Back to a previous issue, I understand why people wouldn't watch The Cosby Show with the same verve as they did before. Cosby presented himself as a black everyman, an archetype for both whites and blacks to live up to. His comedy and his show were based around his acceptance of bourgeois attitudes and generally aspiring towards the American dream while being black, which he admitted came with a whole lot of prejudice, prejudice that—importantly to him—could be overcome if only you worked hard and toed the line required to achieve the American dream. This meant accepting generally bourgeois attitudes and received mores and folkways. To follow received wisdom and to be a decent person at your core was huge for Cosby.
He sat as an honorary degree recipient at universities and colleges, and fancied himself a sort of model for blacks at the time who aspired to greater things in life than was generally their lot. He often criticized black responses to bourgeois white attitudes as extreme and undesirable. He was a bit of a morality policeman for the black community, and some resented him for it. Part of his act became this, and it was then embodied that to laugh with Cosby was to laugh with a certain eye at a certain way of life in the black community. He had personalized his act. Look no further than the title of his famous comedy album opus, entitled Himself
Dad is great
Gives us the chocolate cake . . .
His comeuppance for his despicable actions was a steep, tragic celebrity fall. He had held himself out as sort of a beacon of light, yet he had done untold damage to untold innocents. His act, which had ceased to simply be a comedic act even during his show, is now seen through that lens. That is why people aren't holier than thou when they can't watch Cosby with the same clean slate as they did before.
A modern parallel to Cosby might be Kanye West. Both attempted to bring black culture to white masses and both have been accepted by whites into mass culture. Both have understood the limitations of black nationalism as the answer to racial and social issues and have appealed to whites. And both have gone totally off the rails in their personal lives later in life, affecting countless others and doing much damage to themselves, their loved ones, and especially their acts in as much as an act can be commodified yet still respected as authentically black in America.
The threading the needle and appealing to both blacks and whites in America, something so difficult to do after the rise of black nationalism in the late '60s, either took its toll on two great artists or those artists were ****ed in the head to begin with.
Either way, it's almost impossible for me to watch Cosby without a great sense of sadness and I feel like I'm missing all the jokes and am questioning the veracity of the wisdom that he once dispensed, a wisdom that seemed so hard-won and deserved. It is no longer that way.