I
cried the day Michael Jackson died. Of course I didn’t know him personally but
I knew him through his music. I grew up with him. We went through puberty
together, high school and for me college. I felt a kinship as if he was in fact
my real life brother. So when he died I felt a loss like a really close
relative had passed and I mourned. I feel the same way about Bill Cosby. I
didn’t think of him as just “America’s
Dad” I knew him long before Cliff
Huxtable existed. I remember I Spy
and how proud African-Americans were to welcome a positive Black character into
their homes weekly. As a kid I listened to his comedy albums over and over
again until I knew the routines by heart. I remember Fat Albert & the Cosby Kids and The Bill Cosby Show. I remember it all, so the news of the sexual
allegations hit hard and I quite honestly refused to believe any of it. It just
couldn’t be true of the Bill Cosby I knew.
But
that’s exactly the problem. Because we allow ourselves to develop this distant yet
personal kinship with celebrities, we think we know them. We take them into our
homes through music, television and movies and we create a persona of who we
think they are or more importantly who we want them to be, when in fact we
don’t know them at all. Actors are just that, performers who create characters.
Fictional characters who may be based on real life or real life events but
fictional just the same. America’s Dad
was never any more real than Santa Claus
yet we have no problem separating fat
& jolly from real life. I suggest we need to do that with Mr. Cosby. I
don’t know if he did it or not but I refuse to defend him because quite simply
I don’t know him. I never really knew Bill Cosby despite the character I had
allowed my mind to manufacture, so I refuse to support him any further.
However,
whether the allegations are true or not it shouldn’t devalue the characters
Bill Cosby created. It is not for me to forgive or condemn the man for what
he’s accused. I continue to hold a kinship to those characters and I’m happy to
do so. Perhaps I’m wrong but it shouldn’t diminish the charities and
scholarships he created or any of his philanthropy. But I’m sure it will. Yes he’s a hypocrite, he’s
talked down to the African-American community on many occasions and it’s become
increasingly evident that he has done horrible things that have hurt countless
people. What he’s accused of is unconscionable and absolutely unforgivable and
no one should apologize or speak for the man. Even Whoopee Goldberg has finally
within drawn her support after hanging in there even after he admitted in
released court documents that he had given drugs to women in order to have sex
with them. But I gotta be honest, it
would give me more comfort to go back to dismissing the allegations as lies and
embrace the Bill Cosby character I
knew and loved. The one I created. I won’t support him and I hope this post
doesn’t come off as some Cosby apologist but serial rapist or not, I just can’t
bring myself to let his arrogance diminish the memories or the love I have for
the characters he created.
