By: Aaron Mayo
Bill Cosby is not Heathcliff Huxtable. Huxtable is a successful, quick witted admirable family man. Cosby is an author, comedian and convicted sex offender.
I cried when The Cosby Show went off air. I was 7. I couldn’t separate television from reality. It felt like I was losing a staple of my childhood. Luckily reruns guaranteed the show never went away. All it meant, was no new episodes would air.
The thing about entertainers, athletes and sometimes your neighbors. Is you only know what they allow you to know. If an actor plays a character you like, you may think favorably of them based off of their character depiction. Vice versa if an actor plays a character you don’t like. Tariq St. Patrick is a great example of this. What they truly stand for, and their personality off camera may never come to light.
The Cosby show depicted a positive black family image. It blended humor with life lessons and positivity. It showed that successful black people are not all athletes or entertainers. It spawned other positive black tv shows such as: A Different World, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Family Matters.
Where there’s smoke there’s fire. The first sexual assault allegation against Cosby, came in 1965. The last was in 2004. All in all, 55 women have come forward to say they were raped, sexually assaulted or escaped an attempted assault by Cosby. This is beyond a series of coincidences or tough luck. This is a disturbing pattern of questionable behavior.
Heathcliff Huxtable didn’t get 3-10 years in prison. Bill Cosby did. Cosby bought our good fortune over the years. He sold us Jello and Pudding. He did clean stand up comedy. He told
black men to pull their pants up and look presentable. He was one of the most respected and influential comedians/ entertainers of his time.
None of that makes him above the law. The me too movement, exposed a Hollywood culture of men using their status to put women in vulnerable compromising positions. These men believed their status would scare women from exposing their actions. More so, they believed if any women did come forward, their fame and fortune would protect them.
We can still love Heathcliff Huxtable, and acknowledge Bill Cosby is a sexual predator. Heathcliff Huxtable is not Bill Cosby.
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