a conversation with the cos
He’s known as ‘America’s favorite father,’ and in recent years as a sharp social commentator, but Bill Cosby’s only goal for his two Friday shows is to make you ‘laugh, laugh, laugh’
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Del.icio.ussage on the road to primarily black churches, extolling his view that urban America cannot wait any longer. He started his Call Outs, which are formats for communities to discuss their problems and to inspire people to make changes. The man who has lovingly been called The Cos for decades is, to paraphrase a quote from Network, mad as hell and won’t take it anymore.
“I’m looking at murders - the numbers in the urban areas, the numbers are just unbelievable. And then I listen to the philosophies that are being put out by the entertainers, who, to me, did not seem to be saying anything about ‘don’t do this - young people, don’t shoot and kill. Young people, don’t look at the drug dealer as a person who makes a lot of money, look at the drug dealer as some person who is helping people become addicted, and who just knocks out any positive potential.’”
Critics like University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Eric Dyson say that Cosby simplifies the arguments and ignores the historical difficulties faced by African Americans. Cosby doesn’t discount the lingering effect of racism, but he refuses to pass off the blame.
“These people are talking about their blackness and against the racism, but if you don’t get your education and if you don’t put yourself in a position to be proud of your color, the texture of your hair, if you’re not proud of these things and if you don’t know your history, and all you’re doing is listening to somebody on a record cursing and talking about a way to behave with women, they’re going to wind up with kooky thoughts.”
In these instances he has influenced another writer and actor who has decided to spread a message of pride and self-reliance. Tyler Perry has done more than learn the importance of branding from Cosby, he has taken up the responsibility to provide family friendly programming that is not afraid to stress morals and religious values. He just does it in another way. Whereas Cosby’s voice came in the form of two jovial alter egos, Fat Albert and Cliff Huxtable, Perry’s purveyor of information and inspiration is a tough-talking, big-hearted, pistol-packing grandmother who’s just as likely to offer a hug as a swift swipe across the brow.
Madea, Perry’s famed feminine alter ego, offers life lessons that are pure Cosby. She chastises a woman, saying that if she validated her daughter at home she wouldn’t have to worry about the girl looking for affection in the arms of some young hustler just looking for sex.
John McWhorter, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote in the New Republic, “that filtered through Madea, (Perry’s) supposedly ‘right wing’ thinking on race, much like Cosby, becomes common sense.”
Above all else, Cosby is a teacher. He has a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts, and his Saturday morning warning, “If you pay attention, you just might learn something,” continues to drive his life today, just as it did with Fat Albert and his admittedly best work in terms of content and popularity, The Cosby Show.
Cosby worked with Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry and faculty associate dean for student affairs at Harvard Medical School, who was given every script to make sure the lessons that Cliff and Claire taught were correct. He made sure traditionally black colleges were featured along with the better-known, predominately white universities. He fought to convince studio execs that Theo’s (Cosby’s son on the show) anti-apartheid poster was appropriate, and he made sure that his seemingly perfect family was anything but. Such care was just part of the lesson plan.
“When you follow Theo, the theme with him all the way through college happens to be that he is dyslexic. And it is the fight for Theo, and his parents to find out what it is that he has, that is causing him to need to focus harder, to work harder at learning how his brain works. There’s a ton of people who are dyslexic, and there is no particular amount of time that it takes for them to understand their brain and how to study. So with Theo, you will see how he and his parents, in their frustration, worked hard to find out what and how to do the correct thing.”
It is the same lesson he talks about in his lectures, Call Outs, LISTENing parties and on his CD, State of Emergency. Cosby says life is not always easy, but difficulties aren’t permanent roadblocks to success. As his Web site says under the heading Join the Cos, “Stop making excuses and do something.”
Cosby performs Jan. 15 at Blaisdell Concert Hall. As of last Friday, tickets for the 9:30 p.m. show were still available.
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