Cosby still can’t see the monster in the mirror
Bill Cosby has a lot of nerve calling himself an “educator.”
I can think of other words that end with “or” that are more fitting: predator, manipulator, deflector, aggressor, decimator, fabricator, violator ... boor.
Educator? Please. If this guy were a driving instructor, his students would die in head-on collisions before their tests. If he taught gardening, his pupils would water the roses with Mountain Dew and fertilize grass with potassium cyanide.
Cosby is an “educator” in the same way Joe Biden is a trapeze artist.
Need proof? Just read Cosby’s first interview from prison.
Convicted last year on charges of sexual assault — and now serving three to 10 years inside a Pennsylvania jail cell he tellingly describes as “his penthouse” — Cosby broke his silence on Monday in a story published by BlackPressUSA.com.
The big takeaway? This “educator” should give himself an F in reality.
He hasn’t learned a damn thing.
“I have eight years and nine months left,” Cosby, 82, told the publication, of his remaining time behind bars. “When I come up for parole, they’re not going to hear me say that I have remorse. I was there. I don’t care what group of people come along and talk about this when they weren’t there. They don’t know.”
I’m assuming this “group of people” does not include the nearly five-dozen women who accused Cosby of rape or assault. Does it include the lawyers who drafted hush-money settlements over the years? The drug dealers who supplied Cosby with Quaaludes which, by his own deposition, were snagged for “consensual” sex?
I’m no pharmacist, Dr. Huxtable, but can a woman consent if she’s unconscious?
What’s really striking about Cosby’s first interview is how none of this comes up.
Instead, BlackPressUSA gives Cosby a hall pass to spread conspiracy theories rooted in racial grievance. His criminal trials were a “sham, unjust and not fair.” The jury was made up of “impostors.” Huh? The whole thing was a “set up.” Right.
If a sinister cabal is out to get powerful Blacks, why is Oprah walking free?
Look, it’s not for me to chastise BlackPressUSA — and I am certainly not disputing that institutional racism exists in America’s justice system — but good gravy. Really? Cosby’s first interview should be on all the good he’s doing?
From the story: “A weekly highlight for Cosby since his incarceration, has been the reform program, Mann Up, where he is often the featured speaker. The program serves to encourage and empower African American men to strive for self-respect and dignity, and to put their family first.”
That is actually a powerful message for any community.
But coming from Cosby, it is ridiculously hypocritical.
For the last 15 years, ever since his “Pound Cake Speech” at an NAACP awards ceremony, Cosby has criticized other Blacks as being the architects of their own misery. He became a public moralizer. He attacked the way Black teens speak and dress. He went after deadbeat dads and lamented the nexus between crime and drugs in inner cities. He excoriated an alleged obsession in the Black community with conspicuous consumption, one that is at odds with family values.
Cosby has lectured Blacks to get it together, to knock it off with excuses. But at this point, if he were a real “educator,” he’d follow his own lesson plan.
Bill Cosby isn’t in the slammer because of systemic racism or a conspiracy to undo his cultural legacy, as he and others now allege. This isn’t a modern-day lynching. He is locked up because he is a menace without remorse.
Let’s stop mincing words here. Bill Cosby is a rapist. Bill Cosby is a serial assailant. Bill Cosby, a man of undeniable brains and comedic talent — his take on leaving the optometrist and getting into an elevator will always be one of my all-time favourite standup bits — arrived in the culture, Trojan-horsed with a horrifying dark side.
This had nothing to do with the colour of his skin.
It was always about the content of his wretched character.
And if Cosby really wanted to help others, as he professes in this new interview, he might address how and why he did what he did, for as long as he did it. He’d slice deep into his own tormented psyche and yank out the entrails. He’d be circumspect and self-aware. He’d explain how he went from America’s Dad to America’s Cad.
He’d be brutally honest about the sexual impulses that drove him to drug and abuse women over nearly a half century. He’d help others see the warning signs.
But as this week’s first prison interview makes clear, he can’t handle the truth.
He is too busy being a martyr.
He is still too busy making excuses.
I have never had a physical altercation in my adult life. But if Bill Cosby walked into my house, I would punch him in the mouth. And if he went down on one octogenarian knee, I’d kick him in the face. He is that disgusting to me.
Unlike so many of the “young African-American males” Cosby is now trying to spiritually mentor from the Big House, he had it all. And he blew it all.
So it is time for this “educator” to get with the program.
Or it’s time for him to STFU, forever. Not every fall from grace boils down to racism or conspiracy or both.
Sometimes, a man is just a monster.