Like animal feces hurled at the U.S. Constitution, a deadly bullet sped straight for the very core of the American psyche. In the nick of time, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor emerged from the depths of obscurity to thwart the attack when he declined to press sexual harassment charges against entertainer Bill Cosby.
While the media controversy over the allegations dulls Cosby's nearly blinding light cast upon American morality, perhaps now that the wattage has been toned down from angelic to merely human we can see the cultural ideas of celebrity and race that were formerly obscured.
Merely repeating the allegations against Cosby makes one feel complicit in the slanderous attempt to drag him through the mud. The interests of public awareness and journalistic integrity demand that they must be outlined nonetheless.
Allegedly, in January 2004, Cosby gave medication to an acquaintance at his home following dinner with friends. The medication made the woman dizzy, and Cosby supposedly took advantage of her disoriented condition by groping her and attempting to remove her clothing.
Media attention to celebrity scandal has never been higher, as VH1, E! and similar infotainment television ruthlessly dissects every facet of stars' lives -- from drug addictions to divorces to regrettable fashion decisions. While the transgressions of rich, beautiful celebs such as Paris Hilton have a universally salacious appeal, the media really goes haywire when a black celebrity makes a mistake.
Breaking the news on some oil tycoon's daughter's coke habit is one thing, but the chance to hammer home an ideologically loaded message about race can turn any newsroom meeting into a virtual rampage.
Ironically, the entire thrust of Bill Cosby's career and celebrity image has always aimed to contest the racist images of black people that the media readily disseminates.
In the magical utopia of "The Cosby Show," skin color is disconnected from its social and political context save for a few references to "approved" black culture, such as the Dr. J poster on Theo Huxtable's bedroom wall.
Critics have even labeled Cosby as a "race traitor," claiming that his show perpetuates the notions that blacks can only attain equality by mimicking white culture and that white racism no longer exists.
The possibility that someone can even be a traitor to an entire race is still up in the air. The fact remains that Cosby advocates (through his television persona and through speaking engagements at events such as Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition conference) a concept of race indistinguishable from the racial ideology the media love to promote: a blind eye toward white racism and structural inequality coupled with attention to all the things that black people do wrong.
Bill Cosby's list of such wrongs ranges from parenting to religion to grammar.
The allegations against Cosby, then, presented the mainstream media with a catch-22. Besides the obvious appeal of yet one more suggestive story about a celebrity's fall from grace, the media's racial essentialism meant that anything it said about Cosby would involve his blackness.
The clash between media support of Cosby as an upright citizen and (more importantly) as a black man who the white establishment wishes more blacks would emulate and between the media desire to put one more image of a black lawbreaker into circulation ultimately fizzled out due to the action of District Attorney Castor.
Nevertheless, the short-lived controversy provides a valuable lesson in the racial politics.
Solomon Rotstein is a humanities major. Send revealing pictures of Clare Huxtable to Solomon.rotstein@asu.edu.
