Karma is a bitch, they say. As early as the mid '80's I'd heard through the Temple production network that the studiously folksy Dr. Pudding Pop, though the most famous supporter of my alma mater, was a bitch to work with, that he treated crewpeople like dirt. Later, I recall one or two whispered allegations of sexual misconduct, but at the time, it was common to dismiss them as conservative dirt—the bigoted stereotyping of African American men as sex-crazed. The video crews’ reports I didn’t dismiss. I know these folks and if they said, with a sad shake of the head, that America's favorite TV dad is a raging asshole off-camera, then I believed them.
Flash forward 20 years and he becomes the darling of the conservative set for his "calling out" of black social values. I must admit that I listened with interest to one of his screeds until I came to the part of him slamming people with Africanized names. I said, whoa, hold the fort, Heathcliff, I know lots of good people with names like the ones he was insulting. Who is he to judge my friends or their children for something as personal as their names? Does his race or his success give him carte blanche to rail against people whose lives he doesn’t know?
Though I happen to agree with him about hip hop below groin level pants, guns, the social cost of having multiple children of multiple parentage and absent fathers, the name thing stopped me cold. I couldn’t listen anymore. And my opinion of the opinionator changed.The name thing revealed a lot of loathing, not even below the surface anymore.
So maybe the names are “made up” and so what? Five generations ago there weren’t any Cosbys or Bills in the village where Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable’s ancestors were kidnapped, chained and sold into slavery halfway around the world. The irony of Cosby’s Anglicized names and character’s names is too much, so “white,” but that’s even beside the point. A name, inherited or new to a family, even a made up name, misspelled or creatively spelled, is a point of pride. This is sacrosanct. Names are people. Names are identity and you don’t disparage identity unless you yourself are a bigot of the worst sort.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, a black journalist must have felt the sting of Cosby’s blanket disapproval. Coates is a talented Atlantic staffer whose conversational but layered writing style is always a good, sometimes a great read. So it must be terribly hard to look back on your work and question your own failure to address the painful disillusion that comes from seeing your heroes fall. Coates writes with true humility while Cosby's Huxtable humility is mugged and method act superficial. Reading this article, my estimation of Coates rises inversely as my estimation of Cosby falls.
So many heroes fall today. Practically, to a man, they all seem to fall/fail. Is it in the meanness of our social nature to tear down what we once put on a pedestal or does fault lie in the meanness and triviality of the elevation of celebrity? Cosby presented a (superficially) easy icon to raise up and a painful and difficult one to tear down. But tear down we must. While 12 allegations are not the same as a conviction, they are damningly consistent and sordid almost beyond belief.
Talk shows are dropping like flies, NBC and Netflix have cancelled comeback projects, but his disgrace is worse than that. Mr. Cosby now lives under a terrible, poisoned shadow that will follow him for the rest of his days. His loss of face is both cruel and just. There is no comeback from this. For the women he apparently victimized, this will have to serve. It is an incomplete justice that condemns our culture of celebrity as much as it condemns the predators who feel their elite status grants special dispensation for misanthropy and misogyny. Cosby is perhaps both types of devil. Though the social judgement brought down upon him is horrible, he deserves no pity. He is a self-made man.
