In reading Bill Cosby’s biography, some things come to light that explain why he was so brazen in his activities upon reaching a measure of success in his career. He always found the short cuts and sought out the right friends who could assist him in his ambitions.

Obviously, Cosby was very successful in his career and in breaking down barriers that defined the life of African Americans at the time.

Cosby acquired a mainstream celebrity, unshared by most of his racial peers in America. There is no denying that Cosby had been a real trailblazer in the entertainment business, but how was this achieved and why was he given so much help, so early on in his career? Did all his success and celebrity bring out the very worst in Bill Cosby, or was it just the truth coming out about deeper problems in America? How did he manage to keep his secrets so closely guarded from the public? Why did powerful people go along with his criminal behavior, turning blind eyes to the pain and suffering of his victims?

Cosby was clearly a very intelligent student, he scored high on IQ tests and was sent to a high school for gifted children but he was not willing to conform to what was demanded of him academically. He was more interested in sports and entertaining his classmates than academics. He dropped out of High school, and joined the Navy, where he later completed his High School equivalency, upon regretting his decision to drop out.

While being non-conformist in many ways, Cosby was hungry for success and all it could afford him. He did not live a totally deprived childhood, but his parents had to work hard for everything. His father enlisted in the Navy and was away much of the time. His mother worked cleaning houses for a living. As the oldest child of four he acted as the father figure at home in his father’s absence. It was a role he could utilize later in his home life and later on in his career.

However, with what is coming to light now about him, it was more a role he was playing than actual reality in his life. He did go to work at an early age of 9 to shine shoes to help out financially at home. He later got a job in a grocery store but he did not apply himself in his early school years.

Young Bill became a storyteller, drawing from the books his mother read to him and the Bible stories his grandfather told him. He would incorporate these experiences to develop his comedic style later on. They were irreverent and decidedly hypocritical. All these things, his intelligence, ambition, humor and bravado were things that Hollywood moguls could exploit for TV ratings and above all that thing which they trusted most, the almighty dollar.

He had all the makings for Hollywood to market what the American public was ready and waiting for they were more than ready to put Selma, AL. and George Wallace and Medgar Evers and the persecution of Jackie Robinson and the undeniable sins against mankind of slavery behind them. Bill Cosby was just the healing balm needed.

Cosby had been a gifted track competitor while in the service and upon discharge, he received a Track Scholarship from a proper religious institution in Philadelphia PA., Temple University. He attended Temple until he found a job performing stand-up comedy where he had been tending bar. He dropped out of college because he was quickly finding success in comedic storytelling.

Initially, he emulated other black comedians like Dick Gregory but later returned to his original style of comedic storytelling to include a broader audience. In a few short years he was invited to perform on The Tonight Show in 1963. This gave him a national audience and it helped to secure him a recording contract for his comedy. By 1964 he won a Grammy award for his second album and his career skyrocketed from there.

When Sheldon Leonard, the producer of I Spy saw Cosby do his stand up comedy on a talk show, Leonard decided Cosby would be a good pairing with Robert Culp for the show in 1965. The casting was ground breaking as he was the first African American to be cast in a starring dramatic role on television. Sheldon Leonard believed that race was not an issue in the show, and it is said that both Culp and Cosby agreed early on that it would be that way between them. Cosby was always an equal to Culp’s character on I Spy, and they had a true partnership. As a result, Cosby formed a close lifelong friendship with Robert Culp and looked to Sheldon Leonard as a father figure and mentor. Leonard was a powerful friend to have in Hollywood and added to Cosby’s stature in the business. From an image standpoint, it gave the appearance of a black man achieving a status of equality in the United States.

It is safe to say this early success emboldened Cosby to wield his standing to open doors of opportunity for himself, including womanizing openly. It was widely known in Hollywood that he was a womanizer and the people he surrounded himself with made it easy for him. He had respect in show business, money, and nation wide fame. Cosby could write his own ticket at this time. Leonard also showed Cosby how to be a pitch man for his later commercials and ad campaigns as Sheldon Leonard excelled at those himself.

There is no denying Bill Cosby’s talent and understanding of what appeals to the mass audience. He was able to parle storytelling of everyday life and family into a media empire of recordings, Stand up performances, television shows and movies.

More than that he made himself a respected icon of American family values, that everybody in America trusted and loved. He was welcomed into everyone’s living room weekly, giving him the perfect cover to entice and seduce impressionable young women, looking for their shot at fame.

As it turned out these roles, so important in selling to the American public that race relations between white and black were just hunky dory was nothing less than a flim-flam scam propagated on post-World War II Americans all races and creeds.

American families sitting before their new color TVs eating their TV dinners were eating up this complete fabrication like it was dessert delivered to their home from heaven.

All the while this farce was being propagated the Black Panthers and other black radical organizations, including men and women like Mohammed Ali and Angela Davis were being openly refuted by Cosby’s images of an accepted black man with influence and charming power inside the white social structure. He and his promoters, who were pulling off this ruse (mainly Hollywood and television producers, were laughing all the way to the bank.

Subsequent testimony of many, many of Cosby’s victims make it beyond credulity that the producers, and all the Hollywood powers were not aware of that Cosby was a hypocrite, a predator of defenseless women and a pervert who loved money more than any of the family role characters he so shamelessly played.

Cosby’s promises to the young women made the opportunity to meet with him irresistible. The ease of persuading women up to his room was as easy as the spider to the fly. He, with the help of Hollywood, had successfully molded the image of being an honest, direct and wholesome family man like the images portrayed of white Christian folk that were the only acceptable ones on TV at the time.

White America was more than willing to accept this image as a sign of blacks acquiescing to the white American way. Cosby sold this to the blacks. The Black society tried to buy it and almost did with his cartoon series about black kids doing just fine in the cities as long as they got along with people like Fat Albert did every Saturday morning. The days of Medgar Evers were behind us all, as Cosby was sticking it to defenseless woman rendered unconscious in trailers right next to the producers of the shows that told their fabricated tales of harmonious black-white relations for their thirty pieces of silver.

“Unto the pure all things are pure: But unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.
   They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.”  Titus 1:15-16

Cosby did have a few lulls where he was not so much in demand, but friends like Sheldon Leonard gave him the impetus to re-invent himself a few times, over the span of 50 years.

The jackpot for Cosby was his image of being a father which made him all the more disarming to those he sought out as his sexual conquests. The Hollywood culture of licentious behavior being the norm rather than the exception, coupled with his television image as a respected man of strong family values, made him very dangerous for young women to associate themselves with him. In addition, all the friends like Hugh Heffner and others who assisted him in his predation and intimidation of his victims made it possible for him to keep up appearances and continue his lust filled intrigues.

The rock solid image he and others created for him made him almost untouchable. At the height of his career, who would have believed he was drugging, assaulting and raping women serially. His influence in the entertainment business gave him easy access and a cover from any repercussions. Those who were not totally convinced that he was what he appeared to be were apparently threatened and even had their career stymied or ruined. The testimonies of many victims is that there was no way that people in charge of the productions of which he was star could not have known.

In the end the popularity of Bill Cosby, regardless of his being a rapist, was due to an ongoing perpetuation of a great hoax. A total fraud that led naive white America down the garden path of believing race relationships were not only getting better, but that they were in a cordial and trusting mode and in the process of being fully healed. It opened the way for other propaganda teachings of kosher race relations, and it was being accomplished through the great propaganda device that was changing our thoughts and lives like a hypnotist might – the TV set that all Americans were sitting before as a family in the center room of their house or apartment, the living room.

Those white Americans (and their were many) who actually hated the bigotry, prejudice and racism perpetrated on blacks were led to believe that we were all starting to live together in good humor with fairness toward one another.

The marches had done something. The Civil Rights Laws passed by Lyndon Johnson’s Congress had finally freed the black and the white man. The ongoing warfare between the races proves otherwise. The whole story of racism and its ending is a terribly real Greek tragedy in which the regular people of all races remain the tragic victim, victims strewn across the graveyards of our broad nation that stretches from sea to not so shining sea.

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
   For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
   Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
   Traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
   Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
   For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
   Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”  2 Timothy 3.1-5