The Coin Toss and the Coz

At the risk of proposing what — at first blush — might sound like an overly simplistic solution to the seemingly complicated conundrum leaders and members of the Democratic Party now find themselves in, I’d like to suggest that Clinton and Obama agree to a coin toss. Since their positions on most issues of import are mirror images of each other, it matters little which one of them is on the top of the ticket. And, after all, that’s all this fight is about.

However, the damage they’re about to do to their party — not to mention how their increasingly bloody bickering could cause younger and newly engaged participants in our democratic processes to quickly disengage — might prove irreparable. If we, the people, demand they desist from this dangerous silliness and simply toss a coin, which one of them would have the courage to say no, out of fear the other candidate would savage them for lacking courage? Or are we just too much in love with brutal combat in the political arena to enforce such a demand? However, we’d better do something soon ... before we lose our golden opportunity to head the country in the right direction.

Part II

Bill Cosby: So right... and so wrong

Comedian Bill Cosby brought his “Poor Blacks should just get a grip on themselves” message back to Cleveland, and, as usual, Black folks (as well as others) were lapping it up as if his words were Gospel. Do we have a huge, huge problem in the Black community (and the Hispanic and poor White communities as well) with teenaged pregnancies, which produce too many ill-raised kids that — at around age 14 or 15 — turn into heartless and mindless thugs that wind up killing each other ... and sometimes beloved police officers? Certainly we do. And it’s a problem that has gone unaddressed for far too long.

Cosby says that we shouldn’t be afraid of “airing our dirty laundry in public,” and he’s right ... as far as he goes. But — while I don’t doubt that he means well — I can go up to the corner tavern in any Black neighborhood on virtually any night of the week and there will be someone perched on a barstool spouting off much of the same anger-inspired verbiage as the Coz However, merely saying that we have problems is much easier than offering real solutions to those problems.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if Bill Cosby’s beating up on ignorant parents who fail to properly supervise and raise their progeny would solve the problem, if it had even the slightest chance of solving the problem ... hell, give me a two-by-four (with a sharp nail in it) and I’ll help beat them up. And, unlike Cosby, who lives on Nob Hill and only occasionally comes into towns like Cleveland to scold residents of poor neighborhoods, I know where these parents live because I elected to live among them by moving into the Hough community. These are my neighbors, the people I grew up with, that he’s talking about.

However, to Cosby’s credit, his message is changing somewhat. When he started his rant in 2004 he only picked on poor people; now he is adding Black churches and other institutions to his list of malefactors who need to step up and assist in solving the problem. So there is hope that eventually he will think on these problems long enough to come to the conclusion that, absent some massive effort to break the cycle of poverty, ignorance and low goals that infect minority and poor communities across America, nothing much is going to happen ... unless Cosby is ready and willing to step up to the plate. Unlike the poor people he rails at (people who, by the way, pay no attention to him) Cosby does have the options money provides. I’m waiting for him to pony up just one of his many billions of dollars (yes, he is a billionaire) to fund a pilot program in some city based on the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City. Maybe he could even do it here in Cleveland.

But in reality, what can we expect when a standup comedian — albeit a wealthy and much-loved one — attempts to start setting social policy for the national Black community without funding any projects? No other race on the face earth would listen to someone who only talks at poor people— while only giving funds to already-wealthy universities. I sincerely hope Cosby’s impetus isn’t just to simply remain on center stage ... to keep our attention focused on him for a few more years before he slips into his dotage.

Be that as it may, the person I’m really upset with is Cosby’s enabler, Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a Harvard professor who should — and most likely does — know better. By traveling the country with Cosby as his paid Sancho Panza, lending the weight of his credentials to this incomplete message, he is doing little more than propping up the aforementioned guy on the barstool after he has had one too many. The real danger, of course, is, that people will hear their incomplete message and give it more validity than it deserves (as a means of escaping any personal responsibility or guilt), and will ultimately fail to attempt to formulate real, thoughtful, and workable solutions ... because Bill Cosby said the victims are to be blamed for their own substandard condition because they lack the requisite skills to navigate their way out of their reduced circumstance.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com
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