Bill Cosby, a cultural icon who once stood among the US’ most beloved figures, on Wednesday suffered the latest and most serious blow to his forever mixed legacy, as he walked slowly into a Pennsylvania courthouse holding a cane and answered to charges that he drugged and sexually assaulted a woman.
It was a moment in stark contrast to a reputation built over half a century, merging the personal and professional into one potent, visceral brand. The allegations have left many — especially in the black community — feeling betrayed.
“This is an entire edifice of iconic and symbolic blackness shattered by this charge,” author and Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson said. “If [former US president] Ronald Reagan was the grandfather of America, Cosby was the father of America. Millions of people looked up to him.”
Photo: AP
At times, Cosby has lashed out against the African-American community that long embraced him.
Late in his career, Cosby famously and publicly excoriated poor blacks in a 2004 speech — comments that angered many.
Dyson, who wrote a book on Cosby a decade ago in response to the incident, said his admonitions sting more now in light of the comedian’s own moral failings.
“He lashed out, ultimately, only at himself, even as he indicted millions along the way,” Dyson said.
Though Cosby had been previously accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of women and several civil claims against him are still pending, he has never been criminally charged until now. His public persona began to rapidly unravel last year, when black comedian Hannibal Burress called Cosby out as a rapist and a hypocrite. Burress’ comments unleashed the allegations anew — and forced a reckoning among many African-Americans.
Cosby had been, in many ways, a pioneer. The 78-year-old became the first black actor in a television drama when I Spy debuted in 1965. Two decades later, he starred as Cliff Huxtable in The Cosby Show — based on his own marriage and family — endearing him to the country as “America’s Dad.”
The NBC show aired from 1984 to 1992 and was the highest-rated sitcom for five consecutive years. The ’90s spinoff A Different World, set at Huxtable’s fictitious Hillman College, inspired thousands of African-American youth to attend historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
Cosby is one of only a few popular figures who can be credited with promoting HBCUs nationally, said Jarrett Carter Sr, publisher of HBCU Digest.
“[The show] came about at a time where we were slowly transitioning into having more access to predominantly white [colleges],” Carter said. “Then you had this show, which just ushered in the next level of explosion of HBCUs. It just came at a critical time. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that since the show’s gone off, you don’t have the same level of enrollment for HBCUs.”
Following the parade of allegations against him in the past year, the all-women Spelman College — one of the crowned jewels of the HBCU community — ended its Cosby-endowed professorship. Cosby and his wife, Camille, donated US$20 million to the school in the 1980s. At the time, the gift was the largest personal gift to an HBCU.
Cosby has long enjoyed the loyalty given to breakthrough cultural figures by the black community that can sometimes supersede their transgressions, Lehigh University director of Africana Studies James Peterson said.
“This contradicts our sense of who Bill Cosby was,” Peterson said of Wednesday’s criminal charge. “People really felt that Mr Cosby would never be arraigned. He wasn’t Cliff Huxtable.”
Though his groundbreaking work cannot be erased, it has been tarnished by the allegations of the past year, and likely will be further soiled by his ongoing legal battles.
“There is a fatal difference now between Cliff Huxtable and Bill Cosby that can never be overcome, because Cosby depended as a figure and an icon on the goodwill he established through his characters,” Dyson said. “It does add a creepy subtext and a shadow of tremendous moral weight that will inevitably be brought up each time his name is evoked.”
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
‘TOXIC CLIMATE’: ‘I don’t really recognize Labour anymore... The idea that you can implement far-right ideas in order to stop the far right is nonsense,’ a protester said Tens of thousands of people on Saturday marched through central London to protest against the far right, weeks ahead of local elections and six months after Britain saw one of its largest far-right demonstrations. Organized by hundreds of civic groups, including trade unions, anti-racism campaigners and Muslim representative bodies, Saturday’s Together Alliance event was billed as the biggest in UK history to counter right-wing extremism. A separate pro-Palestinian march had also converged with the main rally. While organizers claimed 500,000 had turned out in total, the police gave a figure of about 50,000. Protesters carrying placards with slogans such as
RSS