What to Feel About Bill Cosby Now? Anger.

As the numbers of rape victims at the hands of Bill Cosby increase, the nation sits stunned as the revelations mount and our collective consciousness tries to wrap its mind around what to do with this 77 year-old predator and, for many of us, life-long entertainer and educator.

For some there grows a heavy conflict in how to rectify Cliff Huxtable — loveable, affable, strident father-figure — with this almost bizarro version of Bill Cosby who is now seen on nearly every major news outlet as a hulking, sneering, bastard of the once great heralded family man, educator, and pillar of the black community. We shake our heads collectively as we try to put the now outed villain into the jovial Cosby sweater of Cliff Huxtable, or to fit him into the rhetoric surrounding the no-nonsense, education-touting, “pull your pants up” form of Bill Cosby. What we get is a smoke and mirrors game. A specter who reeks of betrayal and the sly, chameleon-like sleight of hand of a practiced charlatan.

Bill Cosby was never who you thought he was. This is the stark and brilliant truth.

The Bill Cosby that many of us have known beyond The Cosby Show and back through the years to when he appeared on our movie screens; on record albums; and on television as the presence and voice of the early-education hit Picture Pages; and as the creator and voices of every character from Fat Albert — the only such cartoon of its ilk at a time when having an all black animated series was unprecedented — this person was selling us a bill of goods with a corruptible, foul secret underneath it all. He took a position early on to uplift the black race; to get America, notably White America, to see black people in a different light. He wanted to depict the Black Family as not an “other” in that the family was always downtrodden, struggling, or worse shucking and jiving as their plights grew more desperate while their stories languished and drowned in episodes about consuming second hand vittles from the local grocery and surviving gang violence.

No, Bill Cosby wanted to show the world that black families could thrive, could be upper middle class even, and then to transcend even that notion by making the black family so relatable, and the hardships of past depictions so irrelevant, all that was left was humor, honesty, and a commonality that said no matter what race you were, you could see yourself in those portrayals. And he was incredibly successful at turning that page in history by saying, “Your family is just like mine.”

He became America’s dad, sure, but the Black community was able to keep a bit of Bill just for themselves. That part who was not only Heathcliff Huxtable, but who was also William H. Cosby Ed.D., the teacher, the preacher, the Dad so many needed after the biological one who walked away, never returned. It made a difference. He told many a black child and parent watching that he or she was capable of love and being loved within the family construct, and that they were deserving of a future, of an education, of a professional career, and a place of honor within the community of their peers.

And all the while Bill Cosby was raping women. Bill Cosby was taking the options and choices and freedoms away from another group of people in this country. He became the abuser and the oppressor in his own right, and that among other things, is unforgivable. It negates any and everything else he’s ever done. Just how you can’t tout all the good Thomas Jefferson did for this country and omit the part about his owning slaves. You can’t do it. The good cannot and should not outweigh the bad in instances like these. The bad corrupts it all.

It can be complicated to say that Bill Cosby let us down. On one hand you have to be very careful of the power you give celebrities and entertainers. You have to be careful who you name a role model and a hero. The difference in this case is that Cosby reveled in being that person. It was in every college speaking engagement he accepted, and in every fire and brimstone admonishment he gave the black community for not being responsible. Can we say that these are the actions of an incredibly flawed person? A narcissist? A powerful mogul who dared anyone attempt to take him down, to shame him, to challenge the almighty hold he had on being at the top of the respected gurus of our time list? Perhaps. But that’s letting him off too easy. Too easy when you realize that he used his affinity and sway and the respect cultivated over the years so he could keep that other, dark, maniacal part of himself secret so he could get away with so much horror by throwing money at “problems” as they came up, or with outright intimidation and threats.

Somehow, Cosby fit his secret abuser self into the robes of a God. One who dared anyone stop him, or out him. He stared down rumor after rumor, turned his back, and pretended that they didn’t exist. Even now, Cosby in almost a dissociative sense, says that “He doesn’t talk about that.” That being his rapes, or the allegations themselves. It’s as if, like those who are struggling with Cosby’s public and private personas, the man in reality has halved himself and also views his actions with Jekyll and Hyde-like introspection. It’s as if he’d like us to believe that there is no connection between the man who is the would-be criminal, and the man who is the philanthropist.

Nonetheless, he is one and the same, no matter how he’d like the world to identify his wrongdoing. We can not forget, though, that one of the biggest branches into the darkness is the seeming ease Bill Cosby took up the mantle of purveyor of “do good” and “be righteous” wherein he took young black men to task for not upholding the black family and destroying the lives of their children by being absent and miscreant and to a lesser degree, not being the kind of black men that were worthy of his appreciation.

Well, let us be the first to say to Bill Cosby the words we’re sure he’s been running from for most of his adult, professional life. You sir, are no credit to a decent, upstanding community. You sir, are the pimp, gangster, rapist, low-life, abuser you’d never cast in any of your sitcoms past or present. You are the thing we should be afraid of in the still of night when we should feel safe and comforted, when we thought it okay to let our guards down to spend time with the kind-faced, family-man who rose to iconic status, crossing color lines and barriers. Yet you are no better than the cliché predator skulking in the shadows who makes women walk a little faster in the parking garage and look in the back seats of their cars — you just wrapped yourself in Heathcliff Huxtable’s sheep’s clothes before the pounce.

We are angry, Bill Cosby. And you deserve it.

As the court of public opinion has pretty much rendered its verdict on the once funny hero, many are asking what more can be done. Cosby — barring anyone coming forth within the statute of limitations with a viable claim that is prosecutable — should live out the rest of his days in exile.

Bill Cosby Mural, Washington, DC 49758 by tedeytan, on Flickr
Creative Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License   by  tedeytan 

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