The Cosby Effect: Why did he say it?
Obviously, Dr. Cosby was addressing Black folks last week.
In an interview yesterday, Cosby said he is speaking out because dropout, illiteracy and teen pregnancy rates are at "epidemic" levels among less-affluent African Americans. "You can't get me to soften my message," he said. "If I had said [it] nicely, then people wouldn't have listened."
But I believe he intended a slightly more subversive impact for the media.
Vanessa Jones at the Boston Globe:
In a pause-laden nine-minute conversation yesterday, Cosby eluded attempts to schedule a face-to-face interview to speak more in depth about these matters. One reason why? "I have other things to do," he said brusquely.
He was willing to entertain a few questions, such as: Why are you talking about these issues at this moment?
Cosby: "I'm not being combative; I'm trying to understand something. When you say `at this moment,' what do you mean?"
The reporter said that "at this moment" means now, as opposed to last year or two years ago. "What I'm talking about specifically is the dropout rate in these areas," he said. "And, um, why now? Because I feel that it has reached epidemic proportions."
Cosby said newspapers should go into neighborhoods and do stories about the problems he's talking about. "There are many, many wonderful, educated people in the [black] community," he says, "who will be willing to talk to you and tell you their first-hand experience -- teachers -- their first-hand experience, and if they want to withhold their names, etc., etc, whatever. But it's not just a matter of Bill Cosby."
And, no, a last-ditch appeal to Cosby to use his celebrity status to explore these issues doesn't change his mind.
"I don't accept that I have to be the fulcrum of this," he said. If "the things that are tied into helping this thing grow and get worse are not addressed, then so be it.
"Maybe it's more interesting [for newspapers] to talk about [these problems] or write about them when [people] are incarcerated or when a parent is beating a child to death."
Another request elicits the comment: "I gotta go."
Really interesting because he had to know the attention his statements would attract. By giving no in-depth follow-up at the height of the interest I think he hoped to drive the media to those "many, many wonderful, educated people in the [black] community."
The problem is, the only thing new about what Dr. Cosby said is that Dr. Cosby said it. The actual issues at hand are not very interesting to the mainstream because they think them specific to Black folks. So, the news becomes "Bill Cosby said this!" That, specifically, is what the media is following up on.
