Some of your friends still live around there, and so you CAREFULLY try to visit them without getting your tires slashed or your peace of mind destroyed.
I've discovered you can BLOCK words and names on Twitter. You don't have to see anything about such worthless icons as the Kardashians or Kanye. You don't have to read drivel about UFO's. You can be blissfully ignorant on the latest news about Bieber or Miley or whether they took down a statue of Jefferson or Hamilton or Woodrow Wilson to replace it with one of Tupac.
But you do get CAUGHT by what's "trending." If it's the name of an older celebrity, you think: "Flash...this guy is DEAD." But it's usually just enough assholes (a few thousand apparently) wishing the star a Happy Birthday, along with some well-meaning remark like "I hope you stay alive for many more years."
Among the comments and replies? Of course: "Thought he was dead!"
The other day:
BILL COSBY.
Oh, NOW what. NOW what? Thanks to the hanging judge, Cosby is officially a "violent sexual predator," meaning he won't get out of jail even if he's risking Death-by-Covid.
The man is legally blind, uses a wheelchair, needs help getting his daily medicines, is over 80 years old, but some asshole of a judge in Philadelphia figures this man is a "violent sexual predator" and if he isn't locked up while muggers half his age are let loose, along with every type of repeat-offending burglar, pickpocket and diseased whore, SOMETHING is going to happen.
WHAT exactly? Cosby's case was front page news everywhere. It's not likely that any woman is going to come to his home, where he is on HOUSE ARREST, and share a drugged drink with him.
BILL COSBY.
OK, what the hell is going on? Is he dead?
It turns out that for some reason, the mental case called Kanye West suddenly TWEETED a statement about NBC somehow being involved in the downfall of Cosby.
No, Kanye didn't tell his porn-video wife, the one who can't stop posing naked or in her underwear, to go to her pal Donald Trump and get a pardon for Cos. No, he goes on TWITTER.
The response was scorn and ridicule.
Some of it was to the point.
Most of it is almost as ridiculous as what Kanye wrote.
Somebody uses "remedial" and "argument" but then throws in "niggas."
Cosby would wonder why after all that he and so many black leaders and educators have said about the word, people still use it. Carlin said that people who curse by saying "oh shoot" are fooling themselves: "Shoot is SHIT with two o's." And "nigga" is "nigger.' Using it because it's yours, like gays calling themselves "queer," is still an insult. Cosby rose above that kind of thing by, strength of will, ignoring it. I doubt Anderson Cooper calls himself "queer" and writes about "queer culture" rather than "gay culture" or "homosexual culture." What's next, using "fagga?"
At one time, Sinatra and Dean Martin would call each other "wop" on stage. They got over it. Because it was stupid. Just don't use stupid words, and consider those who do...to be stupid.
That could be a lesson from the Cosby teaching guide -- the Jesse Jackson guide, the Dr. King guide, the Oprah guide...for people who would care to be dignified.
As is TOO OFTEN the case, writing a Tweet is never good enough -- not when you can shove a REACTION MEME in everyone's face, too.
You know, that was always a problem with letters to the editor in the New York Times. NO PHOTOS.
The above illiterately tells "yall" that you are "NOT gonna...act like Bill Cosby didn't drugged" anyone.
Fortunately, Bill Cosby FAILED in some 30 years of trying to prove blacks can earn a PhD and use the English language properly. How much better YALL are to proudly use slang, and GONNA, and do the equivalent of wearing your pants around your ankles or twerk on the subway...use the worst grammar possible.
Somehow, Blacks seem to think that YALL is all right, y'all. While they rant about anything that has to do with the South and the Civil War and the Confederacy and Slavery...somehow y'all is exempt. There's not the least waft of KKK to it. Not the least inference that it was used by evil sheriffs to blacks on chain gangs.
It's right up there with yowza. That's also fine. "Did you see the new Marvel Comic Book movie? Yowza! What special effects!
Let's ignore the truth about YOWZA, which is that it makes fun of the black slaves who cried out "Yessir" every time they were whipped and ordered to perform the most degrading of tasks.
Shel Silverstein wrote and sang a song about how black people were "tired of saying YOWZA," and were standing up for their rights. It was around the time that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the eventual Dr. William H. Cosby Jr. PhD were talking about black dignity.
Somehow Y'ALL and YOWZAH are ok, but go ahead, tear down the statues of Dr. Sims in Central Park and revile Francis Scott Key, not on scholarship but because of somebody's flame-throwing torch-waving tweet, or the twisted and slanted report of an attention-seeking politician or columnist. It's always black and white, and no shades of gray, either.
Tweets that simply said that Kanye was nuts -- again -- sure.
Tweets that reminded him that Cosby is a convict and NBC had nothing to with that -- fine.
An overwhelming percentage of people believe that even if the case for which he was convicted was a set-up (the woman had been paid off, and a district attorney assured both parties that all testimony was sealed), there were at least a dozen incidents of date-rape via drugs. Perhaps no violent rapes, but taking advantage of women just the same. Like getting Capone on tax evasion, or O.J. Simpson on using force to get back stolen memorabilia, most were not too upset that Cosby got sentenced.
What about THIS?
It's troubling, the amount of illiterate venom that comes Cosby's way, almost all of it from Blacks under 40, who only see Cosby as Mr. Poundcake Speech...the old fuddy-duddy Uncle Tom who complained that his people needed to value an education, and not wear their pants around their thighs. P. Diddy and Jay-Z and Steve Harvey...they wear THEIR pants around their thighs?
But Cosby was older, and he had the NERVE to go against the odds and instead of Sanford in a junkyard, or a lot of disfunctional families hurling insults at each other, he created a "wholesome" sitcom at a time when many pundits thought he was washed up and his show wouldn't last 13 weeks.
His show became a hit, but an undercurrent of resentment brewed: here was a sell-out family that doesn't talk ghetto and dresses well, and acts like any other middle-class bunch would act. How crazy is THAT? Assimilation? How can one have ethnic pride in THAT?
He was also the sell-out telling people to buy Jell-o Pudding y'all, when everybody KNOWS that Krispy Kreme Donuts are much better for you. (The number of times Krispy Kreme trends on Twitter because they're having a one-day sale....Christ...)
By the time his sitcom was in re-runs, and he was slow-talking his ponderous prose about dignity and responsibility, a new generation was around. And pissed off. And ignorant of Cosby's place in Black history.
Let's take another look at this all-too typical slam. Dis. Snap. Unda-da-bus-throw.
Why did I write the book on Cosby? The one school kids often had to read as an assignment? The library source for anyone wondering about where he came from and all his career achievements leading up to "The Cosby Show?"
I wrote it because I was a fan of his comedy albums -- he had 5 million selling Gold albums in a row -- and everyone was in awe of his story-telling style. Groucho Marx was one of those who praised him constantly. I wanted to know how Cosby created that style, at a time of Dick Gregory's racial humor and Redd Foxx's underground dirty album sales.
I went back to talk to his early managers, and discovered how much self-control and how much suppressed anger was involved in Cosby refusing to do black jokes. If Warners Bros. label mate Bob Newhart was just offering funny monologues, what tremendous equality if Cosby could do that, too. To just be accepted as a COMEDIAN. That was a tremendous thing. Take me for what I am: a funny guy.
This was 1963, 1964, when there was so much stereotyping in all areas. What, a "lady doctor?" "What's that last name? Polish or something? Are you Jewish? Oy oy! Ha ha." "What, Cassius Clay is now Muhammad Ali??"
I listened to those albums over and over, like hearing favorite bedtime stories.
In the midst of his recording career, Cosby was offered "I Spy." He was the Jackie Robinson of TV. Only, imagine if Jackie Robinson had been offered a football contract. Jackie: "I'm a baseball player. Sign me to the Dodgers. Why are you signing me to something I don't know anything about?"
Cosby was NOT an actor. He knew nothing about memorizing lines, staying on a mark, or anything else. Now he was in a pressure situation that involved an entire race. Fail, and it's a sign blacks are not ready to be co-starring in TV dramas...fail, and it won't just be a few Southern TV stations proud of NOT carrying the series, it'll be a sign that using blacks on TV is going to be a financial loss every time..."
You know what happened. Co-star Robert Culp became a great friend of Bill's, and Bill won Emmy awards for the show, and it broke plenty of ice.
Cosby was championing education. He was working with PBS. He was becoming a familiar and friendly black face on TV commercials. He was doing so much to project an image of equality and intelligence. Yes, it's a terrible tragedy that his personal life was so bizarre, but by the time anyone knew about it (including me) there was Oprah and Denzel Washington and so many other role models.
Even back in the 70's there were people who simply felt that assimilation was bad. Everyone should be proud of their heritage, to the point of keeping accents, dressing ethnic, and refusing to become mainstream. Richard Pryor eclipsed Cosby as the important black stand-up comedian, and his act was...well, what WAS the name of his first hit album? "That NIGGER'S Crazy." Was that a fluke? No, soon after: "Bicentennial Nigger."
There's always been a debate over the word, and Pryor himself flip-flopped on it. Then came "Nigga." Go figga.
Read that Tweet. That's what Cosby was against. His generation was against it, and a significant number of younger people were, too. But plenty saw it as a matter of defiant pride to call each other "Nigga," and to invent the language of rap, and to seize on Southern bigot terms like "Y'all" and to create "ebonics." Hell, Whitey, "you a racist! You be bad! Not just you, but all of y'all!"
And so there were Tweets, too many, lapsing into this "proud" black dialect, as if Cosby and Oprah are Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima, and ignorance is something to be proud of instead.
"Niggas act..." what IS that? Why promote that?
"...like Bill Cosby died on the cross for they ass."
Can't say "for their ass," because that's the white man's language? Good grammar is betraying being black?
"I will never understand."
Hopefully, that's not going to be the case. As we've wobbled through affirmative action, and what is or isn't politically correct, and who should get special favors and for how long, we will come back to what was good about Bill Cosby -- his humor, his respect for education, his belief in family, and so much more. We will accept he was a very, very flawed human and did not always practice what he preached.
We will understand that doing research just might tell us Dr. Sims was not evil, that our founding fathers were as ignorant about slavery as the Pharoahs who imprisoned the Jews, or the Danish colonizing Latin countries or the Dutch and British and French thinking that the Africans and Native Americans were lesser people, or Boko Haram torturing Nigerian women today.
We will all take pride in our heritage and others will also respect who we are, so that idiot words like Nigga and Wop and Queer and Heeb are not spoken just to provoke and jab back at idiots. There will always be some idiots out there, but there numbers are decreasing. Cosby did his part when his clean, family style influenced a generation of comedians, and his TV commercials and TV shows proved that a minority could sell to a majority.
Cosby never "died on the cross," no, but he died hundreds of times on small stages in Philadelphia and New York City perfecting a groundbreaking style of comedy, and he went through intense pressure making "I Spy" a hit, and he put himself on the line for every racist and nutjob who considered him another uppity Dr. King whose place belonged six feet under. All of that was difficult, and more. Donating millions and millions to black colleges, and promoting black artists...he did that, too. Nobody is condoning or minimizing the pain and humiliation he caused, but neither should anyone ignore or be ignorant of the good he contributed.
As his biographer, I experienced some bizarre moments of racism and lethal ignorance, which gave me a slight, slight fraction of an idea of what Bill went through.
Just two examples. In a very cultured setting, a sophisticated woman came up to me and asked, "And what do YOU do..." "I'm a writer," I said. "Oh, what kind of things do you write?" "Books on comedy, reference books...I wrote a biography of Bill Cosby." "Oh. Can he read?"
That stopped me. Stopped me cold. I did not expect ignorance and racism from this sell-spoken woman. We've all experienced coarseness, rudeness, perhaps nasty comments on our race, religion or looks, but usually you can literally SEE it coming. The blithe way this women doubted that William H. Cosby Jr. PhD could even read...
The other incident, as I could give you dozens but this has already stretched too long. I opened up what I thought was a fan letter. It came to me c/o the book company, after all. It was a man urging me to do something about Bill Cosby. As his biographer, I had to know that Cosby had special powers, so please, make him stop. This man insisted over several hand-written pages that Cosby was torturing him via thought control, disrupting his sleep, creating noises in his head...."
Of all people to accuse. The guy with the hit family sitcom? That's when this letter arrived...when my book was first published, not the second or third time. (Cosby: "You put out another edition of the book? You keep revising it!" Me: "You've done new TV shows and movies!")
You can imagine the people waiting for Cosby at the stage door after a show...the kind of letters and threats he got while trying to provide inoffensive comedy routines and escapist spy-adventures on records and on TV.
"Nigga act like Bill Cosby died on the cross for they ass. I will never understand."
We may never understand what was behind the sense of entitlement and the egotism and the power games that involved the date rape drugs. We may not even fully be aware of what, if any, strange behavior was going on in determining when to cancel one of Bill's TV shows, or when NOT to hire him for a movie. But just as the historians will tell you what good things Francis Scott Key did and Dr. Sims did, so it is with Cosby.
Anyone bother to understand that those Jell-o ads that 20-somethings make fun of, were pioneering? That they paved the way for using a minority to sell to a majority? That this was a GOOD thing?
Cosby wasn't just some geezer who once had a sitcom and was ruining the fun by shaming sidewalk assholes who had no job but could wear their pants on their thighs. To resent somebody for scolding you for not being adult is understandable, but to deny that the person is right? THAT is something hard to understand.
It's always a good idea to go to a library once in a while. It's never a sign of intelligence to scoff, "that was before my time," and leave it at that. Perhaps "I Spy" and those old records and old speeches aren't as important as watching a 3D movie or listening to rap or playing video games, but at least know about that stuff.
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