Word: blinds
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Plante, Wallace, Donaldson & Co. are rightly proud of their dogged surveillance of the most powerful man on earth. But the bright lights of power sooner or later blind almost everyone who bathes in them. Journalists were originally created to enlighten, not to threaten; to inform, not to perform; to know, not to show...
Camille Cosby, 43, has exerted a quiet and powerful influence over Bill ever since they met on a blind date in 1963. Born in Washington, she studied psychology at the University of Maryland and became a full-time parent shortly after marrying Cosby. Those who know her describe her as classy, reserved, feminine and stubborn. She has used her leverage sparingly but decisively at key points in her husband's career: most recently by encouraging him to create a family TV series and then siding with the producers, who wanted the show's husband to be a physician...
...Cosby. "But I realized that it was a crutch. What brought it home was when another comedian said to me, 'If you changed color tomorrow, you wouldn't have any material.' He meant it as a put-down, but I took it as a challenge." Ever since, a color-blind approach has been a basic tenet of Cosby's comedy philosophy: "I don't think you can bring the races together by joking about the differences between them. I'd rather talk about the similarities, about what's universal in their experiences...
Though Cosby's comedy was color-blind, the comedian was not. In 1964, when Producer Sheldon Leonard invited him to audition for a role in a new TV series called I Spy, Cosby struck Co-Star Robert Culp as the "angriest young man I'd ever met." Cosby does not dispute the characterization. "You have to remember the times. It wasn't so much because of any racism directed against me. It was because of the March on Washington and how the press tried to ignore it, and the Red-baiting going on. I felt that my country had betrayed...
...such firm loyalists, ideology knows no borders. "I think Bruce Springsteen is a blind nationalist," proclaims the former trooper in the easy drawl he has copied from Florida deejays. "Sure! Just look at that title, Born in the U.S.A.!" Even here, though, things are not quite as clear as they seem. In the ex-soldier's spacious home off once splendorous Fifth Avenue, a picture of Che Guevara stares across at an equally large poster of Barry Manilow. Downtown in central Havana, a 15-year-old schoolgirl goes him one better. On top of her dresser she has carefully fashioned...