Is Bill Cosby Still Funny?

I recently heard a Bill Cosby routine that dated way back to 1966.  It was great, funny, and delivered with the style and wit that made Cosby a comic superstar.  

I also felt oddly guilty for laughing at it.  

Given all that has been going on with the rumors and accusations as to what Cosby did or did not do, I find myself asking, "Is Bill Cosby still funny?"  I don't mean can he still make people laugh in the present - apparently he still can.  But as we hear what seems like one damning accusation after another, can we listen to Cosby's old stuff and still laugh?  

I don't know.  It may be that in a few years after this scandal has broken (and I hope it has by then!) and we learn whatever there is to learn or it falls back into the list of scandals that keep so many tabloids in business, we can hear his work for its own sake.  Maybe not.  We as a collective society don't always know what to do with scandal-ridden celebrities.  In some cases we shun them and the scandal, even when proved false, remains all for which they are known or remembered.  Take the story of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle who found that the verdict of not guilt didn't matter to a public that was ready to see him locked away for murder.  After his trials, he was blacklisted and never found his way back to the popularity he once had.  

Or Roman Polanski who suffered a horrific tragedy at the hands of the Manson 'Family' when they murdered his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate.  Public opinion changed when he had sex with a minor and fled the country in 1978.  Still managing to avoid extradition for that case, Polanski still directs films that do well all over the world. 

As for comedians who have had scandals, well, the list is pretty long.  For some, the scandals disappear with the short-term memory of the American public.  For others, there is a sense that these scandal ridden persons take responsibility and get help/clean up/ serve time.  Then again, some never really recover from it - guilty or not.

What do we make of persons like Cosby?  He seems to fall into the category of the Lance Armstrong scandal.  Denial after denial after denial.  Then?  The weight of the evidence pushes him off his pedestal.  Suddenly all of the Tour De France winnings turn out to be false, and all the books and shirts and slogans and years of defense become one long fabrication and hoax.  He lied as long as he could, then the truth came out.  Even being 'open' on television didn't matter at that point.  He had done too much damage to the character and careers of others by painting them in dire colors all to keep his falsehood from finding the light of day.    

We can't help but watch the footage of Armstrong without knowing it was all a lie.  What about Cosby?  Perhaps the difficult part is that his on screen persona was so completely opposite of what he is accused of being up to behind the scenes.  We bought into the idea that his comedic character was in fact him.   And this is probably the hardest thing for us to realize - part of the reason we might have difficulty believing Cosby raped anyone is that we don't believe Dr. Huxtable could have done this.  The character is not the actor.  

Can we laugh at his old routines?  Can we use the Noah skit in church anymore?  I don't know.  Not yet, anyway.  Perhaps we will never know if Cosby did this or not.  What we might have to do now is consider the body of work and decide if it can be accepted apart from the artist.  Then again, a harder choice might be to admit that his comedy was and is funny, but that even so, we have to stop listening to someone whose comedy may well have covered an abysmal truth.