HEATHCLIFF IS THAT YOU?

         " A word to the wise isn't necessary, it is the stupid ones who need all the advice"
                                                                                                                     Bill Cosby


William Henry "Bill" Cosby Jr was the author of language, cultural imagery and iconography that influenced my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. The stand-up comedian, actor, musician and author who would get his Doctor of Education from the University of Massachusetts broke barriers in television not just for being  the first black man with a leading role on NBC's I Spy, but crushing the myopic, dystopic, monolithic portrayal of the black family and expanding the narrative of the richness of black culture in America by executive producing the eponymous ground-breaking "The Cosby Show" from 1984 to 1992.
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Bill Cosby not only became transcendent as"America's dad," but he became an enormous economic engine for NBC spawning an additional spotlight into black culture by expanding the narrative to include a snapshot of life at HBCUs through the creation of the show " A Different World".  Our collective chests swelled with pride as this brother from Philly, a four sport athlete, Navy veteran and just plain ol' funny guy was blazing the networks with unprecedented positive exposure of our culture.  We would anxiously wait to see what college he would be "reppin' by wearing one of their sweatshirts during an episode.  A Different World literally encouraged tens of thousands of black students to explore the previously hidden environs of historically black colleges and universities and become doctors, lawyers, engineers, software designers, college professors, Fortune 500 executives and university presidents.

Bill was OUR dude!  It seemed every university in the country was wrestling to get him to be the keynote speaker at their commencements. He was awarded a battery of Honorary Doctorates.  I will never forget when he accepted an invitation from my alma mater; Florida A&M University.  The anticipation was epic and the atmosphere was electric.  Mr. Cosby was gregarious, warm and naturally....funny.  FAMU, like so many other institutions of higher learning considered it a feather in their cap to have had the corporation that was Cosby Inc to have adorned the halls of their campus.

After the Cosby show went off the air and Mr. Jello pudding stopped being the imprimatur of guaranteed ratings sweeps, Bill seemed to change.  In the early 2000s he started to become very critical of the black community, more accurately what some would characterize as the hood element.  His "pound cake" speech; his public remarks in May of 2004 in which he was critical of African Americans who put higher priorities on sports, fashion and "acting hard" than on education,self-respect and self improvement drew howls from everybody from Michael Eric Dyson to the Congressional Black Caucus.  For the most part we were dismissive. We chalked it up to Cosby getting older and sitting on top of his stack of nearly half a billion dollars. Like our elders who spoke their mind, he was just going off because he could.

And then the rumors,........ followed by allegations,.......... followed by settlements.

All at once, Claire Huxtable's chill, pipe-smoking, bad-dancing, surgery-performing husband slowly began to turn into somebody we could not have known. Some could have possibly forgiven him for being a "playa from the Himalayas."  But over the course of four decades, allegations about not just infidelity, but drug-assisted sexual assaults from over 50 women began to flow like magma from a volcano.  Our Dr. Huxtable was transforming into a salacious, non-board certified, monster known as Dr. Clyde Hyde!  Universities started revoking their honorary doctorates and the venerated and iconic show bearing his name was yanked off of every network, even BET!.  This insidious dichotomy, this Shakespearean tragedy in which people were saying "oh hell no" to Othello was borderline iconoclastic.

Suddenly, the name Cosby, Huxtable, Healthcliff became anathema!  There is a sad irony in the progressive loss of William Cosby's sight.  It is lock step in conjunction with our inability to even remotely transplant him back into one of the most robust chapters in television history where black folks all over the country literally set their watches to the broadcast time of two of his creations. Heathcliff, it was never you!!!

                                                            BAE-WATCH



Summer seems to be the one season in which we are made intimately aware of our bodies unlike any other time of the year.  As a son of the South, rising temperatures make the prospect of being layered in anything  other than shorts and a t-shirt foolhardy.  The Sunshine state offers many natural amenities that encourage you to come outside and not only play but beckon you to explore our abundance of lakes, sinkholes and some of the world's most beautiful beaches providing the opportunity for a water wonderland type of escape.  The challenge with the call of the outdoors, especially pools, water parks and large bodies of water is that the requisite garb requires that your "beach body' be on point.

A typical trip to the coast can either be seen as adventurous or angst ridden. My family's recent trip to the beautiful, emerald green water of a nearby coastal hot spot was an epiphany of sorts. Television has always curated what I call the masculine and feminine ideal.  Simply put, the body types highlighted on almost every prime time show, outside of caricatures, are a mixture of imagery drawn from runways, fitness magazines and a lens that rarely if ever captures what the average American now looks like.  Body dysmorphia is rarely a topic associated with men. As my wife and daughters enthusiastically changed into their bathing suits, I politely declined the offer to join them-resisting the powerful childhood affinity I had to swim in any body of water I found myself near.

The parade of humanity that walked up and down the shore line displayed a kind of confidence, a freedom in defiance of Michelangelo's David one comes to expect when any one dares disrobe in public.  Even with the sun bearing down on me like molten lava, and a pair of trunks available in the truck, there was nothing that would compel me to exchange the cool caress of Gulf waters for the slow bake I was enduring on the shore.

I don't know if former elite athletes who in peak condition looked like an anatomy chart now struggle when the cuts and  "dents" as my best friend used to call them seem to have been erased with age and lifestyle changes. This is more than feeling like you have fallen into the category of "dad bod'. What I was battling was more than an awareness of my mortality; it was a recognition that no matter how powerful one might appear to people, my muffin top shrouded any trace Herculean elements that I might be able to identify.

I have often noted that just around the age that the average woman reaches menopause, men of the same age begin to look like they are in their first or second trimester of pregnancy.  I am being transparent not to body shame, but to share how even the most stoic, seemingly confident people wrestle with this whole concept of being fit, Being a permutation of your best self can create enormous internal strife.  What kept me on the shore baking like a California raisin had more to do than me being partially naked and afraid.  Fearful that with each piece of clothing removed, my Kryptonian passport would be revoked and I would be relegated to the zone of mortals bereft of even a silhouette that looked like themselves in their former glory.

The epiphany was simply recognizing that in the confines of that vacationer's paradise, people who were at various stages of undress, nakedness if you will, were carefree.  Free of the enormous weight of soul-withering self criticism and just simply enjoying the incredible natural concourse of sand, ocean air and saltwater.  No pretense, no airs,  It's refreshing how people act when they are no longer bound to the dictates of what is deemed beautiful.

I THOUGHT

     


I thought I would never see the day when people chose to be entertained versus being informed

I thought I would never see the day when people would willingly, almost sheepishly, sacrifice liberty for the illusion of safety

I thought I would never see the day when human life would be discounted to such a level that to express a concern would spawn vituperative scorn

I thought I would never see the day when adults would wantonly make decisions that would have disastrous effects on children

I thought I would never see the day when the moral arc of justice would bend in the direction of injustice

I thought I would never see the day when august comportment would be replaced by base, primal behavior as normative

I thought I would never see the day when the United States of America lost its moral compass

I thought I would never see the day that people would prefer to interact with a device more than with other individuals

I thought I would never see the day when to say I love this country would be deemed arrogant and become a pejorative called exceptionalism

I thought I would never see the day when having a bibliocentric world view would singularly be construed anti-everything

I thought I would never see the day when absolute truth would be perniciously executed in the public square and folks would gleefully celebrate without context or understanding of consequences

I thought I would never see the day when civil discourse literally became a foreign concept

I thought I would never see the day when a nation's insatiable appetite for drugs ( prescribed, illicit and legal) would rise to the level of a deadly obsession

I thought I would never see the day when familial dysfunction would clog the national bandwidth as entertainment

I thought I would never see the day when I realized that praying for my family, friends, community and this nation would not just be a luxury, but an ABSOLUTE necessity.