And I know I'm not the only one thinking this.
Cosby’s personal life notwithstanding, there are some comedy gems in Cosby’s long repertoire. I just want to know if there’s enough separation between Cosby the man and Cosby as an entertainer if I can enjoy listening to his old routines without the vast majority of folks out there having a conniption (which Cosby describes thus: )
Or, conversely, should I place my Cosby memories on the pile to be burned?
I’m not going to be dragged into any debates about permissive society, Puritanical society forcing others into more bohemian pursuits, or deciding what lines should not be crossed or who should be allowed to cross them while others are crucified for getting a little bit of that line chalk on their sneakers. That’s a dead end of Itoldyas and Weshouldas and other bullshittery that won’t answer the question.
To my Mormon compatriots, I ask: Can I still enjoy listening to old Bruce R. McConkie talks even though his admonition that the Catholic Church is the “great and abominable church” mentioned in The Book of Mormon has been dismissed? Or Joseph Smith getting sick of answering the “Wheredya get that thar Golden Bible” query by inventing a glowing salamander?
(Another aside: I won’t be drawn into any apples for oranges discussions either. They won’t answer the question.)
The question being: When someone commits the unpardonable – or at least the unfathomable – do we shove everything that person has done down one of the Ministry of Truth’s memory holes?
Hyperbolic?
I don’t think so.
When do we follow the admonition “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.1”
Which is preceded by this:
My disciples, in days of old, sought occasion against one another and forgave not one another in their hearts, and for this evil they were afflicted and sorely chastened.
Wherefore, I say unto you, that ye ought to forgive one another; for he that forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord; for there remaineth in him the greater sin.
I don’t see anything here that says these knuckleheads weren’t guilty of whatever it was that upset the others, nor that the knuckleheads were even penitent about it. All I see is the commandment to forgive.
Yes, easy to read in theory but difficult to perform in practice. Perhaps I will have a time when my ability to forgive is tested.
That time may come. Until then, maybe I’d better practice.
But in practice do I elevate those who no longer deserve adulation? Or, shall we say, appointment to high office? Maybe it’s easy to still enjoy Bill Cosby because the Cosby we know now isn’t actively on stage, still selling us his comedy. Maybe it’s harder, say, to forgive if the perceived or suspected sinner is still ascendant, say, towards a slot on the Supreme Court.
Because you know that fellow Hitler, he may have done some questionable things there in Munich, but that’s no guarantee he’ll continue that bad behavior once he becomes Chancellor2.
And Cosby ain’t innocent. “Cosby,” CNN says, “was accused by dozens of women of drugging and sexually assaulting them over his decades as a powerful media figure. Cosby was convicted in April of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and assaulting [Andrea] Costand at his home in 2004, in the first high-profile celebrity criminal trial of the #MeToo era.”
Aha! What say ye now, Smartypants McBloggerman?
How far up or down down the ascendancy do we go?
Do degrees of fame or potential power raise the bar for forgiveness?
I surely remember, “Wickedness never was happiness.3”
I need so much practice.
1 Doctrine and Covenants 64:10.
2 Yes, I just Godwinned my own post.
3 Alma 41:10
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