I looked at the NY Times this morning. There was an article on Marion Barry, who died at age 78. The paper had a lengthy article about his accomplishments and achievements. People gave accounts of his hard work and sacrifice. Of course, they had to mention about ‘the night.’ The night was the time in 1990, while as mayor of Washington DC, where he was famously caught in an FBI sting operation smoking crack in a hotel room. At the time, the phrase ‘bitch set me up’ was as popular as a catchphrase for crack as the other famous phrase uttered by Whitney Houston ‘crack is whack.’

Speaking of Whitney Houston, she was the songstress with the beautiful voice and look that sold millions of records. Before the movie Titanic force the song “My Heart Will Go On” as an emotional cue for every sappy and cheesy wedding singer, Whitney Houston’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You” wore that crown. When she died many people talked about her rise as a pop singer, the hits she made and her generosity. The drug and alcohol abuse, the tumultuous marriage to Bobby Brown, those were mentioned but were somewhat overshadowed by her accomplishments.

Kim Kardashian was introduced to the world ‘nekkid’ as the day she was born. Just like her friend Paris Hilton, she was caught in a sex scandal, with a ‘stolen’ sex tape surfacing and watched by millions of people. She parlayed that exposure to create an empire. She is famously famous for being famous. It doesn’t matter if you love her or hate her, unless you are an older person living in the semi-rural or rural section of the South, you will constantly hear the name Kim Kardashian and will know of her latest exploits.

There are hundreds, and it could be argued there are thousands of famous and infamous people who have at one time or another been part of serious incidents. Drugs, stalking, infidelity, murder, indecency by the moral standards of the time, all these folks we want to put on pedestals, the folks we want little children to admire, the people we want to love and respect, very few live up to the lofty public persona they and others construct. Ministers cheat on wives or fleece the congregation. Rock stars tell ‘humorous’ stories of drug and alcohol fueled binges of hotel destruction. Actors go in and out of rehab.

Some succumb to their destructive nature and can become more famous in death than in life. Heath Ledger died in a New York apartment on an overdose of drugs. At the time he was a 28 year old star on the rise and had just completed a project some felt was controversial. Fans of Jack Nicolson decried the images they saw of Ledger, wondering how someone so young could play ‘the Clown Prince of Crime.’ A few months later, after the movie opened, his rendition of the Joker became the iconic image of Joker for a generation. Even to this day, a walk at any comic book or pop culture convention will expose someone to vast number of Ledger’s take on the Joker. 

Elvis has millions of followers to this day, even though he died on a toilet after taking too many pills. Marilyn Monroe died with an overdose of pills (or was it the Mafia or FBI getting back at her because of her affairs). The estates of Monroe and Presley make money to this day, decades after their deaths.

Some make an attempt at recovery, pick themselves up after their stumbling and become more famous than before. Robert Downey Jr was an accomplished actor in his youth, but drug and alcohol abuse made him the Lindsay Lohan of his day. After a few stumbles, he exploded back into the movie goers mind in the persona of Tony Stark in Iron Man. That film arguably raised the bar and ushered in the lucrative genre of the superhero movie. That movie made Marvel Studios and Disney a truckload of money. Robert Downey Jr became one of the highest paid actors in history and because of his role of Iron Man in subsequent Iron Man movies and in the Marvels’ the Avengers, he became Hollywood’s most bankable stars.

It has been said people have a strange relationship with people they elevate to hero status, but if you look at stories from ancient mythology to comic books, you can see it is the failure of heroes, the fact that they are flawed and can rise above the external and internal demons, that makes hero stories so fascinating. Yes, we love to emotionally grab onto the coattails of people who rise in the public area. Yes, when they stumble we are quick to smash them down. If and when they rise again, we conveniently forget their pass transgressions. We praise them for overcoming adversity. We use them as examples of the human spirit. In a lot of cases, even if the person we have come to admire stumbles and never gets back up, if the demons they face are too insurmountable for them to defeat, we will more likely than not focus on their accomplishments and not their failures.

I’ve used these examples, and believe me I could bring up hundreds more, because I find that a curious aspect on the coverage of Bill Cosby and the rape accusations is how a lot of people have a hard time separating the persona from the man. I was listening to comedian Monique Marvez on her radio show talk about an encounter she had with Bill Cosby. She isn’t one of the accusers and she said she met the comedian soon after the death of her father. It was interesting listening to her description of the event because in her voice I felt the conflict I think a lot of people are struggling with. This is a man who was a hero to many. He is a man who broke down barriers in entertainment. He re-introduced the Black family to television. Good Times might have been ‘keeping their heads above water,’ the Jeffersons didn’t have fish frying in the kitchen but The Cosby Show showed black people who ‘made it.’ It was the Black “Leave it to Beaver” with the perfect kids, the perfect parents and the perfect life. Cosby is the man that launched a million pudding pops.

Cosby is also the man who scolded Black America. He chastised young black men for saggy pants. He scolded black women for out of wedlock babies. He told black America to lift themselves up and stop whining about past oppression. They were hard words for people to hear, but the person saying them was THE Bill Cosby. Predictably, those on the right wing of politics used his words when talking about the plight of Black America. Because those who were considered enemies of progress were so willing to accept the comments of America’s Dad made some question the ‘loyalty’ of Cosby. There was a time when there was a debate in barber shops, beauty salons and churches in the Black community over the ‘change’ in Cosby and his acceptance by the right wing establishment. Some thought he was selling out to the white man. Some felt he was airing out ‘family business’ that didn’t need to be shared with ‘those folk’. Others praised his ‘honesty’ for telling ‘the truth.’

As Monique Marvez pointed out, Cosby was the man who you were told to be cautious with. When she mentioned her encounter with him, I recalled a few interviews with people associated with Cosby after his iconic show went off the air. One in particular was a reunion of The Cosby kids on The Today Show. I don’t remember who did the interview, but what struck me in the interview was how all the cast member referred to him as Mr. Cosby. No one called him Bill. No one called him Bill Cosby, or even Cosby. It was Mr. Cosby. The reporter even remarked of the phrasing everyone used and someone, I can’t remember who, said it was a sign of respect.

Right now we are in the middle of the Cosby firestorm. Lots of speculations are being made as to the fate of his legacy. Anyone thinking this is the end of the Cosby legacy, as was hinted at on a recent Huffington Post headline, honestly don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m not defending Cosby or his actions, but as I laid out at the beginning of this article, we are a society that loves the ups and downs, the defeat and triumphs of our heroes. Mike Tyson beat up his then wife and was convicted of rape. He tore someone’s ear off in a fight. The man was the butt of many jokes. Now he has a cartoon, Mike Tyson Mysteries, on Adult Swim and was in two Hangover movies. Tiger Woods had a huge number of women make accusations of infidelity. It cost him his marriage and for a time his lucrative endorsement deals. Now, he’s nowhere near where he was at the height of his golfing career, but some endorsement deals returned. He’s definitely not shilling for cash for gold companies. The point is, going on any forum site with articles about Cosby, you will see people vigorously defending both sides of the debate. It is troubling, it’s disturbing and it does shatter the careful image of America’s Dad which Cosby enjoyed from his TV show, but the final words of the life of Cosby have yet to be written. In the end, if Marion Barry and others are an example, my guess is the rape accusations, for better or worse, will be a paragraph in the long article of his career.