Bill Cosby and his plague of arrogance

“The Offending Article”, from nypost.com

It’s time for a rant and I hope you’ll agree that we all need to speak up on this.

I’ve just read Bill Cosby’s op-ed in the New York Post – a pale imitation of the New York Times – and what he thinks is a “plague of apathy”. It’s the usual Cosby schtick: go to school, get a job, respect your elders and pull your own weight. All admirable qualities to strive for but Cosby’s now gone and thrown a clanger in the mix, saying that the only people who live up to these ideals are Black Muslims. Yes, that to have a cosy little family-centred up-bringing, we must all take note of a religion whose fundamentalist side is rooted in the patriarchy: women are nothing more than bits of meat, stonings and torture take place over a fair trial and, sorry Bill, but I’ve never known a Christian or Jew to behead others for daring to have different beliefs.

Never mind that the piece is hyperbole anyway (of course), but I’ve read it three times now and it still doesn’t make any sense. It rambles from stories of people growing up and being strung about by controlling parents to mentioning the deaths of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston and then to how we all should emulate Muslims, and that cigarettes and alcohol are more harmful than extremism.

Cosby likes to get in a snit over the smoking of cigarettes (and yes, I’m an out-and-proud chain-smoker, so have a puff on that, Bill) but didn’t cigarettes as we know them today come about after the British soldiers serving in the Crimean War were inspired by the tobacco-smoking Turkish soldiers, and how many of the Ottoman Empire’s armed forces were Muslim? Please correct me if I’m wrong, but could this not be a streak of hypocrisy on Cosby’s part?

There is no such group of “Black Muslims” – it’s instead an umbrella coterie including the Nation of Islam, United Nation of Islam and the Five-Percent Nation – not a land of “mates rates” but a splinter group of the Nation of Islam. If the Southern Poverty Law Center is against them, then shouldn’t we all? Is Mr Cosby happy to sing the alleged praises of these groups’ anti-Semitic and anti-gay and above all, racist, rhetoric?

The Nation of Islam believes that Jewish people are ‘responisble’ for ” … the filth of Hollywood that is seeding the American people …” which smacks of Joseph McCarthy’s mad reign of witchhunts and “reds under the beds”. They even believe that Hitler was “a great man” and leader Louis Farrakhan is noted as saying

“[I’m] not proud of Hitler’s evil toward Jewish people, but that’s a matter of record. Well, in a sense you could say there is a similarity in that we are rising our people up from nothing.”

Charming! The Nation of Islam even has a “Health Minister”, not just a spokesman, accusing Jewish doctors of injecting African-Americans with AIDS. Do you believe that, Mr Cosby?

The United Nation of Islam’s founder is Royall Jenkins, a guy who believes he spent time on a spaceship with angels. And yet Scientology too is based on other unbelievable sci-fi schlock and is espoused by Cosby’s fellow A-listers. And the Five-Percenters are mostly profligated by the dullest hip-hop “artists”, Wu Tang Clan, Nas and Queen Latifah.

Surprisingly the best criticism of Cosby’s half-arsed rant I’ve seen is from a Republican Congressman, Allen West of Florida, who is African-American and tweeted:

“Bill Cosby said we should [be] more like Muslims,” West wrote. “[You] mean honor killings, beheadings, suicide bombings? Hope [you’re] kidding sir.” 

Despite being before my time, The Cosby Show always looked like it was for saps anyway. Rubbish for touchy-feely wimps who need to be slapped into the real world. Come on, how could that show have beat Cheers and Roseanne in the ratings? I wonder if the Huxtable kids were schooled not just in respect and common courtesy but Sharia law, too? I’d hate to see an argument between the kids in that house. I’d also check out your own life, Bill. You’ve had quite a few lawsuits and are an adulterer yourself despite your crazed preaching like Pauline Fowler or Peggy Mitchell that family is everything.

It’s not just kids who say the darnedest things, but Bill Cosby too, and why should he get away with it?

From A to B to E (picking and mixing religion)

Not too shabby looking …

I’m not religious, so it wasn’t a big surprise that after doing an online quiz (no, not the “What type of porn star am I?” or “Which sexual position is best for me?” type) on which religion is “best” for me. I got 100% compatibility with Unitarian Universalism, which makes sense I guess – I’ve never believed in a god, much less the usual Christian one or any other type, and especially not Jesus (he’s always seemed a bit of a pansy) and the poster-child for hypocrites and the small-minded. Why have so many of my peers joined MySpace or Facebook and ticked the box that they’re a Christian when they’re anything but? My “religion” on social media has gone from Atheist to Buddhist/Judaism and is currently Humanist Judaism, which I’ve cheekily subtitled as “From Goy to Oy”, Philosemite that I am. And with all these people saying they’re a Christian despite living like a “heretic” if not the hedonist they are, it’s due to them being christened isn’t it? I was, in the Uniting Church (clearly the best form of Christianity around, with their progressiveness and acceptance of women and gay people) and it’s the only time I’ve been in a church. Same goes for them I reckon.

I used to call myself an atheist but it seemed too militant (i.e. stubborn – just look at Richard Dawkins) and so dabbled with calling myself a Humanist, but Humanism doesn’t believe in an “afterlife” – I believe in ghosts because I’ve seen one twice – if they don’t exist, then why so much of them in popular culture? Same for aliens, too – but I don’t extend the same courtesy to the current cultural undead phenomena of vampires and werewolves. That’s ridic. I dabble in astrology too, due to my mum being a teacher of it so I’ve picked up bits and pieces over the years and found most parts to be true – I’m a Leo with a Virgo moon and an Aries ascendant, and if you’re up with the zodiac then you would’ve known by now.

I’ve always felt a bit iffy towards most believers of Christianity since in my Year 5 R.E. class, when the class clown asked the voluntary scripture teacher if he was a paedophile and the guy became more flustered and “Ummed” and “Ahhed” than Hugh Grant in a rom-com, declaring “I don’t know what one of them is.” Yeah, a likely story. My other big beefs with “God-botherers”, however serious they may be, have been the remarks that when somebody dies it was “God wanted them” (hardly an invite to an A-list party) and “God sends these things to test us” – well then, get the guy a stress ball! If you’ve got stress, then take some time out, have a drink, pop a pill or change your own circumstances – don’t shift the blame to a supposedly omnipresent, phony “eye-in-the-sky” – there we go, God: the original voyeur!

And as for Catholicism, it was bad enough my ancestors were Huguenots (kicked out of France for refusing to tow the line and kow-tow to the Catholic God – what champs!) only for my great-grandparents to return to the fold and subject my family to never-ending requiem masses when they snuffed it. This point is best shown by my Mum’s favourite funereal memory, when my great-grandfather from the other side of the family had the big Catholic burial and as his coffin was lowered into the grave, one of the handlers nearly fell in with it. Imagine! Having to be bored out of your mind by Latin and other rituals, and then trying not to laugh for an hour or more. Funnily enough, my Mum – the new ager with hippie ideals that she is – rebelled as a teenager by going to a bible study group. Just goes to show the limited appeal of Christianity. And it’s always a source of mirth and dismay of the hypocrisy that her best friend from that time is still believing she’s Jesus’ own sunbeam and won’t let her kids read Harry Potter but will let them watch Star Trek.

In the census before last, I put my religion down as ‘Buddhist’, mainly to boost the numbers and I do agree with some parts of it (and as the quiz shows, I do have some “compatibility” with the Theravada and Mahayana strains of Buddhism): the eight-fold path – better than a garden path – and that the Buddha himself was pretty much a top bloke, however I don’t look good in orange and nor would I look good in Orange.

Which brings me down the list to Reform Judaism (YAY!).

Since my philosemitism blossomed at the age of 16, I’ve always been trying to learn more about Judaism as a whole, and I often think of converting, mainly for the purely selfish reason that I could then call myself Jewish, selfish because of how holistically attractive I think any Jewish person is. But if I was Jewish, would all my out and proud pro-Jew and pro-Israel sentiments then make a “God-botherer” out of me? Perhaps it’s best to leave it alone and go on being the astrology and ghost-believing atheist-lite philosemite that I am. I already bandy about words and would love to do rituals that come from Judaism and to convert to even the Reform branch of Judaism requires a few years study, and even with something I like (and parts I believe) so strongly I would inevitably indulge my indolent streak and let it slide – much like my half-arsed attempt at getting a degree, three years and counting of on-again, off-again time-wasting.

And would Jews have me anyway? For all my chest-thumping and obsessing over Judaism, I’m saddened to say that I’ve never knowingly met a Jew and worry that I appear patronising in my love, respect and defence for Jewish people. Come on, it’s all very presumptuous on my part isn’t it? There’s no Jewish congregation or even a place to go and learn about it here in Gympie where I currently live – it would be like going to learn about veganism at a butcher’s. For all the good that books do, they’re not a patch on learning in person sometimes.

As much as I believe in the separation of church and state, and that having a religion is not a be-all and end-all, the number of times I’m asked what my religion is, from Facebook to the census and general questionnaires, perhaps it’s best to just leave well alone and go on as the no-name philosophy I’ve chosen – equal parts new age larks and bits and pieces of this and that, from Buddhism to Judaism and certainly no Catholicism.