The Devil’s in the Pudding

I grew up with Bill Cosby. Not in Philadelphia of course, but on television. Bill Cosby appeared on both the first two seasons of The Electric Company and on Fat Albert, both of which I watched regularly as a kid.

How I really became familiar with Bill Cosby was through his comedy albums. My parents owned several of Cosby’s records, and I spent hour upon hour in my room as a kid listening to I Started Out as a Child, Why Is There Air? and Wonderfulness, among others. I memorized every word to every one of those comedy bits and recited them frequently to my friends.

In 1983, Bill Cosby: Himself aired on HBO. As far as I’m concerned, that special was, at least for my generation, one of the greatest stand up comedic performances of all time. I can’t imagine anyone who grew up in the 80s who hasn’t sung along to “Dad is great, give us the chocolate cake!” Within a few years I was exposed to the likes of Eddie Murphy, Sam Kinison, Andrew Dice Clay and Cheech and Chong — none of which I probably should have been listening to at that time — but Cosby always seemed like the master. Himself feels less like a performance and more like you’re watching your uncle tell stories about people you know. His stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end with a callback. The way he builds his stories and connects them together has long inspired me; anyone who has listened to both his comedy albums and listened to my podcasts will spot the similarities.

Like those albums, I probably watched Himself a hundred times. It seemed to always be playing on HBO, and like those albums, there wasn’t a bit on that special — from the dentist story to children having brain damage — that I couldn’t perform on the bus, word for word.

If you’ve never seen the special before, quit reading this article and go watch it instead:

If Bill Cosby hadn’t added another thing to the comedy lexicon his legendary status still would have been sealed, but he did. The year after Himself aired, The Cosby Show debuted. From 1984 to 1992 (and years after that, thanks to reruns), Americans followed the Huxtables through adventures that all of us — black, white, whatever — could relate to. As an eleven-year-old growing up in Oklahoma I didn’t have any African American friends, but I had the Huxtables — and through them I learned that black people weren’t all that different than white people. Cliff Huxtable was a doctor, his wife Clair was a lawyer, and his kids — Sondra, Denise, Theo, Vanessa, and Rudy — all went through things that I could relate to. Of course the show was funny, but in its own way it was also educational.

Bill Cosby changed not just my life but lots of people’s lives. He used comedy to show that people, regardless of race, are all the same. He changed the way white America saw African Americans — from “one of them” to “one of us.”

If there are truth to the accusations currently floating around, he did all of this while he was sexually assaulting women. And not just one or two; at least fifteen women (to date) have come forward to accuse Cosby of assaulting them. Most of them have similar stories involving being drugged and waking up later only to discover they had been assaulted.

So far all we have are accusations and allegations. It’s going to be very difficult to prove any of these accusations in a court of law; regardless, people have begun to turn on Cosby. “Innocent until proven guilty,” not so much. Across the country people are protesting Cosby’s current comedy tour. Several of his upcoming performances, along with two new television projects with NBC, have been cancelled. Netflix cancelled a Cosby special it had planned to run the day after Thanksgiving. TV Land has pulled The Cosby Show from its lineup.

I think sometimes we like watching people fall. Some part of us like knowing that celebrities aren’t perfect. We watch these reality shows in which celebrities lose their cool and we laugh. It feels good to know that they aren’t all that different from us. On Facebook we compare ourselves not to other people, but the parts of people’s lives they choose to present to us. Typically we only see celebrities with the perfect makeup and lighting, with handlers all around them ensuring that they don’t take a wrong step or say the wrong thing. Whether it’s a celebrity meltdown or a celebrity sex tape, we enjoy watching those people fall.

For some reason though, not this time. No part of me is enjoying the public beating Bill Cosby is taking and will continue to take. He’ll finish what he can of this round of scheduled performances, but that’ll be it. There will be no more television deals, no more college speaking engagements, and no more comedy tours. Like Mel Gibson and Michael Richards, Cosby’s best bet is to disappear from the public eye for ten years and try again; problem is, he’s 77 years old, and that’s not likely to happen.

When I think of Michael Jackson, I think of the guy that released Thriller, the cool moonwalking dude that everybody loved. People older than me probably remember him as the little kid from the Jackson 5. My kids will always remember him as the creepy looking guy that abused children.

I don’t know what really happened back then, and the accusations against him do seem damning. No matter whether the stories pan out or not, the damage to Bill Cosby’s legacy has already been done. It will be a shame if he and his name go down in history with a negative connotation after all the good he did and laughter he created. I hate to think that my kids may remember “Bill Cosby, the rapist” instead of “Bill Cosby, the comedian.”