Why Bill Cosby Isn't Funny (Op-Ed)

WHY BILL COSBY ISN'T FUNNY

Let's take the recent scandal of well over thirty different, unrelated women who have accused Bill Cosby of inappropriate behaviors over the past four decades or so out of the equation for just a second and look at the performer known as Bill Cosby from the point of view of a professional working comedian, from the vantage of audience members who have supported him and his endeavors with our time and money, and from the aspect of him being labeled a "living show business legend" and modern-day "cultural icon". 

Separating the man from the myths from the allegations gets increasingly harder to do with each passing day, as we come to believe what we see -- good and bad -- repeated in the media without question or context, as the truth, until reality and fiction blend together as one. Perhaps the person who experiences fame and fortune and make-believe as a for-sale commodity eventually comes to not know the differences themselves, as, I believed, was the case of Michael Jackson.

Is Bill Cosby funny?  Was he ever funny? Was he set up to "fail" as an "ideal of perfection" no imperfect human being could fulfill? And, if so, did he set himself up?  Or was he -- and continues to be -- someone who needs serious mental-health help?  Are we enabling him in his illness by holding celebrities to a different standard than "regular people" and by rewarding "outrageous sickness" with celebrity the performers don't deserve?  Has the Cult of Celebrity reached its final saturation point and Mr. Cosby is a prime example of an obsolete, dying breed?  Is he a victim somehow?  Where do we go from here?

Let's look at his messages, values, lifestyle...

1.  Bill Cosby doesn't look "funny".

Bill Cosby used to be good-looking back-in-the-day -- actually, kind of sexy.  When he was starting out, he had a strong sense of fashion style, presented himself as clean-cut, the kind of non-radical Black young man everyone liked, even hard-nosed White people, even when things were bumpy between the races.  His presentation was impeccable.

His once-bankable impishness faded a couple of decades ago.  His poorly-aging body is bloated, sagging -- this is an ex-athlete?  He seems closer to helpless and homeless than to a healthy, active, inspirational senior statesman. He certainly isn't believable playing a doctor any longer.

His gray-coated eyes droop.  These are the same eyes that got a laugh just by rolling them up and pursing his lips to repress a contagious smile.  Those eyes are dead.  He doesn't smile at all anymore. His frowns are frozen, in a seemingly constipated way, agitated, bitter.  His fingernails are long.  His skin is marked by large dark dots and he is unshaven.  He simply looks unhappy and unwell and sad and perplexed and in need of a shower.  He looks as though there is no one around to take care of him to a reasonable standard, he is no longer capable of taking care of himself.

Comedian Joan Rivers also ruined her looks, with a startling amount of plastic surgery in her case, until it was nearly impossible to pay attention to what she was saying.  An elderly woman screaming obscenities through an immobile mask of too-taunt skin is off-putting, similar to when the whole world gasped in shock at an Oscars event at the once stunningly beautiful actress, Kim Novak, whose barely-recognizable face was voluntarily, intentionally, made into grotesque putty for vanity's sake. Pity replaced reverence.

Jerry Lewis had a life-threatening illness (through no fault of his own), took life-saving medication for it, but the steroids involved bloated his face to three times normal size to almost unrecognizable as well.  A pratfall by a twenty-one-year-old fit Jerry Lewis at a nightclub is way funnier than the same pratfall by a seventy-five-year-old near-death Jerry Lewis who looked like Mr. Potato-head (and not in a humorous way), happening shortly after being booted off as host of the Labor Day telethon.  You could neither laugh with him or at him in good conscious because there was nothing funny about his situation whatsoever. Watching a pompous man slip on a banana peel is funny. Watching someone handicapped falling down, struggling to get up, is not funny.

Bill Cosby no longer wears any trace of a "performance outfit" or makeup or has "staging" when performing.  There are plenty of reasons performers dress up in suits, ties, looking as presentable as possible, with good lighting and designed sets.  It's about self-respect and respect for the audience.  It's about putting on a "show", "eye-candy", being "professional".  Cosby gives no indication between being a world-class performer or being his "self", presented as a "nobody-in-particular" who happens to wander in off the streets and on to the stage -- the Common Man -- which is an act, of course, to hide his true ego.  Actress Joan Crawford, on the other hand, said, "If you want to see the Girl Next Door, go next door..."  Perhaps Cosby's attitude toward production values is: "I'm so great I don't have to do anything...I AM the show..."? Funny?  No.

Cosby's signature "sweater" has been replaced with cheap Wal Mart sweat shirts with ironed-on lettering of "Hello Friends" on the front in a kind of child-like, pathetic plea. Wealthy, experienced, educated, DOCTOR Cosby -- actor, producer, writer, comedian, teacher, author -- has the disheveled look of someone with cognitive disabilities/dementia with a day-pass on a bus trip to the mall. Why?

You must empathize with a comedian to some extent in order to find the humor relatable because comedy is already an exaggerated abstraction, a surreal heightening of reality.  You can not find a comedian so horribly repulsive that you feel sick looking at them. That's the opposite of being open to what they have to say and having a good time. 

If the performer doesn't address whatever it is about them that is distracting within the first three seconds of bounding on to the stage, then it is up to the performer to win back the audience's wandering attention -- if they can.  Feeble long-time performers such as Don Rickles, Bob Newhart, and Billy Crystal are currently at that cross-roads, yet, they don't wear lettering across their chests which would add nothing to the comedic proceedings except confusion and distraction.  Where is Cosby's management? 

Bill Cosby must be hysterically funny instantly out of the starting gate and be brilliant each and every time he performs, for as long as he performs, if for no other reason, than to compensate for his current poor, humorless appearance. Genius could bridge the ragged physical hindrances enough to make the audience forget his appearance -- eventually and for a short while.  No reports indicate he is that funny.  What can he possibly say about how he looks?  What can he possibly say about the world without seeming a hypocrite or ironic in a not-so-great way?  Nothing funny there.

2.  Bill Cosby doesn't sound "funny".

In his hey-day, Cosby's jokes were typically punctuated by wonderfully-timed pregnant pauses, rubbery facial expressions and wild gesturing.  He created "Cosby-ism" tag lines that become part of the cultural idiom ("Hey, Hey, Hey...", "Riiiigghhhtttt....What's a cubic?").  His recorded comedy albums were standard fare for every American household, with repeatable, hip jokes that you never grew tired of hearing.  He was a star who had a "recognizable voice" and his material was pure gold.

On stage, he now sits slumped in a folding chair under a harsh "working light", with a microphone planted on his mouth, hiding most of his face, as he telegraphs one trivial "observational humor" pun after another without set-ups or punch-lines, rambling on smarmy non-stories without an arc or point.  He's doing what comedians call "noodling" -- a free-association way of comedy -- nothing written, without structure, and, in this instance, without much intonation or diction, as though too exhausted, too beat down, weighted, to stand and speak to the audience directly with any conviction or vigor.  There are still pauses in his act but they are full of self-consciousness, lingering too long, and the laughs result from audience's fidgety nervousness, rather than lighting wit or a particular insight into the human condition.

Cosby is low-balling to a fanatical die-hard audience who does most of the work for him themselves by expecting him to be funny, whether or not he actually is, who pay a lot of money to see the "Jello Pudding Guy/Dr. Huxtable" of yesteryear, no matter what, and who would laugh at just about anything anyway.  Something similar happens at Rolling Stones and Beach Boys concerts or when Cher shows up. These are the kind of "royalty" performers who could come out on stage, drop their pants, take a crap, and get a standing ovation. Does Cosby deserve that kind of reverence? If you were to look at his "reel of successes", would the materials seem timeless or hopelessly dated?

Just a couple of years ago, Cosby went on several talk shows and repeatedly tanked in a grand manner, while meandering about the studios, seeming lost, making baffling, nonsense statements as though he was either in the throes of a nervous breakdown, on heavy medication, steeped in senility, or all of the above.  A comedian who isn't funny is tragic.

Over the years, Cosby has inched ever nearer Norma Desmond territory, more so than any other comedian of late or in his peer group who were supposedly "great", only to become a quickly tiresome satire of his own faded career and self-importance.  The obvious subtext of his limp, wheezing appearances is: "I used to be big", an old circus elephant, destined to do their routine in a continuous loop, because they have never known any other life.

Any quote you find from Cosby within the last decade is typically curmudgeon in nature -- negative, critical, condescending, self-righteous -- and not the kind of joyful joke he was famous for at all.  Comedians work from a basic personal truth, from inward to outward, and if the performer doesn't have a grasp of what the truth is for himself -- loosing himself -- he no longer has a source in which to draw materials from.  He no longer has funny things to say.  When he speaks, Bill Cosby doesn't sound funny.

3.  Bill Cosby's view of the world isn't "funny".

Cosby, as a stand-up comedian, was never "edgy" like Richard Pryor or "smart" like George Carlin or "political" like Lenny Bruce or "ethnic" like Jackie Mason or "silly" like Steve Martin.  He wasn't pure vaudeville as say, George Burns.  He never had the acting chops of Eddie Murphy or the dramatic depth of Sydney Portier who, at times, could be very funny.  He never worked "blue" (maybe in Vegas?).  He was reliable but never in the show biz stratosphere like Ellen's "Hey, God...It's Me, Ellen" routine or when Roseanne exploded on "The Tonight Show" in full "Domestic Goddess" trashiness.  Cosby was, at best, an easily-digestible light meal -- charm was his greatest asset, like Will Smith.  

His cultural impact in the 1960's was based in large on the fact he was a "person of Color" who made good, got along without rocking the boat, someone White people of a certain mind could see themselves being friends with, in spite his race -- safe, affable. He was like having your riotous cousin cut up during a party but not someone you'd turn to for side-splitting, heavy-lifting comedy, like the joke-machine of Bruce Vilanch's extraordinary gifts.

And he was absolutely not alone in making that impact.  Everyone from Diana Ross to Nichelle Nichols to Diahann Carroll to Sammy Davis, Junior and hundreds of others in all kinds of fields were making strides in social acceptance of African-Americans.  You can not look to a single incident in Mr. Cosby's life and show cause-and-effect of his involvement in social changes, the way you can with so many others.

In the 1980's, Cosby's shtick was pure "family values" -- his stand-up personal observational humor based on what happens at home turned into an extreme right-wing Republican's dream as seen by a narrow-minded populist and propagated to the masses.  That was when people had families and they valued them -- or at least watched the TV version while their lives didn't reflect what was on the screen, as in every era before it.  That's when both parents worked and social repression lead to depression, suicide, high school shootings. Ray Romano did the same thing later with "Everyone Loves Ramon" but closer to how people actually are (but questions arose about responsibility when the boy on his show committed suicide).    I would point to "The Cosby Show" as to one of the many reasons why the words "families values" eventually became a joke itself.

"The Cosby Show's" naive, Black-version "Ozzie and Harriet" family was so squeaky-clean "white bread", so bizarrely un-hip while trying to be mega-hip, that it inspired Roseanne Barr to create a hugely successful counter-programming show with beer-drinking, poor, working people that you actually saw working.  This was at a time when MTV hit the airwaves with Madonna warbling "Like A Virgin".

In my estimation, Cosby's patriarchal character on the Cosby TV show was sick.  His "act", in character and out, was "I'm a highly-intelligent man put-upon by family and friends and everyone else -- who are morons, lesser quality people" and his job was to embarrass and humiliate them into submission and then justify his behavior with "child-like horse-play", making "faces", as if he was too "lovable", too "cute", to reprimand for his harshly judgmental, condescending rudeness. Who, exactly, did he think he was?  In real life I have known people like this, asses who are ignored and shunned, not patronized for even a second.  No one finds this kind of behavior "cute" in my hood.  Why would a grown man with a wife and children behave like this?  Dude, get over yourself.

See a pattern here?  That same pattern extends out from Cosby to the whole of America, as we will come to see...

Cosby was an Executive Producer, as well as star, of his show.  He had ultimate control of the show's content. His "wife" on the show was a lawyer who you never saw at work or clean the house.  Her manipulative, "cunning" character had two purposes -- to telegraph to the audience how "adoringly funny" Cosby was and to be his trite "mother" who "hens" with other silly women about husbands' "bad boy" stunts. This Oedipal-dripping dynamic is so entirely Freudian as to be a joke itself -- not a funny joke, though. Lauded as "feminist" at the time, the Mrs. Huxtable character is unfortunately not a fully-realized person, only a version of what men (including a psychologist hired as the show's consultant) think women are.

"Dr. Huxtable" was a gynecologist who delivered babies.  Uh, creepy... Cosby, once again, stridently wanted the audience to see him as "father-savior", including even being a "father" to other people's newborns by proxy. In other words, out of all the professions the character could have had wherein comedy set-ups abound -- college teacher, social worker, restaurant owner -- Cosby chose the one involving women's vaginas. Wouldn't it have been more believable, more sensible, to have him as a lawyer and his wife as a gynecologist?  This was Cosby's choice.

Older people were treated as though a source for humor on the show, to be made fun of on occasion, and then go home.  No older person on the show had a job, made any contribution, not even as baby-sitter to the kids.  Family -- with no real involvement.  Hmm.

"The Cosby Show" treated children as though stupid and was smug about it, making the children call him "sir".  I recall a scene in which the father had a talk to his son about money. The father gives the kid a handful of cash and then systematically takes the money back as a life-lesson for the bills the kid will have to pay when he is on his own.  I was a teenager at the time of viewing this exchange and recall thinking that if I were that kid, I'd leave home immediately, never to return, never to speak to the father again, since the father took great joy out of methodically making the son feel small and inferior. The proper way to have handled the situation would have been for the father to tell the son he is supportive of whatever decisions he makes, that everyone makes mistakes but it is how and what he learned that really mattered, how he treated himself and others, and, when the son was ready to learn about finances to come see him, keeping the lines of communication open.

There was no self-expression in the Huxtable household, for anyone -- only Dad's Superiority Complex. There was never any discussion about sexuality, never a person running around in their underwear as what happens every minute of every day in households across the world.  Where's the scene where the parents are having sex and the kid bursts into the room?  Where's the scene where a parent is in the bathroom and the kid bursts into the room?  Where's the scene where the kids have a slap fight?  Where was the TV in the living room on a show that was on TV?

There was more than plenty of talk about education, military duty, about money, money, money. You could set your watch by references to the parents having money and the children didn't, how much the children were costing the parents, on and on.  The guilt was laid on as thick as the consumerist value-system.

Gay people were as mysteriously absent from "The Cosby Show" as the lack of ethnicity was on "Friends" -- a perplexing mystery especially since both shows were set in present-day New York City.  None of the kids had gay friends?  A large number of gay people worked on the "Cosby" show behind the scenes, as gay people have to make up as much of show business as people who happened to be Jewish.  If there were anyone who could attest to the low representation of minorities in mass media, it surely would be Mr. Cosby who would want ample opportunity to have as many targets for humor as possible, right?  Uh, no.

"The Cosby Show" pandered to White people's white-washed perceptions of what Black people would be like if Black people were like White people, the opposite of "All In The Family" wherein White people acted like White people in trying to figure out how to respond to Black people who aren't like White people -- recognizing two separate but equal communities, two experiences, exploring through contrast and comparisons. Chris Rock has built a career on that premise.  "The Cosby Show" ended up representing no one except Bill Cosby's limited toleration of others -- including women, children, the aged -- the very people his "allegedly beloved act" is associated with. By never mentioning the words "African-American" or "Black" or even the "N-word" as people do in real life, the characters might as well have been green, for all it mattered. How does that help in understanding "differences" by never mentioning it?

The Cosby-produced kids' TV show, "Fat Albert" would never fly coming on to the air today because the whole basis of the show is about "fat shaming" the main character. Perhaps the cartoon show is more telling than one would suspect.  Is the "ribbing" between the characters actually "bullying" and that alienation, felt by Cosby growing up, the impetus of Cosby's inferiority that drives his need for authority?  Is he trying to be the "father" that he needs for himself who would protect, love, and accept him?

Cosby prefers being called "Doctor", even though he isn't any more or less a doctor than Dr. Phil or Dr. Laura, who also take on an authority about relationships they haven't any cause for either. Cosby has authored the books "Fatherhood," "Time Flies" and "Childhood".  What makes him an expert, the fact he has lots of children and was once a child himself?  He's not selling the books as "first person celebrity anecdotes".  He's prescribing advice as dictated by a for-real doctor.

Each of Cosby's children in real life were given names beginning with the letter "E" to represent "excellence".  (Excellence?  Please refer back to Items #1 and #2.) What kind of pressure does that have on a kid -- to not only live up to a famous parent, but to then having to live up to a strange standard of "excelling"? What's that about?

The murder of his son, Ennis, in 1997, on a Los Angeles freeway in a drug-related robbery/shooting incident in which his son was randomly chosen as a victim marked the end of the era in which Cosby took himself way too seriously, flaunting his doctorate degree as a banner of his imagined superior intelligence, and nose-dived into a complete lack of humor. His intensity was palpable but we will never know if it was fueled by grief, anger, frustration or any other emotion, because, once again, he never spoke about it, nor seemed to take what happened into his work as an artist.  (A familiar scenario -- similar to reactions by former "The Cosby Show" cast members when asked about the recent allegations against Cosby -- "I don't know....I never saw it...I wasn't involved...")

Cosby was front-and-center at the Playboy Jazz Festival for years, fancying himself a musician, though he plays no instrument, can not read or write music, nor sing.  He has been known to frequent the Playboy mansion and Playboy Clubs.  Why would he risk offending his core "family" audience by associating with -- becoming the very face of -- a multi-media empire based on misogyny, sexual freedom and leftist liberalism?  Playboy and Cosby seem at odds in their brands, unless you consider that Cosby has several distinct "lives" -- one on TV and in media which is "wholesome", one at home which is old-school turn-of-the-Century patriarchal, one that is secret and never discussed that is part of the Playboy lifestyle which is so prevalent as to be hard to deny. Ghosts of Michael Jackson loom...

Comedy, at its core, is about suffering, conflict.  Often, comedians become successful, wealthy and happy, and are disconnected from the source of their pain which inspired their comedy in the first place.  How can Cosby be relatable presently when he represents 80s consumerism, pseudo-Christian religious beliefs and tenuous moralities while simultaneously promoting the objectifying and sexualization of women, when he has alienated himself from the African-American community by offending them with aspersions of ignorance and his own intolerant narrow-mindedness? Is this someone you'd invite into your home and listen to?  Probably not.  But you might make fun of them behind their back.

4.  Bill Cosby's future isn't funny.

Cosby announced this week that he has "several ideas" to work on, even though he has been unceremoniously rejected by several producers of on-line original programming and the whole of the world knows this, making his cold-as-ice "brand" even less likely to buy in any format.

One way of of telling Cosby is no longer viable is that he isn't producing himself and translating what he does to the internet insomuch as anyone can tell.  He doesn't have a large internet following or twitter masses hanging on to his every word and the like.  He isn't mentoring anyone noteworthy either. He isn't working with anyone "hot", surrounding himself with ultra-talent who could revitalize his own talents for a new generation.

His low-wattage current career path is to use charities to hog whatever media attention he can muster, while forgoing traditional stand-up comedy circuits and road tours, and while continually soft-balling "truck-stop" colleges and community theaters.  No up-coming small part walk-on nods in a big budget films, no HBO specials or reality series, no one-man Broadway shows, no Las Vegas venues, no insightful film-fest documentaries, no national-level commercial, no up-coming album release, no book mega-deal, no "Cosby Show" reunion -- not even a succession of Indian casino gigs. By doing this, he is his own worst representation imaginable, undermining his "perceived value" and recognition factor, in a time when even non-celebrities are celebrities because they're not celebrities, making someone on "The D List" appear more sought after than this former "A Lister".

The bottom line is always the bottom line, and, Mr. Cosby can not guarantee an across-the-board return (or profit) on anyone's investment with projects to which he is attached, not even by milking what precious little there is to mine from the past in retro-style. If not for the money (which seems like he hasn't had any new big revenue sources since his TV show), what is the motivation to continue on?  That question looms around his head, replacing his halo with a cloud of doubt about what is next. 

The music recording industry is doing a three-sixty, evolving into internet media and cutting out layers of management.  TV is dying fast, replaced by the internet as well.  Stand-up comedians had better figure out a way to stay relevant, to not eat up massive amounts of materials as they had on TV and by now being on the internet, and to diversify their portfolio of talents for different media formats.  There is no reason to pay for a real-live Bill Cosby when digitally downloading him is free.  In fact, him being alive is a hindrance, as Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Michael Jackson were.  Bill Cosby's future isn't anything to laugh at because it isn't funny and it is less funny as time passes.

5. Comedians aren't funny anymore anyway.

In a January 2014 study, conducted in the British Journal of Psychiatry, scientists found that comedians tend to have high levels of psychotic personality traits. In the study, researchers analyzed 404 male and 119 female comedians from Australia, Britain, and the United States. The participants were asked to complete an online questionnaire designed to measure psychotic traits in healthy people. They found that comedians scored "significantly higher on four types of psychotic characteristics compared to a control group of people who had non-creative jobs." Gordon Claridge, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford and leader of the study claimed, "the creative elements needed to produce humor are strikingly similar to those characterizing the cognitive style of people with psychosis - both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder."

To find out "Lucy" was acting out from bipolar depression would be depressing in itself and would make her not funny at all.  What is at the core of Bill Cosby's need to seek attention -- healthy outlet or compulsive psychosis?

Perhaps Bill Cosby can not speak to allegations directed against him openly due to the insistence of legal council or court mandates.  But he does have a platform in which speak on many important issues of the day, any day he chooses.  He has the eyes of the world on him, and he has a tool -- humor -- as a way to convey messages.  Even when promoting "social causes" or when he has spoken out in the past about his perceptions of how others in the Black community should behave, for example, the subject matter is him, his wealth, his power, his image as the moral and benevolent "Father Figure", as if he were The Pope.  He over-shoots his authority and self-aggrandizes at every turn.  Being an entertainer -- even a beloved one, even a legendary, historic one -- isn't life-or-death.  You can't eat it, wear it, live in it, drive it or put it in a bank.  Entertainment's value is temporary at best and cheap.  Performers come...and they go.

Even if Bill Cosby is one-hundred-percent innocent of the ALL heinous allegations against him, Bill Cosby is not funny, has not been funny for a long while -- as a person or as a public personae, similar to Bill Clinton, only in his case, Bill Clinton has become a joke.  Perhaps those two men have a lot more in common than one would suspect on the surface.

Cosby has the worn-out aura of a guilty man who has pronounced his innocence for so long, he has become annoyed by the questions, the questions becoming his identity.  Mass murderers, child-molesters, drug addicts -- all justify their acts in order to live with themselves, as when someone who really is "crazy" tries to convince you they are "sane", while the rest of us secretly wonder how crazy we really are -- which is normal.

Whatever Cosby had has been eclipsed by negative connotations connected to his reputation -- as a man, a husband, a father, as an artist, as a businessman, as a representative of his people, as an American -- and not because of the allegations of women he has or hasn't crossed paths with.  He has done this to himself through his deeply personal, massive insecurities -- ego is his undoing, as simple of an answer as that might seem.

The Emperor has no clothes.  He should go home to deal with the triumphs and tragedies of a life-time, retire from public viewing, seek therapy, stop speaking to anyone outside the "inner circle" altogether.  His insistence at remaining high profile will force the whole of the world to judge him in the take-no-prisoners court of public opinion -- including my own harsh opinions -- and he will not win his cause of becoming triumphant at the end of the day, no matter the cost, of having the last laugh.

The "joke", if there is one now, now that we're finally aware, is on us and it isn't funny.