@patrick II: When the Revolution comes, no tumbrel for King.
Too humane for the vile likes of him.
socraticsilence
@patrick II:
Does Pete planning on apologizing to the average British soldier ordered d to Ireland in the 70s and 80s whom he not only slandered but likely raised money to help attack/kill?
Tell you what Petey, when President Obama wants advice on how to use bar based microfinancing to help fund terrorist groups he’ll call you, until then shut the Fuck up and quit somehow being the dumbest Peter King in public life.
heckblazer
I’m reminded of a recent episode of Cartoon Network’s show Black Dynamite, a satirical cartoon set in the 1970s. In it Bill Cosby kidnaps the cast of the blaxploitation film Blackity Black Black Black and forces them to act in a wholesome sitcom because they’re “scaring the white people”. The day is saved by Black Dynamite, with an assist from Moms Mabley. The episode is titled “Sweet Bill’s Badass Singalong Song“.
Another Holocene Human
@heckblazer: That’s awesome.
Another Holocene Human
Am I off base to feel that part of what worked in the Cosby show was the tension between the kind of goody goody smarmy but oh so safe family life being depicted and Cosby’s comedy of the id, where in this kinda faux cutesy, kinda deadpan way he just says those sorts of selfish things that everyone has thought (especially parents) from time to time but would be loathe to voice. But since he’ll say stuff in these cutesy, wheedling ways it’s not scary. It lets the audience laugh because they’ve thought the same thing too: kill this child. And so on. I never liked Clair on the show. She’s only tolerable because she is the straight man to a lot of Cliff’s antics but it’s a pretty smarmy, sexist, dimensionless character. Supermom. No thanks.
I grew up watching Michael J Fox and Cosby back to back. Cheers was big too but I was a kid and didn’t like it. The only character I liked was the mailman who always came in at happy hour. For whatever reason, guess I had shitty taste as a kid, I really was into the Cheers intro and always disappointed when the show proper started. I loved Night Court. That was an awesome and hilarious show.
For some reason watching MJF on daily TV was okay with my parents but going to see Back To The Future was not so although I was aware that was like his biggest role I didn’t see it until after college.
My treasured memories of the Cosby show were when it would get surreal, like the episode where Cliff raided the fridge at midnight and the food didn’t agree with him. I got bored with the constant drama over who the daughters were dating. The episode where he buys a new car was hilarious from beginning to end: The woman doesn’t come with the car, Theo.
It’s not just about what Cosby represented to whites that shielded him but also we as viewers and fans got fooled, we got the wool pulled over our eyes, the Cos would play id but he didn’t mean it, right? He’s smiling. It’s all a joke. Nobody wants to square what they thought they knew of somebody. (Like Paterno.) There was the philandering. He was in the tabloids. There was the way he treated his ex girlfriend. I knew he had feet of clay. But the rape thing was still shocking. And I still kind of deepsixed it out of my mind.
I saw Bill Cosby live a year before his pull yer pants up tour with a mostly white audience of college students. He did a lot of pull your pants up then too and the undergrads did not take it well. I guess by making it a more explicitly racial thing the next year he got more press attention and pulled a loyal wingnut audience. Older bitter people, people who believe in FYIGM, Black classists and white racists. Way to go or something.
I don’t know if I have a point, just rambling but … we always thought he was just joking. All the dark things he said.
How many other entertainers have been doing such things and the lid was kept on it for years?
Another Holocene Human
omg, that skit sherman did was awesome.
Mustang Bobby
@patrick II: Why doesn’t he go all the way and invite George Zimmerman over, too? Kumbyah and all that.
Schlemazel
Cosby had a gift, he could make the normal daily events common to all of us funny. In doing that he seemed just like us. Since I can’t picture myself drugging and raping someone I couldn’t picture Cosby doing it because he and I were alike. Sure, that BS that he spewed and was passed around vial email and facebook by racists to say “see, its not just racists like us that think blacks are ignorant and lazy” pissed me off but I attributed that to his age and a world he didn’t like any more, a world where is only son was gunned down while changing a flat tire. But I still thought he was a guy with a good heart because his act was that we had a lot in common.
I have said this before, the more I enjoy an artists work the less I want to know about the person, they always disappoint. I can’t imagine the mind that would allow someone to live a happy life with a history like this.
I just saw the Danial Craig / Rooney Mara version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” a few weeks back. I realize the scene is simple revenge fantasy but maybe more women should own tattoo guns.
Morzer
What shielded Cosby? The fact that most white people would rather have someone black telling the black community to pull its pants up than contemplate the fact our own fat ass is pretty prominently on display.
Keith G
@Another Holocene Human: I too grew up with Cosby, a few decades earlier. He was the first stand up comedian I knew of. His first three albums were in constant play in the mid American farm house that I grew up in during the 1960s. He was in rotation with the Smothers Brothers and Tom Lerher on our big wooden stereo console record player that seemed to take up half the wall. Cosby’s TV series, I Spy, was required viewing.
At the time, Bill Cosby was in an elite class of entertainers. He held what the kids today would call privilege. Then, as now, such privilege can be a corrosive thing. Whatever demons and dysfunctions Cosby grew into as an adolescent (some of which undoubtedly fueled some of his comedy) when mixed with the power that comes with privilege, helped lead to this sad state of affairs.
Humans are tragically imperfect and seem so easily to find paths that are destructive to them and those around them.
Edit
@Morzer: You must know that his status, and therefore his superstar’s ability to ward off dire consequences, was developed decades before saggy pants were an issue.
raven
@Keith G: That is awfully good for this early in the morning.
Morzer
@Keith G:
We are talking metaphorically here, Keith. Surely you don’t think anyone believes that a literal collective white ass is hanging in the sky over America the Bootyful?
p.a.
And he’s still of use to racists:”Ya see. Told ya they’re all like that.”
Lee Rudolph
@Another Holocene Human: “How many other entertainers have been doing such things and the lid was kept on it for years?”
Percentage-wise? I’d guess, about the same as, but probably a bit more than, in the general population. EconWatcher’s point that “Some celebrities are particularly talented at projecting an attractive persona” applies to people in general; some (maybe most) of those people who can project an attractive persona actually are perfectly nice or at least no worse than average—but some of those people are not nice, and some are psychopathic (being able to project an attractive persona is a specialty of psychopaths).
However, “This gift is how they became famous in the first place” goes too far: the gift (if it is a gift…) can help its possessors to become famous, but to become a celebrated actor, comedian, politician, scientist, or whatever, some other talent is probably necessary as well. Of course there are “celebrities” like the Kardashians…but by most accounts Cosby does have comedic talents. (I have never seen him.)
As to “the lid was kept on it for years”, that’s another part where being a celebrity isn’t necessary (think of all the in-family child abuse that only gets reported, if at all, long after the children are grown) but it does appear to help, particularly when the celebrity is worth money to a wide circle of people. Cosby and Jimmy Savile in England fit that, for sure. There’s one guy claiming to have been Cosby’s “fixer” for NBC, here for instance; and some days it seems like the entire BBC management was involved in fixing stuff for Savile.
OzarkHillbilly
@Morzer: I don’t know… Let me go check.
MattF
I’m not a bit surprised about Cosby. People always confuse the actor with the role that the actor plays, and that confusion should not be a huge surprise– acting is all about the art of making the audience believe that what the actor is saying is real. Cosby’s a gifted actor and a bad man.
raven
It just dawned on me that in the tiny world of people who work with the High School GED we referred to “The Bill Cosby Effect”, people who took the GED with no preparation.
Cmm
I am feeling sympathy for the administrators of the schools that received big donations like Spelman. The HBCU for the most part don’t have the kinds of ginormous endowments other colleges do, and it must be horrible wrestling with the decision about what to do with a big donation that was once a blessing and is now tainted.
Morzer
@Lee Rudolph:
I think what type of celebrity you are matters when it comes to covering up your misdeeds. Saville’s big thing was charity work and he was so effective at it and publicizing it that even suggesting that he might have some questionable episodes to account for would have been career suicide. It’s also clear that in the British case there was a whole network of radio/TV entertainers abusing fans or people brought into contact with them by circumstance. I have lost track of how many names from 20 years ago have now been arrested and, in many cases, convicted, but it’s likely that the BBC management would never have dared to deal with one problem for fear of exposing just how rotten the whole system was.
mikej
@Cmm: Pecunia non olet
Morzer
@Cmm:
They could announce that they are using some of the money to set up a rape awareness center or some such thing on campus. That would be an appropriate gesture – and it would make clear just what they think of Dr Huxtable’s extra-curricular activities.
sharl
My early memories of Cosby as a mere lad in the 60s closely parallel those of Keith G. at #13. I really liked his show with Robert Culp (I Spy) and we had a comedy album of his that I played to death on our cheap little record player.
His later show, where he played Dr. Huxtable, coincided roughly with the worst years of the crack epidemic, and – this may have been from white old guy TV reviewers I read at the time, so caveat lector – I seem to recall it was felt that some African-American communities found inspiration in that show when positive role models were desperately sought after. I would though defer to Black folk who are knowledgeable about those times to weigh in on that.
Later (around 2005 or so) when I was reading AA political blogs to research opinions in the AA community on my Congressman – I’m in one of those majority-minority districts (MD-4) created after the 1990 census to be in compliance with the Voting Rights Act – I would see some chatter in the comments that the real life Cosby was a whole different kinda dude from dear, sweet Dr. Huxtable. But I wasn’t that interested in him to pursue those rumors further.
These recent revelations…YIKES!
evodevo
This has been going on for as long as “Hollywood” has been in existence – those studio heads from the 20’s to the 60’s had battalions of people hired just to keep their actors’ scandals suppressed and people paid off. Affairs, drunk driving, sex scandals, occasionally “wrongful death”, maybe even homicide (I imagine), all sorts of things. Fatty Arbuckle comes to mind as one of the earliest. Rock Hudson’s homosexuality was well known among the people who worked with him, but you never heard a word outside the industry. Roman Polanski’s taste for underage girls wasn’t brought to attention till many years after the fact.
I AM very disappointed in Cosby as a person; I loved his routines and the Cosby Show. Too bad his comedy legacy will be forever tainted by his proclivities.
evap
I remember back in the late 80’s watching tv on Thursday night — The Cosby Show, A Different World, and LA Law. I loved them all. The Cosby Show seemed to present a picture of a perfect family.
I’ll tell you what shielded Cosby — money. He settled lawsuits with many of the women who accused him of rape and he bought off Spelman College by giving them $20 million. I know someone who has worked at Spelman for 25+ years and they recall the rumors when Spelman decided to give Bill an honorary degree. There was some faculty protest, but the administration ignored them.
gelfling545
@EconWatcher: Exactly. It’s how he makes his living – pretending to be someone he’s not – & he’s been very good at it. What we know about the actual individual is nil. One of the oh, so many reasons why it is foolish to look to people in the various branches of the entertainment industry as moral/ethical/political role models. I don’t expect we will ever stop doing so, however.
Bobby Thomson
The man did a lot of good. Whether that was a front, or the flip side of his character, or an attempt to quiet his own guilt, none of us will ever know. But it’s difficult to accept that those who are doing good works also have faults.
khead
Bill Cosby has done it again!
No, I’m not talking about yet another speech in which Bill tells the kids to pull their pants up.
I’m talking about yet another woman accusing him of giving her a drink to get her pants down.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Apparently the phrase “It’s Okay if you Act White” (IOKAW) needs to be coined for these kind of situations. After all Cosby’s whole screen persona is a white male, down to “oh look at those worthless black kids”
That being said – since when do ruffies give a guy a dudebro pass? I though date rape is the “slutty, slut was asking for it, so what could a REAL man do?”.
sharl
On being roofied, Wonkette’s Editrix has been there, done that. Despite her jaunty manner of writing about even the most horrid stuff – a style I like, but YMMV – the point is driven home that getting drugged this way is not a fun experience, even if you don’t get raped during the process.
Librarian
I remember Cosby’s TV show from 1969-71, which was a much better show than his 80s one.
Another Holocene Human
@Keith G: Ah, risque Tom Lehrer records, a progressive home.
Comedy tends to come from a dark place. Many comedians suffer from depression and their personal lives are a wreck.
Another Holocene Human
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: A GOP official in the South just got two years probation for roofies and multiple rapes. “Justice was served.” Yeah right.
IOKIYAR, or kiss GOP ass, I guess
Death Panel Truck
In which Groucho Marx regards Bill Cosby with barely concealed contempt.