Seeking America’s ‘Dad’

It has made the rising drumbeat of allegations more shattering than typical celebrity misbehaviour. Particularly for Americans who grew up with The Cosby Show, grasping the transformation of Cosby’s image from best-known father to accused serial abuser has produced the discomfort and struggle akin to coming to terms with the dark past of a family member.

“He reminds me a lot of my own father, or he did,” said David Rhoden, 47, a computer programmer in Austin, Texas. “Let’s make that clear. Reminded me a lot of my own father. I thought he was teaching something,” Rhoden said.

Cosby’s role in I Spy and as the patient interpreter on Fat Albert made him a breakthrough star, television’s Jackie Robinson. The Cosby Show, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1992, helped build a bridge between blacks and whites. When Los Angeles erupted in riots after the acquittal of the police officers accused of beating Rodney King, Cosby took to the air to urge protesters to stay home and to watch the final episode of the show instead. When his son was murdered in 1997, it was absorbed by many as a family tragedy.

Some black scholars criticised The Cosby Show for too easily soothing white households into a sense that the struggle for civil rights was over. And many blacks resented Cosby’s later moralising about personal responsibility. Still, Cosby continued to define a certain kind of sweater and a certain kind of family — educated, accomplished, kookily and happily normal.

“He implanted so many positive images, moments, subliminal pictures of what African-Americans can be,” said Mervan Osborne, 46, associate head of a school in Boston. The portrayal struck him as false — the families he knew in Brooklyn did not live in well-appointed townhouses in the Heights; the Cosby children’s range of skin tones made it a strain to see them as siblings. Still, he recognised the accomplishment.

“There was a time when white people used to claim, ‘I watch Cosby’ as their bona fides,” he said. “While we can look at it very cynically, there’s some good in that.”

The closeness and personal pride may be what allowed people to look away when rape accusations against Cosby surfaced decades ago. And still, with at least 15 women coming forward with similar stories — of being given a drink or a pill by Cosby, then waking up feeling they had been sexually assaulted — many fans continue to point out that he has never been charged. The women, they say, must be after money.

As Cosby, 77, recently took the stage in Melbourne, Florida, as part of what was to be a comeback tour, at least two in the audience shouted out, “We love you, Bill Cosby!”. To this, Cosby, wearing a ‘Hello Friend’ sweatshirt, responded with a clenched fist above his head, and many in the crowd copied him.

His 90-minute routine was as if no storm was swirling; there were jokes about family life, petty marital fights, getting old.

Cosby broke what had largely been silence on the allegations in an interview with Florida Today before the show. “I know people are tired of me not saying anything,” he said, “but a guy shouldn’t have to answer to innuendos. People should fact-check.”

But for many, the increasing number of women coming forward made it hard to look away any longer.

William Colburn and his wife Carol had intended to enter the King Center to watch Cosby’s performance in Florida on Friday but grew increasingly uneasy.

“We lost interest in going,” said Colburn, 61, who works for a car auctioneer in Orlando. “I don’t think we’d even enjoy it. He can masquerade for a while but his jokes aren’t going to be funny.”
Dr Beverly Gray recalled watching the show every week with her family. Reflecting on Cosby now, she thinks of the survivors of sexual abuse she sees in her work in Durham, North Carolina. About the show, Gray, 38, said: “I remember a happy, close family. It’s the contrast between that and what you hear on the news that’s so upsetting.”