Blacky Arbuckle

His legacy is ruined forever. Even if the jury comes back with a not guilty verdict, America's Dad will be remembered as one of the most prolific serial rapists in history long after he is dead.

Oh, sure, his legacy is definitely shot. What I can't get over is how even innocuous stuff like this commercial now feel unclean.

Maybe it's just the corporatism stripped clean of a wholesome image.

Yeah it's weird. I dunno about y'all but I notice a lot of lifesize 8-bit Mike Tyson spraypaint stencils on sides of buildings and it doesn't seem to bother me that much, even though one of the first things that pops into my mind is "rape conviction." And it's not that Tyson had a "bad boy" image that would make rape somehow OK, besides prison for Tyson Nintendo basically retroactively pulled the game for ANY public consumption. I'd be willing to bet that when all the original NES cartridges are no longer playable, the "Mike Tyson's" part would've been nothing more than a memory were it not for unauthorized emulation. That's even harsher than Cosby's treatment in a way, since you can still watch the Complete Cosby Show with an Amazon Prime subscription or buy the DVD sets.

For me at least, it's the knowledge of what he was doing between shoots. Watching this video, I see the man with the goofy smile, charm, and fatherly presence we all grew up with. Only now I'm picturing what happened after The Cosby Show tapings, the standup specials, book signing for Fatherhood, Picture Pages, Fat Albert, Kids Say the Darndest Things, Ghost Dad, Coke, Jello, Service Merchandise, pull up your pants. Drugging and raping women. Fucking models at the Playboy Mansion while Camille was home with the kids. Slipping his secret baby mama child support/hush money.

It's common knowledge that celebrities have fucked up hidden lives with more debauchery in them than dollars in their bank accounts. But this wasn't a grungy rock star subject to a hundred urban legends, it was Bill Fucking Cosby, the unlikeliest person to be outed as a predator. The fact that he hid it so well makes it worse. So yeah, Cosby sipping New Coke probably 11 hours after his most recent rape is off-putting.

I had to look it up, but it doesn't surprise me that Chris Brown records are still topping the billboard charts. Being a "bad boy" doesn't justify domestic abuse and rape, but maybe it makes it easier on the stomach for some people. In fact, not 30 minutes after I typed my Tyson comparison I saw an ad for a new mockumentary about doping in pro bicycling and sure enough there's Mike Tyson alongside Lance Armstrong like "omg it's that guy! How ironic!" Somehow Jared Fogle appearing in a mockumentary about a NAMBLA-esque group still seems in worse taste, even if it's more-or-less the same thing.

As a kid I remember finding Cosby a bit creepy and thought that no one on network TV is really that wholesome.

Yeah all celebrities have their skeletons, and if it came out that Bill Cosby did coke, well it was already a joke before this commercial endorsement deal, and that would've been cool. Hell, since iPhones came out I've figured that one third of hands I professionally shake are from hands that just yanked it to youporn in the mens' room stall, and I think that Clinton didn't know what "is" was when he was secretly banging dozens of women not named Monica Lewinsky. Cosby's fall isn't anything new, but it is interesting: celebrities will often go out of their way to defend the genius of the Spectors and Polanskis of the world despite what they later did, whereas we pretty much have his own fictional daughter as one of the few Cosby supporters, and the only female I can think of. History is erasing Bill Cosby's imprint entirely and I for one am cool with that.

That's funny because grabbing entire packets of Sweet-n-Low and pouring them into my mouth is one of my earliest childhood memories. Now imagine if that Sweet-n-Low was GHB and you've got Combustible Huxtable!

It tasted like Pepsi.

I started out as a child, and Bill Cosby was like a part of the family. I'm not talking about that Cliff Huxtable bullshit. I'm talking about 1965, the classic Noah routines, Go carts, tonsils, street football, the chickenheart, to Russell my Brother, Who I slept with. (At the time, I didn't get the joke) I was seven, my Dad was 29, and we all laughed our asses off,

Bill Cosby was a hugely important figure He was a nonthreatening black man who wasn't an uncle Tom. Sidney Poitier broke through a lot of important barriers. For him, the simply didn't exist. It was like magic.

JHM, I need to know, going forward, what theme music should I be playing in my head while I read your wistful​ reveries?