Bill Cosby And The Obama Effect

Some theorists argue that political and social change is preceded by shifts in popular culture. So it's not surprising that the debate has heated up over who, or what, in arts and entertainment presaged Barack Obama's election as president.

Many ideas have ricocheted around academia and the blogosphere -- from Oprah Winfrey to Tiger Woods to Will Smith to "The West Wing," to the many actors who have played black presidents, among them Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock (although not that many people actually saw Mr. Rock's film "Head of State").

But one idea seems to be gaining traction, and improbably it has Bill Cosby and Karl Rove in agreement: "The Cosby Show," which began on NBC in 1984 and depicted the Huxtables, an upwardly mobile black family -- a departure from the dysfunction and bickering that had characterized some previous shows about black families -- had succeeded in changing racial attitudes enough to make an Obama candidacy possible.

On election night Mr. Rove, the former Bush strategist, said on Fox News: "We've had an African-American first family for many years in different forms. When 'The Cosby Show' was on, that was America's family. It wasn't a black family. It was America's family."

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[Bashley]

I think the Huxtable family was an ideal family for all Americans. It was unrealistic, in some ways, for everyone. There are not many households where the parents have two advanced degrees. Most kids, black and white, poor or middle class, can relate to the sibling issues and having two working parents. That's what hit home for me.

[Internaut]

I hope Obama does not become cur.sed with the Lisa Bonet Syndrome.

[ssg13565]

Rather than the Cosby Effect, I call it the Reverse Bradley Effect. People didn't want to admit publicly that they would vote for Obama. In the privacy of the voting booth, they could vote for him.

In my neighborhood, I was the only one with an Obama sign in my front yard during the campaign.

After the election, I saw several hand made Obama signs in peoples' yards. I had to wonder why these people did not have signs up before the election.

[barackobama4prez]

I call it the Obama effect.

[sykadelic chic]

I don't agree with most of this article, but I will say that I'm one of those kids that grew up on the Cosby's (I am a twentysomething white female who grew up in a rural farming/blue collar Midwestern town) and I had the same sentiments as those people in that line, I wanted desperately to be a Huxtable. However, I remember when I was young it didn't strike me as "Here's a great portrayal of an African American family!" - it was more "Here's the perfect family!" I didn't have any preconcieved notions of black families, having never seen those shows from the 70s. So for myself, personally, that never played into it. I grew up in a town where the families were more comparable to "Roseanne" than "The Cosby Show" - of course they were admirable, not for the race of the family but for the prestige and the success and the lack of dysfunction. Was it idealized? I used to think so - no way families like that existed. Until I learned about the Obamas.

Now I desperately want to be an Obama. =) lol

[jdmba]

And what fictional TV characters made the Bush administration possible? What prime time actress made Palin a possibility?

Stop putting Black people into little familiar boxes. We are as diverse as any other culture and there have been successful Black people since Reconstruction. If white America chose to ignore that, and pretend that it doesn't exist, then that really has little to do with us. Obama won because he was the better candidate. Pure and simple.

Further, the hip-pop generation got Obama elected. Young white people who grew up around Black people and listening to pop music helped get out the massive young vote. Being that the MTV images are the opposite of the Cosby's, and most Black people don't even listen to that particular type of music, it becomes even less likely that Obama was reading a Cosby script for success.

[rf-hawaii]

Obama didn't just win because he was the better candidate. He was the only sane candidate. An end to scorched-Earth Bush.

[Melissa]

I would have voted for Bill Cosby or Colin Powell for president, no so much Obama.

[MinneapolisBob]

The media has a huge impression on society. If it didn't, neither party would complain and try to make the media the boogie-man man when things aren't going their way.

Many White-Americans, especially those who are too lazy to read facts and learn history, form their opinions about most minorities from what they see and hear on television. Fake News is the perfect example of how the media can control the minds of its viewers. The same can be said for what they hear on the radio--right wing radio.

We must remember, there are millions of White-Americans who live their daily lives without coming in contact with a single minority. And they form their opinions from what they see on TV.

[Rockwell]

Of course pop culture is the leading indicator and shapes the attitudes of the next generation. If you grew up on a diet of Donna Reed or Leave it to Beaver you saw only one model for the American experience. With the Cosby Show you got a more diverse view of what it means to be American. And even Cosby wouldn't have been possible without the beariers broken by All in the Family, The Jeffersons and even Good Times. Those show's in turn built on the foundations laid by Sammy Davis, Jr, Jackie Robinson, Ruby Dee and countless others.

That's why I hope that the high visibility of Ellen, Rachel Maddow and Neil Patrick Harris will continue to open up societal norms so that Prop 8 will be as much a ridiculous relic of the past as Colored-Only water fountains.

[trinity]

As the Cosby Show had it's imperfections...at the time in the 80's, America, specifically white America, needed to see images of African Americans that weren't blatant stereotypes on TV and in most movies (even into the 80's). Even Good Times, that started off with strong mother and father characters had degenerated into a Jimmie Walker fun fest. Many Americans still remembered the Ronald Reagan and Republican stereotype of the Black welfare queen with 7 kids, and that made up their basis of what African Americans were to a lot of White America. There were plenty of African American professionals, but you never saw them on TV and rarely in movies.

Yes Bill Cosby needs to get off his high horse at times, but the idea of the Cosby Show was pretty important to tearing down at least some of the stereotypes back then. His "kids" on the TV show could have very well grown up to be President.

[Octoberon]

Perhaps the "acceptability" of the Cosby Show has played a small part - but the negativity couched within this suggestion is that people everywhere have to conform to urban, white, middle-class (and possibly Christian and heterosexual) standards in order to become acceptable. And that's why this line of thought is an insult.

Not only that, but the thought is myopic. Going back a little in time, what about, for example, the widespread interest in the Tamla Motown artists of the 1960s, or the massively white fan base of Jimi Hendrix, or the respect accorded to figures such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and so on - the list is endless. Oh, and what about the case of a certain Dr Martin Luther King?

[Octoberon]

Oh, and let's not forget Sidney Poitier, who was appointed as ambassador of the Bahamas to Japan in 1997, and is also the ambassador of the Bahamas to UNESCO, and a Member of the Board of Directors of The Walt Disney Company.

[PatricefromNH]

Reading about the Cosby influence gave me an AH HA moment. Perhaps it depends where we grew up and what generation we belong to. As a boomer from a 99% white state, most of us in Maine never saw a real black person until we went to college or began traveling.

Which is why, from my perspective, you have this backwards "..but the negativity couched within this suggestion is that people everywhere have to conform to urban, white, middle-class (and possibly Christian and heterosexual) standards in order to become acceptable."

Yesterday I went for a walk with my friend nexy door, who is black. We were talking about Obama, and how we loved the "incredible family man" he is and how this gave hope that there were other men like him who didn't have affairs, had high values and didn't have addiction problems.

The Cosby show left a huge idealistic imprint in my subconscious that I still aspire to, and I'm lily white. It modeled family values and behaviors for everyone while subtly teaching whites, who for years had seen blacks caricatured as uneducated and unworthy, that black families were and could be highly educated, classy, loving, kind, funny, responsible and respectful to one another. The Cosbys were more functional, fun and stable than many white families were, that's why we watched them! I can't think of one jazz personality who could be held up as a beacon for family values that influenced millions.

[Octoberon]

Clarify whether you're talking about "real" white families or white families as portrayed by the media. I respect your point, but I wonder whether we'd be having the same debate had the Cosby Show been based around a dysfunctional family. All I'm saying is that if we start drawing conclusions about real life through the illustrations that the media put before us, we run the risk of studying some carefully scripted exceptions.

I too watched the Cosby Show and I too am white. I enjoyed the program very much, but wasn't it just as reassuring - in a false TV kind of way - as the Mary Tyler Moore Show a decade or so earlier?

[hypnotoad72]

And Nat King Cole and Billy Preston.

Wasn't MLK Jr just as much a womanizer as JFK and every other political sort that's ever lived?

[Octoberon]

Yep. I'd forgotten about Nat King Cole. I've also forgotten about Paul Robeson. Of course, the fact that many of these people were entertainers, rather than company directors, politicians or whatever, makes its own statement about the past.

As far as womanizing is concerned, if what you say is true, then it just emphasizes the fact that common humanity knows no distinctions between black, white or anything else.

[toocoldout]

Good article. Bill Cosby & Oprah really normalized the idea of successful black people. They got America used to the idea & did it take a lot of getting used to. People are still not fully used to it.

[robin50]

I look at Obama and the first thought in my mind is not "black". What I see is a capable leader who has many of the same goals and ideals I have. I see a person I admire. And this is coming from a white 50 year old woman who now lives in a small rural community. Did this attitude come from a popular TV show. I really don't think so.

[phoenics]

Okay - I don't mean to be rude, but are you saying that because you see a "capable leader who has many of the same goals and ideals I have", then that means he simply CAN'T be black?

It would be SO nice if we saw leaders like Obama and thought to ourselves that 'of course he's black' - because black people are completely capable of being capable leaders, etc...

It's almost as if you're saying that because he's so capable, then he's more like a 'white person'?

As an African American female, I challenge you to rethink what you just said and how it could be construed in an offensive way.

When I first saw Obama - I thought "intelligent brotha". His speeches reminded me of my father's speeches (they use the same voice cadence - it's VERY well known amongst AA speakers). His viewpoint on community organizing was what I grew up around.

People act like Obama is such an anomaly (in the sense of him being so successful for a black man). He's not in the sense that THIS is what I saw around me growing up - Obama is just the fulfillment of the dream that MLK had - but there were OTHER fulfillments too, they just aren't President - YET.

Don't get me wrong - I'm extremely proud of Obama. But for me, he's the manifestation of what I've seen my whole life and what I hoped to finally make it out to the American

[ness]

The Cosby Show was at least a more positive representation of AAs for people who didn't know any than the nightly news was (but I think Bill Cosby's recent comments were awful). I'm from a big city, but I went to a college in a small town in Iowa and there were kids there who had never seen a Black person in real life, let alone a Black/white person (don't call me a mutt!). I can't say that any of them mentioned that the Cosby show helped give them an idea of what Black people were like or helped prepare them to be comfortable with Black people, and we did talk about race a lot. What they saw on the news had a larger effect on them, and why wouldn't it since it wasn't supposed to be fiction? My classmates who actually wanted to talk to me about race were thoughtful enough to have questioned the validity of what they were seeing (Black people as criminals). Only time the show came up was when someone said I looked like Denise. I was very impressed with those students for wanting to unlearn stereotypes, but I transferred because that school should've put me on their payroll for all I tried to do there!

I preferred the spinoff "A Different World" to the Cosby show. It was the only show I'd seen where a mixed person actually played a mixed person on tv (rather than a person with 2 Black parents).

[crayola 08]

"I preferred the spinoff "A Different World" to the Cosby show. It was the only show I'd seen where a mixed person actually played a mixed person on tv (rather than a person with 2 Black parents)."

i couldn't agree more. as a biracial person (who grew up in the 80s) the Cosby show kinda got under my skin because two of the actors were actually biracial. even though i'm half black i still feel that growing up i didn't see people like me or families like mine on the telly. if someone was biracial it was never mentioned and you never saw their family. to this day we have yet to see a biracial family tv show, well unless you count the show Heroes, which i do give credit for showing a white mom with a black dad and a real biracial child, even though they're all mutants.

[MedinaM]

This is kind of insulting. Why is it whenever there is a good, respectable black man they get compared to Bill Cosby and when it's the whole family then they become the Cosby's? This is really insulting actually. They have to compare it to a show that was on in the '80's!! Believe it or not, there are plenty of black families that are not living in the 'hood, go to college and don't speak using ebonics etc. My family is one of those families. Ughh, I just don't like what I read here.

[Texas4Obama]

I don't think it is insulting at all. The Cosbys portrayed an ALL AMERICAN family and when I watched the Cosby Show I did not see color. Even though the show was on in the 80's it was a great show!
No one has said that there are not many families that are not living 'in the hood' etc... all the article said was that the Cosby Show helped America see the forest for the trees.

I didn't grow up in an area that had any African-Americans but I do remember when I was very very young (under 10 years old) watched 'A Patch of Blue' with Sidney Poiter and also ' A Raisin in the Sun' and those two films shaped how I saw African-Americans in America up until this day in my life - so the media does matter. Anything that helps America to be more understanding and inclusive and tolerant is always a good thing.

I have supported Senator Obama since 2004 and I am so very proud to have been able to have voted for him and I am truly very proud to be an American for the first time in my life.

[phoenics]

The Cosby Show played an All American family that stayed true and loyal to their African roots. They patronized HBCUs (hello, the fictional Hillman was a combination of Morehouse and Spelman) in conjunction with Princeton and Yale (Sandra went to Princeton, I think)...

Anyway, yes they were All-American, but there was also a strong connection to African American ideals that have been held since slavery. HBCUs never got a bigger endorsement ever.

So while I respect your view that it was All American, I just need to reiterate how important it was for The Cosby Show to pay homage to the AA struggle and triumph.

[GregorZap]

The article is not about comparing Obama to the TV show. It is about how the country was prepared to accept Obama after they had watched the TV show for so many years, conditioning people, if you will. Cosby took us away from "Good TimeS" and "The Jeffersons" caricatures into something more elevated, thereby changing our perceptions of blacks. [Okay, I'm white. It's out!]

What is curious to me is how, while I was reading the article, and even before I read the article, I was reminded of "Family Ties, with Michael J. Fox portraying the Young Republican. I have often felt that his character may have given children the fervor expressed by many Zom-Bushes to this day. I have no data to back it up. I;m just saying...

[Texas4Obama]

GregorZap- I agree with your comment.

Television has helped to bring different cultures and social issues into our homes and has help society grow. I was born in the late 50's and shows like Rhoda and the Mary Tyler Moore show showed us that single women could have careers and live on their own. Cagney and Lacey showed us that women could be in law enforcement - etc., etc., etc.
TV has been a strong force in our society for quite awhile now that has shaped our cultural views - sometimes for the good and sometime for the worse. America has grown more mature as a result.

[robXdion]

I saw an Fox interviewed on VH1 about that and it's true. Lots of Republicans trace their beginnings back to that show (Tucker Carlson). Ironically, Michael J. Fox kinda regrets playing that role now.

[hypnotoad72]

"Good Times", a spinoff from "All in the Family"*, started out as something more; but the network producing it was far more interested in the laughs coming from Jimmie Walker's OTT antics (he's a republican, for what it's worth).

Behind the scene tussles eventually got John Amos fired, and later had Esther Rolle walking out (but was persuaded to return a year later).

* And the characters in AitF were pretty much two-dimensional caricatures as well, though Edith was the most realistic of the lot.

[Texas4Obama]

Yes, people in the MEDIA from Sidney Poitier o Bill Cosby to Morgan Freeman to Oprah and Tiger Woods and even newsmen and newswomen such as Rollin Martin, Eugene Robinson, and Amy Holmes, etc. - all have had their affect on the changing views of the American people over the years. Those people that came into our living rooms via the television have played a part in how America has changed.

God bless the Obama family and God bless America!

[CeeCee]

Good lord, that Rove guy is everywhere blabbing away like he's a close personal friend to Obama.
Puh-lease.