Bill Cosby is 77. He may well live another 5 years, but is unlikely to live more than 10 years. Still, there are no accounts suggesting diminished capacity for the bright, thoughtful Bill Cosby who has been a famous comedian and more recently a brave social commentator on failed fatherhood in black America. In his eleventh hour, accused of serial rape, but beyond the statute of limitations and therefore immune to legal prosecution, the public eye focuses intensely on him. Cosby has become a character of Shakespearean proportions.
Aristotleâ??s second law of thought is the excluded middle. Something is either true or false, there is no middle possibility. When it comes to drugging minors and having sex with them, there is no middle possibility, no possibility of consent, partial or complete. It either happened, in which case it is criminal rape, or it didnâ??t. In the days ahead there will be a hardening of public opinion in one direction or another and this will contribute to a broader cultural narrative of either fallen idols or queasy ambiguity and averted gaze. Exoneration seems beyond the pale even if accusations are discredited, because of the large and growing number of accusations. It will be interesting to consider how the re-casting of Bill Cosby, who represented black America as we would have wanted it, will settle into our dawning post-Obama self-understanding.
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