Cosby

LORD: I want you to make me an ark.

NOAH: Riiiight. What's an ark?

LORD:  Make the ark out of cubits.

NOAH:  Riiiight. What's a cubit?

From Bill Cosby's comedy routine entitled "Noah."

I have such wonderful memories of sitting on the couch with my kids watching The Cosby Show in the mid 1980's. The kids were young, but they understood most of the humor, and if a one-liner went over their heads, they could at least appreciate the antic faces of Bill Cosby as the loveable Cliff Huxtable. Since a father figure had been missing in our household for some years, we adopted him as our TV dad, and we hung on every word of sage advice he handed down to Sondra, Denise, Theo, Vanessa (and later, even little Rudy), whether his intentions were silly or serious. During those years, my daily schedule was exhausting as I tried to keep up as a full time college student while simultaneously raising four active kids as a single parent. That weekly time on the couch, laughing and nodding with Cliff's wisdom, were a precious respite from the stress of the week. In our house, we loved Cliff Huxtable so much I used to joke that if anything ever happened to Cosby's wife, Camille, I'd be first in line to snatch him up.

Of course, I had fallen in love with his comedy many years before, in the 1960's, when he was a frequent guest on Johnny Carson and other variety shows. His routines were hilarious (you can still find them on YouTube), and I laughed along with my own siblings, just as my children would laugh along in the same way a couple of decades later.

Having said that, I knew in the back of my mind that Mr. Cosby had another side to his personality. In the late 1960's, he played a sidekick character to Robert Culp in a series entitled I Spy. On rare occasions, an episode was written with his character as the lead, and it gave Cosby the opportunity to be more than just the cool guy making wry quips. His serious roles were played with such a hard edge to them it made me wonder, even back then, what this man was truly all about in real life.

I guess we've found out over the past year or so. Last week Cosby was convicted of sexual assault. He is currently wearing an ankle bracelet on house arrest as he awaits sentencing.

At best, this is a cautionary tale. It seems clear from the number of women who have come forward to accuse him--with nothing to gain beyond justice and validation--that his criminal behavior extended back over decades, all the way back to those idyllic days of The Cosby Show. Of course it was his character we loved, not the man himself. We can see that now. But back then... Cosby the man was lauded and applauded, given honors, asked to render up commencement speeches that were hilarious and yet stellar in their sage advice. Even after the show was cancelled, we continued to love the man we saw as the real life personification of Cliff Huxtable. How completely we were blind to the man he truly was. And how disturbing this should be to us.

Just how easy is it for a man to appear upon the stage of life, smiling in a jovial way and saying things that people want to hear, remarks that make audiences feel less fearful about the current world we're living in, only to be, in truth, slowly and deliberately pulling the wool over their eyes?