I, too, watched The Cosby Show as a kid, and while I did get a laugh out of Cliff and his antics, and the adorable Rudy and Budddd, I am not naive enough to think that fifty (and counting) women are ALL lying about this man, and the things he's being accused of. Okay, so Janice Dickinson and Beverly Johnson's allegations of being drugged and taken advantage of are a little questionable, but EVERYBODY is not lying.
Listen, Black people. I know we don't get very many positive role-models, and we're often not shown in a good light on television, especially these days. The Cosby Show was as close to perfection for us as we've ever gotten. For those of us who didn't come from families like The Cosby's, it gave us a glimmer of hope for the future- that we could be doctors and lawyers, and have beautiful, intelligent children who went on to HBCU's, and have great future's, rather than be doomed to forever living in the ghetto, struggling to keep our heads above water, as was portrayed in movies like Lean On Me, and tv sitcoms like Good Times. We all probably wanted a dad like Cliff Huxtable, and a mom like Claire. And while the rest of the cast had nothing to do with Bill Cosby's disgusting acts against women, and what they all did for television shouldn't be overshadowed by his scandal, Bill Cosby is not Cliff Huxtable. He is not a perfect man, or even a good man. He's a pig, who preyed on women, because he had the means and the power, and the money to do so and get away with it for so long.
I know that there are some of my people who, even though Bill admitted- under oath- that he did, in fact, use Quaaludes to drug women back in the day, still want to believe that he is innocent, and all of these women coming forward are part of some smear campaign, orchestrated by someone with more money and/or power than he has, to take him down and tarnish his legacy. To those people I say, stop drinking the kool-aid. Even with the evidence in your faces, you still want to blame the women for coming forward now, rather than when it happened; you want to blame Ebony magazine for this cover, which shows that the perfect family image we had of Cliff Huxtable (a character played by Bill Cosby) has been shattered forever, rather than blame the person who is really responsible for his own demise...and that's Bill Cosby, himself. Y'all sound like those mom's whose son has been accused of a crime...even with clear evidence put in your faces, showing you that your beloved son did exactly what he's being accused of, you're still saying, "That's not my baby...he's innocent."
Learn to separate fact from fiction. Bill Cosby did, in fact, drug, grope, and sexually assault women...he admitted this...this is a fact. The Cosby Show- as beautifully choreographed as the opening dance numbers were, and as beautiful and classy as Claire Huxtable was; and Cliff Huxtable- as funny, smart, caring, and loving as he was- was fiction. That was tv land...this is the real world; and in the real world, sometimes people that we have put our faith, trust, and confidence in, do horrible things and let us down, even if we don't want to believe it. Ebony magazine did not ruin Bill Cosby's legacy with this cover, he did that all by himself...and no one should be blamed for that, but him.
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