This article was originally published by Newsmax on November 26, 2014
by Bill Donohue
If Bill Cosby’s biggest problem is fending off all the serious allegations against him, his biggest blunder was his straight talk about young black men, beginning 10 years ago.
Liberals never forgave him, and now it is payback time.
In a remarkably frank article in today’s New York Times, David Carr recounts how those who interviewed Cosby knew of the accusations made against him, yet failed to ask about them; even Cosby’s biographer looked the other way.
Things began to change when Cosby became critical of the young black male lifestyle. “But that moralism,” Carr writes, “which put legs under his career as an author and a public figure, made Mr. Cosby a target.”
Carr credits a 2005 ABC News report on accusations against Cosby for starting the ball rolling. That was followed by a “Today” show piece and a damning story in Philadelphia magazine. I researched the timeline and found that Carr is correct.
The first major statement Cosby made about blacks who play to the stereotype about them came on May 17, 2004. Cosby spoke at Constitution Hall in Washington on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision barring segregation. Here is an excerpt of what Cosby said: “I can’t even talk the way these people talk. ‘Why you ain’t where you is, blah, blah.’ Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads!
“You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth! It’s time for you to not accept this language that these people are speaking which will take them nowhere. What the hell good is Brown v. Board of Education if nobody wants it?”
In early July 2004, Cosby spoke before the Rainbow/Push Coalition & Citizenship Education Fund’s annual conference. He sounded the same theme, criticizing blacks for using profanity and invoking the N-word. “They think they’re hip. They can’t read; they can’t write. They’re also laughing and giggling, and they’re going nowhere.” He implored young black men to “stop beating up your women because you can’t find a job, because you didn’t want to get an education and now you’re [earning] minimum wage.”
Ever since, the response to Cosby has never been the same. The irony is plain to see: according to today’s liberal values, his crime was not the drugging and predatory behavior he allegedly engaged in — it was his betrayal of liberal expectations.
Dr. William Donohue is the president of and CEO of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization. The publisher of the Catholic League journal, Catalyst, Bill is a former Bradley Resident Scholar at the Heritage Foundation and served for two decades on the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars. The author of five books, two on the ACLU, and the winner of several teaching awards and many awards from the Catholic community, Donohue has appeared on thousands of television and radio shows speaking on civil liberties and social issues. Read more reports from Bill Donohue — Click Here Now.
