The ground shifted the day Bill Cosby was exposed.
To the Editor,
The ground shifted the day Bill Cosby was exposed. To be fair, the ground had already been shifting, but the gritty allegations on Cosby were the fissure that made the shift noticeable. And to be clear, I am not saying that the world is any worse than it has been. I am not a voice purporting general decadence. However, I think that the world was, in the past, naively innocent. Those people who wanted to censor could do so. Those people who wanted to raise their children in naivety could do so. Humans were able to believe that proverbial other exuded higher values and all humans should strive to do the same.
Now, those icons we imagine are, one by one, exposed as rapists and pedophiles. Those hopes and aspirations we have somehow become lost in an interstellar black hole of our own construction leaving the optimists in a grid of banalities.
The Cosby Show wasn’t that big of a deal to me growing up. Not as much to me as it was to others, I guess. I think that some people looked to Dr. Huxtable as a father figure and kind spirit, but did we really equate Cosby's on-screen performances with his off-screen life? It isn’t unusual for a famous actor live a grossly dubious life. Hollywooders have never been one to look for moral guidance. Don’t get me wrong; if the allegations are true, I think Mr. Cosby should be punished for his actions. I’m glad the women who spoke out found the courage to break the silence. That being said, I’m not sure it's going to change anything because the issues precede rape culture.
It only works — a rape whistle — if a bystander hears it and acts. After you’ve been blowing the whistle for years, the high pitch ring becomes a part of the white noise that your auditory system stops sensing. The way people think of Mr. Cosby will change but the way we address sexual assaults is far from changing. Todd Akin’s remark about “legitimate rape” got the press boiling over for a month or two but new understandings of rape and abortion were anything but created. The Internet did little other than create a transient foaming after Ray Rice KO’d his girlfriend in an elevator. We have watched some really stupid things in the past and cultural icons are always creating new scandals. We consume, like, comment, and forget. On the other hand, something is emerging, the inability to uphold the belief in the goodness of humankind. Mr. Cosby wasn’t the reason, though, for this loss any more so than the American individual’s unwillingness to confront issues that don’t bolster her or his self-image.
Andrew Frisbie is a student at Ohio University
