Woody Allen and Britney and the Vince McMahon strut
Things got really weird really fast 2 days ago when the Cosby news broke. The guy had just been denied parole, and nobody was expecting him so slither back into the nation's consciousness. He was yesterday's news, about as relevant as that pervert who played Baretta on TV. Just another sex fiend with deep pockets and a hideous fashion sense. Our fascination with celebrities ends abruptly when they are buried in the penal system. Phil Spector went from the greatest record producer of all time to some sad freak sitting in a courtroom with a Sly Stone afro, and it all happened in about the time it takes to learn the chords to "Be My Baby". And poor Jared from the Subway commercials is unrecognizable these days......bigger than Monty Python's Mr. Creosote.....since he can't order the foot longs and baked Lays anymore. Fame is a ghastly business. Be advised.
***
But here was America's Dad.....back from the dead. Released by the PA Supreme Court because some dingbat prosecutor made the kind of mistake that would get a first year law student exiled to North Korea. Make no mistake. Cosby's creepiness was never in question. He admitted to it all in a deposition. But he apparently only did so on the promise that he could not be charged in the future for the entrails he was about to spill now. All of the wretched charges were true. Dr. Huxtable never met a woman he didn't try to roofie......at last count more than 60 women have come forward with remarkably consistent stories...spread out over 40 years. Cosby was a serial predator, on the Mount Rushmore of scum. And suddenly he was a free man....eating pizza and telling jokes at his kitchen table. Just about everybody who isn't on his payroll or who didn't play his wife on TV was repulsed by the entire spectacle.
***
All of this cut into our regular celebrity programming, which consisted of everybody wondering why the fuck Britney Spears wasn't allowed to have a credit card or remove her own IUD. Britney grew up being hyper-sexualized, treated abominably by the press (and former boyfriends), and finally found 24HourNewsCycle guilty by reason of insanity for shaving her head and trying to brain some swine photographers with an umbrella. And now she wasn't even in control of her own body. The thought that such a thing could or would happen to a man is simply preposterous. And yet here we are.
It managed to shine a spotlight on how rich powerful men can run around like hyenas in heat, while the women in their wake are belittled and ridiculed and shouted down. If you ever wonder why women are reluctant to come forward after being assaulted......watching Cosby strut out of jail, looking like Vance McMahon on his way to the ring, was all you'd ever need to see. I can't even imagine what his victims must have felt when the news came down. It must have felt like being violated all over again.
***
I loved Cosby for years. One of the funniest men alive. Loved watching "Fat Albert" as a kid. Had his records. Must have watched his one man movie "Himself" 100 times. His riffs on growing up were every bit as good as the ones on watching his own kids grow up. He was squeaky clean. Not a "shit" or a "fuck" to be found. Cosby being ribald?
"Cocaine intensifies your personality"
"Yes, but what if you're an asshole?"
That line was probably thrown in so the movie wasn't given a G rating.
The Cosby Show was groundbreaking for its portrayal of an upwardly mobile black family....at a time when African-Americans were mostly shown as ghetto dwelling drug dealers, pimps, or locked into some type of servitude. Here was a doctor and a lawyer and these amazingly well behaved and good looking kids. I'm not sure anybody else BUT Cosby could have gotten away with it. He was so unthreatening even the racists didn't notice.
But Cosby is what we all fear. That things are never quite what they seem. That it's foolish to trust ANYBODY. That a guy so universally beloved was a gargantuan pile of shit all along.......how do we reconcile that? A guy who looked at Woody Allen, smirked, and said "hold my beer". He would have been the LAST person we would have expected to be put on the sex fiend register. Right up there with....well....Woody Allen I guess. And Cosby and Woody....both of them, cocksure and unapologetic and about as welcome in polite society right now as Roman Polanski. Or OJ. We live in strange times, Bubba.
(Never erect a status for a guy who isn’t already dead. I’ve told you that multiple times. Penn State and the Baltimore Ravens learned this the hard way, eh?)
***
And speaking of. Still no word on how close OJ is to finding the real killer. The poor guy has been searching golf courses for almost 30 years now.
I'll try to keep you posted.
In a bit...
--tf