In the last decade or so, Bill Cosby's career-defining image - the affable dad with a penchant for designer sweaters - has been supplanted by another: the cantankerous elder fed up with problems plaguing black youths.
The legendary comedian, who will perform at the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts in Virginia Beach on Thursday, has spoken out about his frustrations with what he sees as crippling apathy in black America. He made headlines in 2004 for his infamous "pound cake speech" at an NAACP award ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision.
"People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake," Cosby said at the time. "And then we all run out and are outraged: 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"
Cosby's underlying point was that the culture of poverty, normalized and even glamorized by some, is partly to blame for racial inequalities today. Critics skewered him and called him an elitist. Cosby responded in 2007 with "Come On, People: On the Path from Victims to Victors," a book written with Alvin Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a consultant on "The Cosby Show," theNo. 1 primetime show in America from 1985 to 1989.
At age 76, and after more than 50 years in the business, Cosby is still exploring how family relationships shape our lives and our psyches. He does the same thing on a recent Monday morning, when I call him at his home in western Massachusetts.
After two rings, the comedian-actor answers the phone in a mock harried tone, the way he used to address the Huxtable kids on "The Cosby Show."
"What is it now?"
I introduce myself, and Cosby asks my age - 36. He asks for the meaning of my name - Arabic for "gifted one" or "good guidance." Then he builds a narrative using me as the main character to buttress and spin variations on his theme: "The revolution is in the home."
"Let's say you go to school," Cosby says. "I'm gonna make you 14. You go to school, right?"
"Right."
"What grade are you in? About the eighth or ninth grade, right?"
"Right."
"The bell rings at what time?"
"3:30."
"You have math, science, English, social studies, et cetera. When you finish there, what time do you leave the building?"
"About a quarter to 4."
"Where are you going?"
"I actually had a job after school, so I'm going to the downtown library, where I work for about three hours."
Cosby asks about my father, who wasn't in the picture. My parents had been divorced for nearly a decade. Mama had several older female friends who were like surrogate aunts. I share this with Cosby.
"And they're talking to you, and they're serious," Cosby says. "And you got this job, and you want to help out. You didn't decide that you wanted to go to Dunkin Donuts with a gun. Hello?"
"I'm here."
"Oh, I know you're here," Cosby says. "Yes or no?"
"No."
"You didn't decide that you were going to meet up with the drug dealer for a lot of money to buy your mother a new house. Now, somewhere Rashod, better known as the gift, knew that what he was going to be doing for money was work three hours in the library."
Cosby asks about my evenings circa 1993, which included cooking for my sister and me because Mama was often still at work when we arrived home from our after-school jobs.
"The revolution," Cosby says with a dramatic pause, "the revolution is in the house. You have all these women, and these women are not treating you like you can't do anything. I hear your pain. This is very important, man. Because in spite of the divorce, we're talking about a woman working and different women working and being around this male because the revolution is in the house. You're cooking, and your mother is going to eat your raggedy cooking."
I laugh. Cosby doesn't know that I was a talented cook and that Mama and her friends raved about my food. But I keep that to myself as Cosby takes details from my past and gives them back to me with a new spin, a re-imagined song.
Bill Cosby is a jazz man. His love for the music is no secret; he even plays the drums.
On "The Cosby Show," the iconic '80s sitcom about the affluent, art-loving Huxtables, the music and the stars who made jazz were often featured. But beyond being a lifelong aficionado, Cosby's approach to comedy - the way he spins and improvises stories, the manipulations in pitch and inflections - is similar to how a jazz musician re-imagines a melody.
His comedy, delivered through TV shows, books, movies, cartoons and albums, is as much an extension of John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins as Mark Twain and the winding storytelling style of Cosby's grandfather.
The "blues impulse" drives it all.
It's evident when he's onstage, as he takes familiar ideas, stretching and inverting them, all while pulling the audience in and creating an invigorating call and response. He repeats his theme at different intervals, the rhythm of his speech fluid and improvisational, a kaleidoscope of dark and pastel shades, like the music of Miles Davis, one of Cosby's favorites.
The uplift of poor people has long been the baseline of Cosby's art - the sharing of universal joys and fears through the cultural specificities of urban blackness.
Whether he's onstage before an audience of moneyed white people or talking on the phone with a black culture reporter in Virginia Beach, Cosby focuses on commonalities, twisting his way through a narrative to find wisdom and affirmations of our humanity.
My strict daily routine at 14 was another form of nurturing, Cosby tells me.
"This does not make you a weird person," Cosby says. "This makes you a person who is being protected. These old women are popping in and out and asking how you're doing in school. The revolution is in the home. Now, I'm going to ask you a question. You're 14. You're not hanging with the boys who don't do their homework?"
"No."
"I love your 'no,' " Cosby says, chuckling. "But you know the corner they're always on, and they go to the same school, and they're supposed to be tough. And they talk a whole lot and dress a certain way and walk a certain way. Now the point is this: Whatever happened to those guys?"
Several of them died before graduation, I tell Cosby.
"The boys who were left out there were left unprotected, not Rashod," Cosby says. "Some people are not paying attention to the revolution within the home. Your blackness: How many things did you hear about your history, about slavery? You came up at age 14, and you knew about your blackness."
He's not being presumptuous. I was an avid reader of black history. And part of the inspiration behind my assuming the centrality of my culture came from "The Cosby Show." There, on TV every Thursday night, the multihued Huxtables looked like folks I knew. Tuning in broadened my understanding of family. Even if I didn't see such affluence and loving engagement in my neighborhood, "The Cosby Show" made it accessible and real.
Cosby riffs about sociopolitical systems that reward victims and close schools, the devastation of drugs in the black community, the psychological damage of poverty.
"Where's the solution?" I ask.
"The solution is in your history. You know it, and you know better," Cosby says. "But you're just too damn lazy, and I mean that. You were given a brain by God. Do what you can. I want you to fight back."
The "you" is understood to be any oppressed person.
An hour has passed, and Cosby has to go.
"Your mother still living?" the comedy legend asks.
"Yes, very much so."
"Tell her I said, 'Thank you.' The revolution is in the home. See you later."
Rashod Ollison, 757-446-2732, rashod.ollison@pilotonline.com. Check out Rashod's blog at www.hamptonroads.com/behindthegroove.
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Cosby returns to TV
“Far From Finished,” Bill Cosby’s first televised concert in 30 years, will air at 8 p.m. Nov. 23 on Comedy Central. In it, the comedian improvises variations on funny ideas, the way a jazz musician deconstructs and reshapes a melody.
And it might not be his only upcoming TV work. In a recent interview with Yahoo, Cosby said he has been developing a TV show to pitch to the networks, and he’d also like to launch an update of the classic animated show “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.”
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If you go
Who Bill Cosby
When 7:30 p.m. Nov. 21
Where Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, 201 Market St., Virginia Beach
Cost $45 to $80
More info 385-2787, www.sandlercenter.org