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Jolie Rouge · 10-21-2004, 11:37 PM

Bill Cosby Gives Parenting Speech in Wis.

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...57.htm&sc=1401

MILWAUKEE (AP) - Bill Cosby won cheers as he carried a serious message to the city's black community, urging parents to take up the responsibility of educating and raising their children. ``It is not all right for your 15-year-old daughter to have a child,'' the comedian said Wednesday night. ``I'm 67 years old. I'm not talking to you any different from a grandfather who would say, `I wouldn't do that if I were you.'''

Cosby was warmly received by a crowd of about 2,400 people at North Division High School in Milwaukee's inner city.

He asked parents to talk with their children, spend time with them and encourage them to study hard and prevent teen pregnancy. He said parents shouldn't leave the responsibility of raising their children to television and CDs. ``These are your children,'' Cosby said. ``You're supposed to raise them.''

Cosby said he decided to come after speaking with Eugene Kane, columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and learning about the city's high rate of high school dropouts, its high teen pregnancy rate and its murder rate.

Cosby has become known for talking tough about problems of blacks and challenging parents to be more accountable for their children.

Kane had been critical of the comedian's comments before he attended a community rally Cosby held in Newark, N.J. Kane praised the event in a later column.

10/21/04 16:12

Jolie Rouge · 10-21-2004, 11:39 PM

[BILL COSBY'S MUSINGS
Thu Sep 30, 7:59 PM ET
By Gerald Boyd

For weeks, comedian Bill Cosby has been attacking the parenting failures and personal values of some African-Americans, and it's been easy to turn his comments into a big story. In fact, it's been too easy.

Instead of using Cosby's assertions as a starting point for a serious examination of what is really going on in the lives of African-Americans, and especially the urban poor, news organizations have presented them with little if any scrutiny. Occasionally, they have brought on predictable talking heads to debate his charges, but not in a way that provides real illumination or clarity.

It's the same old song. When it comes to matters involving race or class, the media often opt for the superficial, rather than expending the time and resources to determine what really is happening. That's the case in terms of Cosby's remarks.

The charges, in a number of forums and media outlets, have been explosive. He has said of black parents: "Lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. They are not parenting. They are buying things for kids -- $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.'" And of black women: "Five, six children -- the same woman -- eight, 10 different husbands or whatever. Pretty soon, you are going to have DNA cards to tell who you are making love to. You don't know who this is. It might be your grandmother." And of black youth, he said: "... with names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail."

Such rantings have made for great sound bites with Cosby fuming about maladies common to black communities. He puts the onus on blacks themselves, arguing that they have to stop playing the role of victim.

Parents are obviously at least partly responsible for the success of their children -- a point Cosby has hammered home in the media. But why some are falling down on the job is the real issue here. To suggest that's it's simply a lack of will is superficial, at best.

News organizations give us Cosby blasting obscenity-laden rap being played by parents on their car stereos with children seated in the back, or kids wearing their hats backward and their pants swinging low. But does any of this really explain why the problems plaguing minorities continue to exist from one generation to the next?

To say that these issues are complicated hardly begins to describe the challenge the media face in trying to explain what is really happening.

News organizations encountered a similar test in the 1960s as they sought to present the story of race in America. But in many ways that challenge was tame. Race was a story full of heroes and villains, and blacks wanting and deserving to be treated as equals. Today, the story of race is one full of paradoxes. On some fronts, there has been clear progress, yet too many blacks have not just been left behind, but are not even in the game. Blacks are tired of having to explain their thinking to whites, and whites are tired of having to listen.

In today's world, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, single parents now raise more than half of black children. That's one reason why almost 10 million African-Americans are living below the poverty level with annual incomes of less than $15,000. Children who complete high school are likely to go to college, but the percentage of blacks dropping out is nearly double that of whites. And black teenagers are far more likely to become pregnant than their white counterparts, or to end up in jail.

Those are the facts, or the headlines. But they say little about the why -- and more important, what can be done to end such woes.

Once Leon Dash, then a reporter at The Washington Post, spent more than a year in a D.C. housing project to explore why teenage girls were becoming pregnant at an alarming rate. What he found was surprising and revealing. The teenagers regarded motherhood as a badge of honor rather than the yoke it would become. That's the kind of reporting we need today.

It's great that such a prominent figure as Cosby would call attention to some of the critical issues overlooked by a media now dwelling on war, politics and international strife. If only the media would take his cue and dig beneath the surface, they would be doing a far better public service that simply airing some provocative sound bites.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...bysmusings&e=3

stresseater · 10-22-2004, 12:16 AM

Bill Cosby rocks. He is also correct, but I seriously doubt the media will do much digging into his statements.

Jolie Rouge · 05-26-2005, 12:48 PM

The 'Today' show trashes Cosby
Larry Elder

When Reverend Sharpton ran for president, he accused the media of racism for ignoring his candidacy. Since the word racist gets recklessly thrown around, does it also apply to the "Today" show?

Remember when the legendary actor/entertainer/philanthropist Bill Cosby said, "[i]n our cities and public schools we have 50 percent drop out.... No longer is a person embarrassed because they're pregnant without a husband. No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child."

He urged blacks to embrace education, speak standard English and obey the law. How dare he? His comments created such a stir that last year, the "Today" show's Matt Lauer did a pro-and-con segment.

Now here's where things get interesting. Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at University of Pennsylvania, just wrote a book called "Is Bill Cosby Right?" Dyson goes after Cosby for allegedly unfairly attacking blacks. You know, the standard liberal pap about blaming the "victim," blah, blah, blah. Never mind the tragedy of babies having babies, of a 50 percent inner-city dropout rate or the disproportionately high percentage of black youth involved in crime.

So who conducted the "Today" show's interview of Michael Eric Dyson? Matt Lauer? No. Katie Couric? No. Al Roker. Nice guy, but what does this say about how seriously the "Today" show considers the problems facing the black community?

The Roker-Dyson interview was wild. You couldn't help screaming at the television set for Roker to jump in, to challenge some of the silliness, something -- anything.

Instead, the "interview" went this way:

Al Roker: "Do you think there's any validity in some of the things he said?"

Michael Eric Dyson: "Oh sure... there's validity always. Tim[othy] McVeigh had a point. The state is over-reaching. But the way you do it, dropping bombs and castigating of human beings, that's terrible.... Let's hold the larger society accountable for creating the conditions that lead to some of the downfalls of the poor people." Roker said nothing.

Roker then read three quotes from Cosby: "Those people are not Africans; they don't know a d@mn thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaliqua and Mohammed and all of that crAp, and all of them are in jail." Next, "All this child knows is 'gimme, gimme, gimme.' These people want to buy the friendship of a child... and the child couldn't care less.... These people are not parenting. They're buying things for the kid. $500 sneakers, for what? They won't... spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics." And finally, "You can't land a plane with 'why you ain't...' You can't be a doctor with that kind of cr@p coming out of your mouth..."

Dyson: "...Black people have always been creative in naming their children. Africans name their kids after the days of the week, after conditions of their birth. Black people in 1930s gave their kids names after consumer products, Cremola, Listerine, Hershey Bar. So black naming has always been creative. I'm not worried about Shaniqua and Taliqua, I'm worried about Clarence and Condoleeza, who can hurt us in high places of power in America." Roker said nothing.

Dyson then accused Cosby of hypocrisy. After all, Cosby was a "pitchman" for "Jell-O Puddin' Pops.... He created artificial desire in people to spend beyond their means..."

??!!

Roker said nothing.

Dyson: So I'm speaking forth... on behalf of those people who are poor, because, after all, I was a teen father, lived on welfare until I was 21, then went to get a Ph.D. at Princeton, now I'm gonna have Afro-nesia [sic] and forget the people from which I've emerged? No, bro, I ain't the one."

To which Roker "fired back" with this show stopper: "You know, you gotta come out of your shell."

Would Dyson have called Couric or Lauer "bro"?

Why didn't Katie or Matt do the interview? Perhaps Couric no longer feels comfortable with "contentious" subjects after she came out on the wrong end of an interview with smart and funny conservative commentator Ann Coulter. Perhaps Lauer knows that we "right-wingers" watch for signs of bias and would have demanded a forceful interview. But, if Lauer challenges too hard, he fears running the risk of being called racially insensitive. If he goes too soft, he will be accused, quite properly, of pandering and condescension.

The solution? Let Al do it. After all, he, too, is black, as are Cosby and Dyson. So what can critics say? What should Roker have done?

Two options. Either rise to the level of the seriousness of the topic and conduct a real interview that challenged Dyson and enlightened viewers. Or, Roker should have said to his producer, "Cosby raised important issues, and Cosby argues that blaming racism no longer gets it. This is a serious claim and needs to be taken seriously. We insult Cosby, the issue and our audience if I do the interview rather than Katie or Matt."

In other words, "No, bro, I ain't the one."