{"id":5028,"date":"2015-07-28T08:25:57","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T12:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/?p=5028"},"modified":"2015-07-28T09:34:50","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T13:34:50","slug":"the-list-huxtable-hoax-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/2015\/07\/the-list-huxtable-hoax-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"The List: Huxtable Hoax Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I met a traveller from an antique land<\/em>
\nWho said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone<\/em>
\nStand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,<\/em>
\nHalf sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,<\/em>
\nAnd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,<\/em>
\nTell that its sculptor well those passions read<\/em>
\nWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,<\/em>
\nThe hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.<\/em>
\nAnd on the pedestal these words appear —<\/em>
\n“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:<\/em>
\nLook on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”<\/em>
\nNothing beside remains. Round the decay<\/em>
\nOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare<\/em>
\nThe lone and level sands stretch far away.'” <\/em><\/p>\n

Percy Bysshe Shelley<\/span><\/a>, Ozymandias<\/a><\/p>\n

\"ozym\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(photo credit<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Ozymandias, meet Bill Cosby<\/a>.\u00a0 That shattered visage strewn across the barren landscape is the once-mighty Cliff Huxtable<\/a>, the very soul of perfect fatherhood, clean living, commanding presence at the center of an adoring family.\u00a0 The fictional television character is now exposed as a fraud, a hoax on the American imagination, a shattered monument to something far more than ego or hubris, the detritus exposing the stink of a far deeper level of corruption, the evil abuse of power and fame.<\/p>\n

Bill Cosby spent his entire career hiding behind that pristine image of the virtuous man, the upright pillar of a beautiful family, the prophet speaking through humor and gentle aphorisms.\u00a0 There’s nothing virtuous or upright about a man who,\u00a0by\u00a0his own\u00a0admission in\u00a0depositions,\u00a0drugs trusting young women for the purpose of his own sexual gratification.\u00a0 There’s nothing humorous or gentle in the stories that have emerged in the courageous voices of dozens of women who were allegedly abused, debased and humiliated by the monstrous lie behind the Huxtable Hoax.<\/p>\n

The public\u00a0indictment of Cosby is complete on the cover of this week’s New York <\/a>magazine.\u00a0 35 courageous women and the empty chair <\/a>signifying untold numbers beyond them.<\/p>\n

\"nymag<\/a>The stories of these women are so horrifying I could not stop reading them, and yet, I wanted nothing more than to turn away to something less painful.\u00a0 But I had to keep reading them because they are the necessary testimony exposing the years of lies and false hopes that were carefully constructed laughing masks hiding the ugly predator whose serial use of quaaludes and other drugs is so shocking it can’t possibly be true — except that even he admitted <\/a>to the behavior.<\/p>\n

I’ve written about The List <\/a>before, that rather shockingly long list of powerful public men who seem to think that power and fame are license to behave in the most shameful of ways.\u00a0 Some fairly well-regarded men are on The List<\/a>, and some like Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, David Letterman and Arnold Scharzenneger even have managed to move beyond scandal to reclaim their power and fame.\u00a0 Others (Tiger Woods, are you listening?) have been unable to climb out of the depths of the pits into which they fell.<\/p>\n

Cosby is different.\u00a0 Cosby now makes the sins of those on “The List” seem quite venial, if they be sins at all.\u00a0 Infidelity is one thing, possibly criminal behavior something else.\u00a0 Even if he’s never subject to a criminal indictment, which time and evidence may render moot, Cosby’s admitted as well as alleged actions are horrific — even if only woman woman was involved, drugging someone for sex would be outrageous, but in his own depositions he admitted more than one.\u00a0 The accusers fill a magazine cover, and still there may be more.<\/p>\n

We should know better than to believe fictional characters, of course.\u00a0 We always knew that the Huxtables were just television fantasy, just like viewers of an earlier age always knew — or should have known — that behind the fiction of “Ozzie and Harriett”<\/a> there was real dysfunction, pain, cheating, disappointment — as in any family.\u00a0 We know better than to believe what we see on TV — but we believe anyway, living our own fantasy lives through the characters on the screen.<\/p>\n

Entertainers are no more role models than baseball players, and yet the effect of popular culture always elevates those who are famous, modestly talented or powerful into that icon we revere and want to emulate.\u00a0 So it was for several generations of Cosby fans, those who found in Bill Cosby and his fictional family something that was good, wise, funny and worth emulating.<\/p>\n

Every single alleged incident of drugging, sexual abuse and possible rape is appalling if true.\u00a0 Beyond the individual instances of abuse, the collective impact of Bill Cosby’s shameful behaviors is a widespread sense of betrayal, disappointment and cynicism.\u00a0 Sadly, the whole ugly mess also adds tinder to those raging fires of racism and hatred that burn just below the surface of some segments of American society.\u00a0 When public figures go bad, the consequences for everyone are profound.<\/p>\n

(Note that Spelman College <\/a>did the right thing by terminating the endowed chair named for Bill Cosby and returning the funds.)<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the “decay of the collossal wreck” is not on some empty desert, but in the heart of this very crowded society, haunted once again by the awful sense of betrayal by someone we trusted too much.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American society once trusted and even loved Bill Cosby. His shattered image now haunts American society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,19],"tags":[1517,1518,1523,1522,1521,1519,1520],"class_list":["post-5028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-living","tag-bill-cosby","tag-cliff-huxtable","tag-new-york-magazine","tag-sex-abuse","tag-sexual-misconduct","tag-the-cosby-show","tag-the-huxtables"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}