White people loved “The Cosby Show,” especially liberal white people. They loved it ... because it offered a warm vision of a world in which shared experience might help Americans of all colors to see past racial divisions and instead focus on the places where they connected...By the way, I never watched "The Cosby Show." I just didn't watch network sitcoms in that period of my life. I did, however, watch "The Bill Cosby Show" — which was on around 1969, when I did watch plenty of sitcoms. It predictably hit a note of sentimentality that made me cry. Cosby played a phys-ed teacher in L.A., and something about the way he helped kids always tear-jerked me. Maybe I saw Episode 5, "Rules Is Rules": "Chet goes to great lengths to obtain a valve needle which he needs in order to inflate basketballs for his gym class." I'm sure I saw Episode 4, "A Girl Named Punkin." Here, this is the sort of thing that really got to me when I was 18:
Any suggestion that white people were culpable in the history of racism that the show addressed mostly through reference to mid-twentieth-century activism. White audiences were never made to feel bad about themselves....
[A] decade after “The Cosby Show” went off the air... the comedian embarked on a speaking tour in which he told black audiences that the kinds of hardships they faced were of their own making.... Here was the white blamelessness that made his television such a balm to white audiences, writ all too real. It was an approach that earned him sharp criticism from some black critics like Dyson and Coates....
ADDED: You know, Rush Limbaugh, who is exactly the same age as I am, had a beloved cat named Punkin. Perhaps, like me, he was moved by that episode about a painfully withdrawn girl who learns about love from Bill Cosby.
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Damn. I forget.
How the hell can we enjoy the holidays when knowing that Bing Crosby was a rapist?
"White Christmas" indeed.
I am Laslo.
Dickinson being involved is raising my BS meter to high levels.
Here is her story in 2002. The reporter is quoting from her autobiography about the incident.
“‘Exhausted?’ (Cosby) asked, and it was clear he was trying hard to keep his temper in check. 'After all I’ve done for you, that’s what I get? I’m exhausted …. ‘”
“‘Well gee Bill, if I had known it was going to be like this-’
“He waved both hands in front of my face, silencing me. Then he gave me the dirtiest, meanest look in the world, stepped into his suite, and slammed the door in my face.”
“Oh, he’s so sad,” Janice Dickinson said. “He dangled a TV role. And he called me in rehab to come to Tahoe. In rehab! I was shell-shocked, and I’m getting bushels of fruit from Jagger. No one gave a rat’s ass about my sobriety.
But you see, that’s the gilded prison of fashion. We’re riding in private jets, and meantime I was so incredibly, painfully sad and lonely. And trying to fill up the vapid hole with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.”
Here she is on Howard Stern.
It seems to me both in her newspaper interview and her Howard Stern interview she is hostile to Bill Cosby, and does not like him. Because he took her out of rehab? Ruined her sobriety? Treated her like a prostitute? One of those, maybe. But I do not get the vibe that she is talking about a man who raped her.
The rape allegation comes a decade later. She's decided that Cosby put something into her drink.
"But I do not get the vibe that she is talking about a man who raped her. "
Or she is alluding details to avoid a legal firestorm.
Kate Upton did that to me.
She did not call it 'rape' but I was drugged and she only wanted my dick.
Bad Kate Upton.
"No Kate, No!" I said.
But it sounded like:
"Oh God Yes Yes yes!"
And:
"My God, put your magnificent breasts near my mouth."
Could I ever find an impartial jury?
I am Laslo.
No matter how many manicures she has the Truth is somewhere under Kate Upton's fingernail.
Kate Upton had the nerve to say to me:
"If you think THIS is rape realize that I get thousands of letters from little boys who have cancer and all they want to do is touch one of my tits."
Good point, but the truth is the truth.
UGH !! crack's back to hijack comment threads ?!? ...i'm outta here.
Crack is back:
Regression to the "mean"
Self-described Constitutional Law Prof Althouse faces left, betraying her bias, as she UTTERLY IGNORES the gutting of the Constitution and the American Republic by her hero, the God Emperor Barak Benito Schicklgruber Obama.
White folks created Deliverence.
A white folk shouted "squeal like a pig!!!"
So we got that going for us.
Nick said...
It's always interesting to watch other white people get indignant, even abusive, when it's suggested that racism exists, that blacks bear by far the greater brunt of it, and that white people individually and collectively have a responsibility for the existence of that racism.
Not nearly as interesting as when another dormant blogger account identity "comes to life" on the Althouse blog. I've lost count of how many there have been but they're always unilateral and short lived.
Let's see how long it lasts.
jelink said...
Self-described Constitutional Law Prof Althouse faces left, betraying her bias, as she UTTERLY IGNORES the gutting of the Constitution and the American Republic by her hero, the God Emperor Barak Benito Schicklgruber Obama.
Are you new here too? Other conlaw professor bloggers are getting that traffic. Althouse wants the Crack-driven traffic.
The Crack Emcee said...
"Two things:
1. Blacks don't give a shit about that - we're looking out for the race and progressives are as much a hinderence to us as conservatives."
They are worse. At least conservatives would let you choose your child's school and let them out of the re-segregated public school system. Conservatives wouldn't keep undermining the black family like the progs do. But I notice you are more worried about your food stamps on this thread. I don't know if you are real. That is too stereotypical and awful.
"2. Mia will be feeling no love and Uncle Tim (Scott) had better be ready to be Uncle Tom for some time now.
We will not be betrayed."
All whites think the same and are guilty as a race. All good blacks think the right way, and the blacks that think the wrong way are betrayers. You are the one writing this. Most would consider it a parody.
"The Progressive Left sure does run an efficient plantation, doesn't it?"
Whites are the plantation - that's why Cosby and other black conservatives never go there,..."
You are a joke. A parody. Probably a Moby sent out to make black people look racist and stupid.
Crack, the "political types" on the left who wanted to dissuade Cosby from continuing to say what he was saying did fail. They had no impact on what Cosby did, no impact on conservative whites' misuse of Cosby's point of view and very little success in marshaling white liberals or other blacks to disassociate themselves from Cosby. It that isn't failure, I do not know what is.
Cosby is now cast out for a different transgression, and with him goes his voice on the social questions he addressed. RIP Voice of Cosby, killed by women who have concluded that he is a rapist.
I give little weight to what Coates said. Coates has been all over the map in the way he treated Cosby. Only now, when Cosby has fallen and can not get up, has Coates come down hard on one side or another.
You say " what is it about coming from Bill Cosby do you think we haven't heard and tried and rejected already?" The answer is "nothing." I've read all the black leaders Coates mentioned, and I'm familiar with their lives. As I said, I heard the same thing from Al Sharpton. I was sitting 25 feet from him as he beat the subject around for an hour to a very appreciative black crowd. His point was clear. Black people should clean up what they can about the problems of drugs, crime, family decay etc in their own communities. It's so obviously good advice and a helpful path that it's astonishing that it has become controversial coming from black people. (From white people and especially whites making a point about their lack of responsibility for black problems I understand the pushback. But why does that invalidate the idea?)
Does Al Sharpton believe that drugs, crime, low educational achievement, gang culture and rampant unwed pregnancy are the "fault" of black people and that whites have no responsibility for the problem? Of course he doesn't. But he does understand that, as to each individual, there is a power to shape one's own conduct. That is a fundamental aspect of personal freedom. If you want to be free, act like you are free, and exercise free choice.
That free choice can also be exercised by rejecting all that the white society presents as its values (values which we constantly fail to achieve also.) That is a valid choice. "I will live within your society, white man, but I reject its so called values, because you don't live up to them and you rig the game so its even harder for me to live up to them than for you. So don't talk to be about drugs or gangs or crime or fatherless families, because it's your fault in the first place that we have these problems."
But if a kid or an adult makes the choice to ignore or oppose those who want to change these couducts, let them recognize that there is a choice involved. Each individual could strive to adopt the more conventional values, which do present benefits if adhered to, even imperfectly. Millions of blacks make that choice, and do the best they can on that path, many with success and some with spectacular success.
It's a lot harder for a poor black kid in a shitty school to make that choice, and that is a rank injustice, which the nation should be doing a much better job of correcting. But slavery is over, even if its artifacts persist. Blacks have free will, and can use it.
Racism is not over. Will racism ever end? God, I hope so, but it is a shape shifter that can live for a long time without its traditional nourishments. I believe that racism can end, or at least be greatly restrained by societal norms that are not racist. In the meantime blacks and whites all can make choices. My choice is still to believe in progress and the power of the individual to effect positive change.
Wow. Another jump-the-shark episode on Althouse, starring your host, Crack.
I guess traffic was down on the site, huh?
Just one question. Seriously, why do y'all engage with Crack? Why do you argue with him? Do you really think you have a chance to sway his wild-eyed, cultish fanatism with rational arguments?
Here's a clue, people. He's not here to argue. He's here to preach the gospel of Crack. He wallows in the muck and thinks he's bathed in the light of righteousness. You don't argue with people like that.
Please just walk on by, and show a little pity if you feel you must.
I have not read all of the above comments, but I did watch that Punkin episode of the old Cosby Show you embedded. Thought it was kind of creepy when viewed through the lens of these allegations. First scene, those clothes he was wearing, way too swingerish. Just down hill after that.
"White people were never made to feel bad about themselves". Yeah, because that's the way to make a successful television show: make the audience feel bad about themselves. LMAO! No wonder why this simp ended up in academia and not in entertainment.
[A] decade after “The Cosby Show” went off the air... the comedian embarked on a speaking tour in which he told black audiences that the kinds of hardships they faced were of their own making....
Well, they ARE, aren't they?
African Americans like to complain that there is too much Driving While Black, or Walking While Black, but the real problem is that there is TOO LITTLE of things like Studying While Black and Marrying While Black.
Laslo Spatula said...
How the hell can we enjoy the holidays when knowing that Bing Crosby was a rapist?
"White Christmas" indeed.
I am Laslo.
Cosby has a routine where he is mistaken for Bing Crosby. Really.
Phil 3:14 said...
Crack is back:
Regression to the "mean"
With respect, you should rethink this.
Skyler,
"Crack, you epitomize black racism, so don't even bother trying to taint others with your manure.
Being white is not racist."
Me "taint others"? I'm not the one putting words in black's mouths and pretending we said it - nor am I the one who, in 2014, can be said to "so poorly understand" the others around me - I know whites very well - you're the ignoramouses:
Because white conservatives so poorly understand black people, they never quite understood Cosby or the organic black conservative tradition he was speaking out of. (I wrote about this for the magazine a few years back.) That tradition argues traditional conservative "up from your bootstraps" ideology, but has no real interest in acting as foil for white conservatives who want to downplay racism. When I interviewed Cosby back in 2007, he mentioned that his presence had been requested on Fox more than a few times, but that he'd declined. Cosby, and his black admirers, saw him in the tradition of Booker T. Washington, not Herman Cain.
This is an uncomfortable fact for white populists who'd like to use Cosby as a mouthpiece--or maybe not. If he won't say it, they'll just pretend he did.
The evidence - not my beliefs - shows whites are delusional lying fools, talking to themselves, to salve their poor put-upon minds.
Sorry but you're racists,...
SomeoneHasToSayIt,
"[A] decade after “The Cosby Show” went off the air... the comedian embarked on a speaking tour in which he told black audiences that the kinds of hardships they faced were of their own making....
Well, they ARE, aren't they?"
Sure, that's what Cosby said - NOT - see what liars you are?
Cosby said whites were to blame but we can succeed anyway.
Not the same thing,...
Another cosby story. Short version, he kissed a playboy bunny in 67 and gave someone else drugs and then put her up in a hotel for 3 weeks, and she continued to sleep with him.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/11/21/two-new-cosby-accusers-emerge-including-former-playboy-bunny-carla-ferrigno/?tid=pm_national_pop
This common theme of "here are some unmarked pills please take them", "ok I will take them with no comment and then be surprised when it turns out badly" is really bizarre to me.
"The rape allegation comes a decade later. She's decided that Cosby put something into her drink."
She has said that she originally included the rape, and her publisher's lawyers made her take it out.
That's a good question. The escapades of the South West Sodomizer, a homosexual black male serial rapist, was selectively excluded from the nation press's reporting and civil rights establishment angst. However, in the case of the South West Sodomizer, his victims came forward within days and weeks, not decades. So, there was physical evidence to corroborate their allegations of rape-rape.
Why read a writer who admits lying to you? Why go back, ever?
"I wonder how all blacks can have ten real white friends but all whites only have one token black friend."
It's also a numbers game. There are approximately 6-7 white ppl for every black person. For every white person to have that one real black friend, every black person would have to have 6-7 real white friends, plus their black friends. You bump the 'real black friend' number up to two, every black person has to have 13 real white friends each.
That's going to be one tired black person.
Crack, I say "white society", you say "respectability politics" -- potato, potatoh. Buress has NO KNOWLEDGE of the alleged rape cases, but plenty of hatred for Cosby. I never said Buress cared what whites thought of Cos, but what Cos thinks about blacks clearly burns Buress. And if you think saying "Google" is a defense against defamation, try that in court.
This common theme of "here are some unmarked pills please take them", "ok I will take them with no comment and then be surprised when it turns out badly" is really bizarre to me.
Yes, it seems strange. Was that a cultural thing then? Was there a free-wheeling do drugs take whatever someone gives you vibe in the air? I'm guessing there was. I can't see many people doing this now.
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