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Cosby
inadvertently made himself a sitting duck for the finger
pointing, when in a well meaning, but ill-tempered tirade
last May, he lambasted poor black teens and their parents,
for being lousy parents, educational slackers, for butchering
the English language, and for their alleged thuggish
behavior. He made the same charges against them a couple
of months later. The indictment was way too broad, too
sweeping, and it inched dangerously close to reinforcing
the same vile racial stereotypes that Cosby has spent
most of his professional career fighting against. They
were the type of stereotypes that he had accused the
TV and film executives more than a decade earlier of
fanning.
Now Cosby was on the bad behavior hot seat. If America's
number one Dad can ride high up in the moral saddle
and lecture other blacks on their alleged bad behavior,
than he should be held to the same lofty standard. The
hint of sexual misconduct left him wide open to the
accusation that he was a hypocrite and a fraud.
There were warning signs that Cosby might eventually
be ripe for a tumble. In 1997 he made a bombshell confession
that in the 1970s he had an extra marital affair, and
was accused of fathering an illegitimate daughter. There
were allegations of shakedowns, under the table hush
money payoffs, an extortion trial and conviction of
the woman who claimed to be his illicit daughter, and
an avalanche of embarrassing kiss and tell tabloid gossip
stories on Cosby.
He dodged the bullet on that one. In sex scandal driven
America, it's a virtual rite of passage for the celebrity,
rich and famous to be embroiled in peep show scandals.
The public delights in that kind of titillation. It
was hard to ban in Boston a guy that had shelled out
millions to minority student scholarship funds, black
colleges and had worked tirelessly for civil rights
causes over the years. Cosby also continued to rail
against the clown, coon, and buck dance image that blacks
propagated of themselves in TV sitcoms. He pushed and
prodded the film and TV industry to do more to promote
more positive black images on screen.
But the glue on Cosby's still largely intact good guy
image loosened in January when Andrea Constand was the
first in the door to accuse him of drugging and sexually
assaulting her. Cosby initially vehemently denied the
charge, but swiftly shifted into damage control mode
and, as he delicately put it, had a "sexual encounter"
with her, but said it was consensual. That still fit
the jaded public belief that the rich and famous routinely
have their little sexual trysts, and who makes a big
deal out of that? Cosby defenders cited the fact that
Constand waited years to come forth to make her charge
as proof that it was a put up job by unnamed conspirators
to character assassinate yet another high profile, outspoken
black man and thereby sully all blacks as moral degenerates.
There's not a shred of evidence to back that up. Moreover,
Cosby did not pillory President Bush, "the white man,"
or the "white establishment."
That's the bare prerequisite for blacks to rally around
a black under fire, shout racism and spin racial conspiracy
theories. Cosby had attacked other blacks. The horde
of conservative commentators stumbled over themselves
to hail Cosby as the ultimate truth-giver and laud him
for having the courage to air dirty racial laundry.
America's favorite dad got some things right and some
things terribly wrong in his bash of black America.
And he may be right that his parade of sexual accusers
is out to gouge a star. But if he's wrong, he'll have
more than an image problem.
Earl
Ofari Hutchinson is a columnist for BlackNews.com,
and can be reached at 323-296-6331 or hutchinsonreport@aol.com
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