Rant #2,226: Christmas in Jail

Yes, Coz got cuffed yesterday, and he will be spending Christmas--and a lot of other days--in jail in the immediate future.

Bill Cosby was sentenced from three to 10 years in jail after being found guilty earlier this year of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in 2004.

Furthermore, Cosby will be forever listed as a "sexually violent predator," which basically means that for the rest of his life--he is 81--he will have to report his travel, work and address to the authorities, which will then be able to make that information public.

This is as sad and as upsetting a case as could possibly be, with one of the country's most famous, wealthy and beloved entertainers--yes, let's not forget that last one, because he was--falling faster than Humpty Dumpty off that proverbial wall.

"Bill Cosby sat on a wall,
Bill Cosby had a great fall,
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Cosby together again."

So for here on in, whenever we listen to one of his very funny comedy records, watch him in "I Spy" or the various Cosby shows, watch the "Fat Albert" cartoon series, or look back on his long career as a commercial spokesman, we are going to associate all the glee that he brought us with this dark side, where he evidently was canvassing Hollywood for needy women who gave up their bodies to him, actually thinking and believing that by doing so, they could advance their careers.

He was a moron, but these women really weren't the sharpest tools in the shed either.

And I ask this question again, because I simply don't get it: Where is his wife in all of this mess?

She must have known what was going on, she must have accepted his perversions, as long as she was taken care of.

But didn't she know that one mistake could cost her and her husband their very existences?

And yes, that mistake came evidently at the end of his run as a Hollywood casanova, and the mistake was that it didn't take place in Hollywood.

Look, for all the high and mighty talk that comes out of Tinseltown these days about moral righteousness, Hollywood has long been a bastion of perversion.

Yes, the casting couch exists, and has existed for eons, and will probably last for eons more.

Much is accepted in Hollywood that would never be accepted anywhere else, and Cosby played that into a virtually lifetime mental schism, on the one hand being the All-American hero and on the other side preying on women too weak--and too career driven--to say no to him.

The drugging was also accepted in Hollywood, so don't think that these women did not know what they were getting into when they caroused with him.

But the amazing thing is that the public was kind of shielded from all of this, and Cosby built up his reputation as a Hollywood icon because his behavior was rarely in question.

Funny, but the public did know about the various lawsuits and court cases over the years involving him and various women, some of which never got very far, some of which were ended by being paid off, and some of which were found to be unsubstantial.

But the public pretty much figured he was a target because he was such a nice guy, so well liked, so powerful and so engrained in the American framework, a black guy making it in a white society, and making it really, really big.

Funny, but all that it took was a two-bit comedian and a slip by the world famous comedian to bring this all to a head.

And while some will writhe with delight over the Cosby verdict, others of us--myself included--will be sad about the entire situation.

We were duped, maybe we wanted to be duped, but yes, we were duped into thinking that Cosby was an angel on earth, that we laughed along with him at life's little things, that we reveled at simply how popular this guy really was.

But sometimes, as the saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall, and that suits Cosby to a T today.

You couldn't write this as a Hollywood script of pure fiction. Nobody would buy it.

But now, with Cosby a jailbird, it is real and it really happened.

What a shame.