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Monday July 5, 2004 Volume VI Number 27

f I were to shout a hearty AMEN in response to Bill Cosby’s most recent diatribes on the shortcomings of parents who ought to know better, I would run the risk of appearing insensitive. 

At best, some may accuse me of political incorrectness – a white male cheering the blistering critique of a certain black sub-culture.  It’s just plain inappropriate.  At worst, others might play that race card, and suggest that such enthusiasm for Cosby’s speeches betray some sort of foreboding, lingering prejudice - that I’m drawn to caricatures and stereotypes that are rooted in an antiquated bigotry that is unacceptable in this enlightened era.

At the outset, I’d rather plead not guilty on any of those counts.

Bill Cosby’s eruption in the public forum is rooted in the DNA of a caring father.  While his poignant message is clearly directed at his own ethnic clan, Cosby’s concern transcends racial typecasting.  Cosby is in his heart a dad.  He’s got the perspective of a dad.  The disposition of a dad.  And as a father, and now a grandfather, he sees the children exposed.  At risk.  Neglected.  Falling way short of the hopes and dreams a good dad ought to engender in them.  And he’s deeply troubled over it.

Cosby couldn’t care less about political correctness, about conforming to the conventional wisdom or textbook analysis.  And isn’t that what happens at the Grandparent stage?  Early on, appearances are everything.  Most in the prime of adulthood would never admit to conformity, but for most all of us as we began, conformity to the prevailing culture was paramount.  Grandparents, thankfully, don’t worry too much any more about what other people think.  It may be a sign of the emerging wisdom that comes along with thickening waistlines and receding hairlines.  Opinions come from the heart, not the head.  From experience, not someone’s well crafted theory.

The Cosby Show was perhaps one of the last family sit-coms to draw a truly mass American audience.  There were two hundred and one episodes made in eight seasons at NBC.  Thursday night was the sit-com sweet spot – and the show occupied that honored place in the schedule from 1984 through 1992.  Dr. Cliff Huxtable and his wife Clair struggled week after week, with a stroke of comic genius, to assist as their five children wandered through adolescence toward adulthood, and the nation tuned in.

The Huxtables were intentional, caring, available parents.  They held on to strong family values, encouraging independence and academic development.  But they drew boundaries.  They had expectations.  The children knew when they crossed the line into forbidden territory.  Cosby did not apologize.  He stood firm.  Laughing and loving all the way.  It wasn’t a contradiction.  He intended to create roll-models.  He wanted to contribute to a sense of what could be accomplished in a world brimming with opportunity.

The Huxtables were not an African American family.  They were an American family.  And on this celebration of forty years since the passage of the Civil Rights legislation in 1964, it should be noted: the Huxtables certainly contributed a great deal the progress made by the beneficiaries of that legislation.  The show illumined the simple truth: family is family.  Parents are parents.  Teenagers are teenagers. 

We are all in this thing together.

So when Bill Cosby stood before a large audience in Washington D.C. about a month ago at a gala dinner celebrating the 50^th Anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, he launched a no-holds-barred assault on permissive, neglectful parents who have failed to take advantage of the wide open door of opportunity afforded them by that same legislation passed so many years ago.  He derided an overused victim mentality, with little sympathy for those who complain of helplessness in the face of popular culture.  There is an anti-achievement attitude that prevails among young impressionable kids, Cosby lamented.  “Why are some parents buying their kids $500 tennis shoes and refusing to spend $200 on ‘Hooked on Phonics’?”  He went on -

Ladies and gentlemen, do me a favor. Talk to each other. Talk to each other. I have too many positive stories also. When I said, “Take your neighborhood back,” this can happen. You have to get out and talk to each other. And you have to realize what is good and what is not good and who's tweaking your children to buy things.

I mean, when girls are beating up other girls because the other girls were virgins, when boys are attacking other boys because the boys are studying and they say, “You're acting white.” Well, I got news for ya, a guy told me that there were some white kids who attacked other white kids because they were studying and they said, “You're acting Asian.” So it's a disease all around.

Cosby is concerned that kids can’t speak English.  They don’t read.  They are anti-intellectual.  Anti-achievement.  When crime is cool and anti-social behavior is not only condoned, but encouraged, we have a problem, Cosby said to his elite Washingtonian listeners.

Many wondered out loud in the media if Cosby had lost his marbles, if not his sensibilities.  Others suggested that a wealthy man like Cosby has no concept anymore of what it’s like to live without.  He’s lost his capacity to understand and appreciate the plight of the poor.

It was a month later.  Cosby again spoke, this time to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition & Citizenship Education Fund's annual conference in Chicago.  It was a repeat performance.  He hardly backed down.  In fact, he was even more direct.  And interesting enough, Jesse Jackson supported his uncompromising remarks.

It reminded me of those early years when a young Jesse Jackson made the circuit addressing high school assemblies in the mid-to-late seventies.  Jackson had been there on the terrace of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis when Martin Luther King was gunned down in cold blood in 1968.  He witnessed the chaos of the watershed killing first hand – an eyewitness.  Jackson, not even thirty at the time, determined to keep Dr. King’s vision alive.  Less than years later, he would visit campuses and deliver energetic, pointed speeches to teenagers about the power of education and the possibilities for those who developed themselves intellectually and academically.  He warned against the harmful effects of the abuse of drugs and sex and the consequences of crime and violence, taking on the gangs and challenging them to a higher calling.  Most agreed, his work had a positive impact on thousands of lives.

Now, in affirming Cosby’s campaign, he appears to be re-affirming his own. 

But once again, this campaign transcends racial barriers.  This is the heart cry of every good father.  And mother:  Kids.  Shape up.  It’s dangerous world.  Full of sinister and shadowy forces – forces that destroy.  Learn to resist those forces.  Fight the good fight.  Take your work seriously.  Cultivate your better nature.  Learn to read and write and speak.  Learn to complete your assignments.  Help each other.  Know there is a bright tomorrow.  There’s a big pay-off in delayed gratification.  Find a dream, and go for it.  We believe in you. 

The most significant person to deliver this message to a child, according to Cosby, is a parent.  A mom and a dad.   Throw in a couple of caring grandparents and a few aunts and uncles, and you’ve got a powerful, unstoppable force for good.

Maybe I liked the Cosby Show because Cliff Huxtable reminded me in so many ways of my own Dad.

* * * * * * *

I’ve been telling you something about the three men, all of them gone now, who were fathers to me – my two grandfathers and my dad.   It all came together in preparation for a Father’s Day message.  I didn’t speak much about them directly that day, because I had a limited amount of time (which I more than filled).  But their influence and presence were as much a part of that message as they are of my life.

As I grow into this new stage, their place seems more and more pronounced.  I hear their voice in mine.  A comment or a phrase comes out, and I know it’s not really mine, it’s his.  But then, come to think of it, thanks to him, it is mine.  The torch is passed.

That message was about the universal need to receive a father’s blessing.  If you got it, you know how powerful an influence it has been for you.  If you didn’t, you know the pain and the emptiness of the absence of that blessing.  It’s not the only factor in becoming a whole person, but it’s a big one.

It was early on a Saturday morning, we got the word.  Dad slipped away into eternity just before sunrise.  We gathered in his hospital room with Mom, and we said good-bye.  It was 1997.  Seven years ago.

It can be safely said that Dad’s seven children were the center-piece of his life.  He saw each of them married, and he embraced each of their spouses as one of his own children.  In the end, his physical limitations restricted his involvement – but none of us questioned his heart for his family.

I told our Sunday morning crowd on Father’s Day some of the lessons I’ve learned about fatherhood – now that I’m perceived as a veteran dad.  (There are a few dads more senior than me in our little church, but not many.  Most all of them are younger.)  I made the point that kids need to see their father openly, energetically, recklessly affectionate toward their mother.

I recalled for them those early Sunday mornings, when dad would herd us kids into the car for church on Sunday morning.  Those were the days when the girls wore frilly dresses and ribbons and bows and the boys sported ties.  Dad put on a suit.  Even in summer.  And we’d sit in the driveway, ready to go.  Mom would be the last one out of the house.

Dad could grow impatient.  He learned early on not to honk the horn.  That would be a certain cause for silence all the way to church.  So he didn’t honk.  But he would rev up the V-8 a little bit, just tapping the accelerator, transmission in neutral… hoping to catch mom’s attention and remind her (as though she needed it) that we were all ready to go.

Then she would appear, a bit frazzled but dressed for Sunday, out the back door and toward the car and I’d be sittin’ up front with dad (one of the prerogatives of the first-born), the others in back.

“See that woman?” dad would ask, pointing in her direction but looking at me just to be sure I was paying attention.  “Yep,” I said, knowing what was coming next.  “Right there,” and he looked back at her, “walking toward this car, is the most beautiful woman in the world – and I married her,” he bragged.  That was my Mom he was talking about.  And I knew he meant it.

I don’t know why.  But at that very instant the cosmos lined up.  The whole universe felt like it was in order.  Just for that moment in time, there were no contradictions.  No fears.  No inexplicable calamities.  All of planet Earth felt good and right and whole, full of purpose and meaning and promise.  And I did, too.

I stepped out the front door, holding it open for my Mother and she slipped in next to Dad and I took my coveted place at shotgun (that’s what we called the front window seat on the passenger side).

And dad backed out the driveway, and took us all to church.

* * * * * *

It’s Monday morning.  You are a leader.

It’s Independence Day Weekend – and I trust that you are proud to be an American and that you and your family took in the fireworks.  It’s a good long weekend.  Time for relaxation.  Time for you to enjoy that home of yours.

Bill Cosby sounded the alarm this month.  It’s a clarion call; not limited to his intended listeners.

It’s a call to all of us who are parents.  It’s a reminder that good parenting matters.  The resistance kids have toward parental involvement is as predictable as the sunrise.  Our attentive, active involvement is our greatest gift.  Not only to them, but to the whole community – and nation.

I’ve only started telling you about my dad.  But that one story is enough for now.  He loved my Mom.  He got us to church.  He didn’t just drop us off at the entryway.  He was there with us.

The former Cliff Huxtable places responsibility squarely on our doorstep.

It’s never too late to be what you are meant to be.

Posted in Valley Center, California

© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2004

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