Free Republic

Ralph Nader has been many things: lawyer, consumer-rights bulldog, political activist and perennial third-party presidential candidate. He has now added a new title to his business card: fiction writer. His latest book, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, is a 700-page populist fantasy in which a small group of billionaires and media moguls — led by Warren Buffett and including Ted Turner, George Soros, Bill Cosby, Yoko Ono and Phil Donahue — pool their massive resources to reform the U.S. With the help of a $15 billion war chest and a p.r. campaign starring a talking parrot, the group successfully...

Dr. Bill Cosby, I am ashamed of you and for you. I have been a fan and admirer, of you from the days when your only exposure was your wonderful comedy albums. I still relish my memories of your stories about theme music and the movie theatre monster statue at the top of the steps. I have always considered you a man of good character, and of an honest and decent heart. And now I feel as if you have betrayed a lifetime of dispelling the evil that sneaks it's way into the hearts of men through racism. You have...

Bill Cosby spoke about his feelings regarding black people and education in his recent rant called We Cannot Blame the White People Any Longer. Cosby is probably the only person who could get away with talking the way he does because he is well respected among people of all races. “People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around,” he says. “They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk….You can't be a doctor with that kind...

On a Boston radio program this morning, Bill Cosby suggested that President Obama spoke too soon on the controversial arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. “I’ve heard about five different reports [on the details of the arrest],” Cosby said on Boston’s WZLX. “If I’m the president of the United States, I don’t care how much pressure people want to put on it about race, I’m keeping my mouth shut.” “I was shocked to hear the president making this kind of statement,” Cosby said referring to the president’s remarks during last night’s press conference. The comedian appeared to have dialed...

Bill Cosby told a radio host today that he was "shocked" at Obama's attack on the Boston police. CSMonitor reported: On a Boston radio program this morning, Bill Cosby suggested that President Obama spoke too soon on the controversial arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. “I’ve heard about five different reports [on the details of the arrest],” Cosby said on Boston’s WZLX. “If I’m the president of the United States, I don’t care how much pressure people want to put on it about race, I’m keeping my mouth shut.” “I was shocked to hear the president making this kind...

Republicans and Democrats agree their favorite TV Dad is ...Bill Cosby? But over half of the top-15 dads are from the old days. Ozzie, Andy, and more.

Here is video of Meet the Press today, January 11, 2009, where the program featured an in-depth panel discussion of the state of the U.S. Economy and the Obama Economic Stimulus Plan, and then an interview with Bill Cosby. . . . . (watch video)

I haven’t heard one fellow yet say, “I went to medical school all because my gang members encouraged me to do so while we were breaking into the gas station.” While some people don’t want to hear what I’m saying, others have said: Why don’t blacks listen to Bill Cosby and not Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. But I say, don’t pit me against Jesse and Al because they speak the truth. The things that Jesse has come out for and he’s been against, these are things I’m talking about, too. Yes, there is such a thing as institutionalize racism.

"We are living in a new time, where people are behaving in abnormal ways and calling it normal…No longer is a person embarrassed because they're pregnant without a husband. No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child" -- Bill Cosby, speaking to African-Americans at St. Paul Church of God in Christ, Detroit, July, 2007. As Mother's Day approaches, it seems a fitting moment to point out the truth of Bill Cosby's observation. Left unsaid but well understood by him: This "new time" and these "abnormal ways"...

Jeremiah, you're no Jeremiah. Although Barack Obama's controversial former pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright puts himself at the center of a prophetic tradition of the Afro-American church, he's not much of a prophet. The prophet in the Biblical mode often tells his people what they don't want to hear. Wright only mimics the prophet in his fiery condemnations of America. When it comes to the feelings of those who employ him, he's strictly on tiptoe. Around the time Wright was fluffing his feathers before the national media, a genuine prophet appeared in Newark, N.J., to deliver a tough look-in-the-mirror message...

NEWARK, N.J. -- Comedian Bill Cosby told several hundred people at a conference of community associations Thursday to stand up and confront the ills facing black Americans and ignore those he called "intellectual panhandlers." Characterizing his own words as "blunt, but not harsh," Cosby criticized a culture in which "babies are wearing $40 sneakers while their mothers are feeding them Oodles of Noodles" and in which pimps and murderers are seen as heroes. During a speech that lasted nearly an hour, he began by comparing current attitudes to a patient who ignores a toothache until it requires major surgery. Several...

The audacity of Bill Cosby’s black conservatism ___ Last summer, in Detroit’s St. Paul Church of God in Christ, I watched Bill Cosby summon his inner Malcolm X. It was a hot July evening. Cosby was speaking to an audience of black men dressed in everything from Enyce T-shirts or polos to blazers and ties. Some were there with their sons. Some were there in wheelchairs. The audience was packed tight, rows of folding chairs extended beyond the wooden pews to capture the overflow. But the chairs were not enough, and late arrivals stood against the long shotgun walls, or...

“Men, if you want to win, we can win,” Cosby said. “We are not a pitiful race of people. We are a bright race, who can move with the best. But we are in a new time, where people are behaving in abnormal ways and calling it normal … When they used to come into our neighborhoods, we put the kids in the basement, grabbed a rifle, and said, ‘By any means necessary.’ “I don’t want to talk about hatred of these people,” he continued. “I’m talking about a time when we protected our women and protected our children. Now...

<p>Last summer, in Detroit’s St. Paul Church of God in Christ, I watched Bill Cosby summon his inner Malcolm X.</p> <p>He began with the story of a black girl who’d risen to become valedictorian of his old high school, despite having been abandoned by her father.</p>

A few years ago, Bill Cosby set off a firestorm with a speech excoriating his fellow African-Americans for, among other things, buying $500 sneakers instead of educational toys for their children. In a recent book, Come On People, he repeats his argument that black Americans spend too much money on designer clothes and fancy cars, and don't invest sufficiently in their futures. Many in the black community have been critical of Cosby for blaming poor people rather than poor public policies. Others have defended Cosby's comments as an honest expression of uncomfortable truths. But notably absent from the Cosby affair...

It's no secret that in America knowing how to speak the English language is the basic requirement for success -- if you can’t speak the language everybody else speaks, you are back at the Tower of Babel wondering what everybody around you is trying to say. For any youngster starting out in life, knowing and speaking the common language is the first step in moving up the ladder. And in the United States, English is the common language, and has been from the beginning. The Constitutional debates were conducted solely in English. Only English is spoken in Congress and in...

Comedian Bill Cosby laced some humor into his messages to Lakewood kids and parents in an afternoon session Tuesday, but he also earnestly urged youngsters to talk to others about feeling sad before it grows into something worse. To hundreds of kids in the audience, he said: “Whatever you’re sad about, the longer you leave the sadness in, the more it turns into frustration and anger and will come out some way.” To parents, he said: If your children complain that they have nothing to do, “and if you believe that, you’re not parenting. Give the child something to do....

Bill Cosby’s Rant Link to Bill Cosby's RantQuote: They’re standing on the corner and they can’t speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk: Why you ain’t, Where you is, What he drive, Where he stay, Where he work, Who you be… And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. In fact you will never get any kind of job making a...

They’re standing on the corner and they can’t speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk: Why you ain’t, Where you is, What he drive, Where he stay, Where he work, Who you be… And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living. People marched and were hit in...

Anna Nicole Smith's longtime companion Howard K. Stern is suing a journalist for "exploiting" the memory of the late model/actress. Stern filed a $60 million lawsuit against Rita Cosby on Tuesday over "false allegations" in her new book "Blonde Ambition: The Untold Story Behind Anna Nicole Smith's Death." The book claims Stern and Larry Birkhead - the father of Smith's daughter Dannielynn - were lovers who plotted to get control of the late star's estate. Cosby, a former MSNBC correspondent, claims there is a sex tape to prove the pair were lovers. But Stern's attorney, L. Lin Wood, has furiously...

Larry Birkhead tells TMZ he will go after Rita Cosby with a vengeance if the rumors about her upcoming book are true. Cosby, formerly an anchor with MSNBC, has written what she says is a tell-all on the death of Anna Nicole Smith and the subsequent custody battle over Dannielynn. Rumors are swirling about the book, Blond Ambition: The Untold Story Behind Anna Nicole Smith's Death, due out next week. TMZ has heard Cosby will say she has documents that prove Larry Birkhead essentially bought the baby from Howard K. Stern. The publisher is mum until next Tuesday. Today, Birkhead...

Back in aught-four, I penned a piece for WorldNetDaily entitled “‘Cultcha,’ Cosby and the Con Men”. Resulting in a flood of hate mail second only to my Barak Obama Church exposé, it was an ironic barb on top of the one comedian and actor Bill Cosby had begun delivering to black audiences apropos their accountability for societal ills within the black community. Many black people balked at hearing such messages primarily due to the fact that they’ve been brainwashed into the belief that the aforementioned societal ills were solely the fault of rich white men in $50,000 suits, cloistered in...

snip Several decades ago, when I was head of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, I would have joined with Jackson and Sharpton with little reservation to call for Imus's demise. But somewhere along the way since then, reality intervened and I began to reject the view that America is a racist, hostile environment for people with my skin color. Further, I began engaging in the unforgivable sin -- rejecting the orthodox civil rights view of blacks as victims. snip Polls have shown that only about 2 percent of blacks view Sharpton as their "leader."

I did a search and didn't find this posted in the past on FR. I also checked Snopes and found this is TRUE. They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: Why you ain't, Where you is, What he drive, Where he stay, Where he work, Who you be.. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. Everybody knows it's important to speak English... except these knuckleheads. Mushmouth is what they speak! You can't be a doctor with that...

Some of the most notorious and dangerous criminals in the United States are part of one gang. It's not the Bloods, it's not the Crips, but a gang called MS-13. 'Live and Direct' takes MSNBC into the streets to investgate how the gang is terrorizing neighborhoods and treating their friends and enemies with brutal, bloody force.

Time to catch up on some Pop Culture. First, heh, Sir Paul McCartney wrestles with wife Heather, who's busy dancing with one leg and demanding millions from Paul. Also, what's up with America's comic books? Captain Marvel, Captain America…why are they being killed off? Also, Rita Cosby career in peril, Mike Jackson and his Beatles' ownership and some neat blind items.

Rita Cosby is leaving MSNBC at the end of the month. Her contract was due to expire April 1 and was not going to be renewed, according to sources familiar with the matter. MSNBC cancelled Cosby's 10 p.m. show, Rita Cosby Live and Direct, in June. The network dumped Tucker Carlson's 11 p.m. show then too to make way for documentary programming. At the time, Cosby was named head of a new specials unit, but she has been featured sparingly since. The former Fox News personality gained notoriety for her celebrity pieces, most recently a story on Anna Nicole Smith's...

March 9, 2007 -- RITA Cosby sounds less raspy following recent vocal-cord surgery, but MSNBC is still going to drop her when her contract expires on April 1. The cable network had no comment, but insiders insist the host, who has been diligently covering the Anna Nicole Smith story, is out. Cosby has been presenting daytime specials since MSNBC canceled her prime-time show, "Live & Direct," last summer.

A tamer, more timid Bill Cosby came to town last week. After an 18-month pitched battle with former DePaul University professor Michael Eric Dyson and others who have criticized him for bashing the black poor, the celebrity comedian was more defensive than defiant Wednesday as the featured attraction at the Chicago Public Schools' fourth annual Parent Involvement Conference. "In closing, ladies and gentlemen," the entertainer/educator told the gathering of 7,000 or so, mostly poor parents, in the audience, "I have never given any crowd a whuppin'." True and false. While picking up an award from the NAACP during the celebration...

Comedian talks tough at LeMoyne-Owen Bill Cosby doesn't sugarcoat his words. The sitcom star, author, comedian and former Jell-O spokesman told a crammed cafeteria at LeMoyne-Owen College Saturday that "the new Ku Klux Klan happens to be us, we're the Ku Klux Klan, and we have not protected our children." He continued: "Children need confidence and if you don't give it to them, how are they going to know that they can do something?" If Cosby's October visit to Memphis aimed to entertain, his most recent jaunt to town intended to inspire inner-city students. He spoke on education and personal...

I have a profound admiration for Bill Cosby. He and I both aspired to be teachers, and I guess we've each made it, in his own way. He's achieved his goal more spectacularly than I, of course, but we've both encouraged education, served on college boards, written books that require a level of literacy to enjoy, given of our means to establish chairs and scholarship programs at good, highly accredited schools, and found ways to use our status and platforms as entertainers to promote high standards, discipline and morality. I consider Bill a first rate professor. He has a bundle...

Actor and comedian Bill Cosby spoke at a rally in Newark this afternoon and urged the federal government to spend more money on healthcare for veterans. Cosby, a Navy veteran, told a group of about 100 veterans that they had the power to be heard in Washington. "You may be in a wheelchair, you may have lost fingers, but you are strong," Cosby said. "There is no reason to cut back on anything involving you...you didn't cut back when you were over there because you knew there'd be bullets coming from all over the place at you." Cosby, who flew...

The Reverend Jackson by: Jenni Vinson Trejo September 1, 2006 In 2001, the scandal storm cloud that hovered over Washington DC rained on the Reverend Jesse Jackson and for once, he was one who got soaked. First, there was the disclosure that he fathered a child with a subordinate from the Rainbow Coalition. That was, in and of itself, quite startling. Jesse Jackson has set himself up as a moral leader not just for the black Community, but for America. He has preached to us the immorality of a variety of issues as they pertain to white America’s interaction with...

Rita Cosby is losing her year-old MSNBC show and will get her own specials unit for the cable channel effective July 10. The shuffle, which MSNBC announced Thursday, is the first big move of Dan Abrams' three-week tenure as MSNBC's general manager. "Rita Cosby: Live and Direct," which has been telecast at 10 p.m. (ET) weeknights and repeated at 1 a.m. (ET) since late spring, will be replaced by taped documentary programming, under the familiar label of "MSNBC Investigates." Ms. Cosby will serve as the primary anchor of "Investigates," which has been led by various rotating anchors over years. "Investigates"...

Comedian, actor, philanthropist and self- help activist, Dr. William “Bill” Cosby, PhD Ed., will bring what he called his, “bell ringing challenge”, to low-income families, foster parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, siblings and other family members who are taking care of other relatives’ children to Penn Valley Community college with two special programs on Tuesday, May 23. The first session will take place at 4 p.m. and is open to people who are taking care of other family members’ children. Cosby will have psychologists and other experts on hand to help answer questions those family members may have and also direct...

Cosby challenges Spelman graduates 'to take charge' CHARLES ODUM Associated Press ATLANTA - Bill Cosby challenged Spelman College's graduates "to take charge" Sunday, adding those leaving the historically black college for women have no choice but to lead. "You have to know that it is time for you all to take charge," Cosby said. "You have to seriously see yourselves not as the old women where the men stood in front and you all stood behind, because the men, most of them are in prison." Added Cosby: "It is time for you to pick up the pace and lead because...

Bill Cosby Tells Parents To Take Control Of Their KidsFriday, April 14, 2006 Comedian Bill Cosby brought tough talk to Cincinnati Thursday night with his controversial "call out" to the Tri-State's minority community. Cosby's dialogues on parenting, crime, and social responsibility caused uproars in other cities. About 600 people attended the first session at Xavier's Cintas Center. About 1,200 came to the second. Cosby's message was very much one of personal and family responsibility. He did crack some jokes. Yet, you could tell the audience was unsure how they were going to take his message to the streets. The comedian...

Cosby, Saying the Darndest Things • Bill Cosby was anything but politically correct in his remarks Monday night at a Constitution Hall bash commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. To astonishment, laughter and applause, Cosby mocked everything from urban fashion to black spending and speaking habits. Bill Cosby, ready to let off steam. (Lawrence Jackson - AP) "Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal," he declared. "These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids -- $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend...

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Entertainer Bill Cosby urged New Orleans' black population on Saturday to cleanse itself of a culture of crime as it rebuilds from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina last year. Cosby, whose criticism of some aspects of modern African-American culture has stirred controversy in recent years, told a rally headed by black leaders that the city needed to look at the "wound" it had before Katrina struck. "It's painful, but we can't cleanse ourselves unless we look at the wound," Cosby told the rally of about 2,000 people in front of the city's convention center.

Where is the outrage that was manufactured to run Rush Limbaugh off the air? Is it absent because Gumbel is allegedly black? So just picture for a moment, if you will, that you're watching SportsCenter tonight and Dan Patrick says, "The lack of whites in the NBA makes it look like a welfare office." Think that would get buried like Gumbel's comments? For what it's worth, maybe Gumbel should do some research on the emerging face of the GOP.

Some cast aside traditional loyalties... Adam Hunter, an ambitious law student with bright eyes, an easy smile, and plenty of charisma, seems practically destined for politics... a first-year law student at Howard University, a historically black campus with a long record of liberal activism. He has political ambitions of his own -- but not with the Democrats. Instead, Hunter, who as an undergraduate headed Howard's chapter of College Republicans, sees himself as part of a younger generation of African-Americans. He is ready to cast aside traditional loyalties to the Democratic Party and forge his own political identity. ''There's a lot...

GENEVA — A U.N. panel has awarded Bill Cosby an Internet domain name based on the Fat Albert character he created in the 1960s. Arbitrators for the World Intellectual Property Organization ordered Monday the transfer of fatalbert.org to Cosby, who had complained it was being used in bad faith to divert visitors to a commercial search engine and a Web site selling sexually explicit products.

Comedian Talks About Personal Responsibility and His Own Lapses in Judgment Jun. 29, 2005 - It came as a shock to many last year when Bill Cosby, one of America's top TV dads and comedians, strongly criticized low-income African-Americans, and then took that message on the road. In a series of "Conversations with Cosby" held in cities with large urban and poor populations, Cosby has said African-Americans are not "holding up their end of the deal" and need to take more responsibility for their families and communities. During these events, Cosby has been tight-lipped with the media, often talking only...

ON OFFICIAL COURT documents, her name is Jane Doe No. 5. Now she wants everyone to know her real name. Beth Ferrier. And she wants everyone to hear her story about Bill Cosby. About 21 years ago, after she ended a months-long consensual affair with the entertainer, she says he drugged her when she visited him before a performance in Denver. "He said, 'Here's your favorite coffee, something I made, to relax you,' " said Ferrier, 46, who at the time worked as a model. In a telephone interview from her Denver home, Ferrier told how she drank the coffee...

Bill Cosby spawned a cottage industry among opinion writers when he ascended a podium in Washington last year and harangued inner-city parents for doing too little to educate their children. He threw salt in the wound by saying those parents were spending too much on expensive sneakers and not enough on books. Those brief remarks have continued to reverberate through the court of public opinion. Conservatives are hailing Mr. Cosby as the tough love truth teller of the moment. Liberals have come close to describing him as a race traitor, as Prof. Michael Eric Dyson of the University of Pennsylvania...

Posted on Wed, May. 25, 2005 Cosby's challenge: His social message is right, but he should preach beyond the choir BY E.R. SHIPP New York Daily News (KRT) - In a nation that so values freedom of speech, one would think that frank talk would also be valued. But consider the consequences in three settings. First, New York City mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer violated what should be Rule No. 1 of politics: Be clear and consistent. He commented on the 1999 killing of African immigrant Amadou Diallo by four trigger-happy Bronx cops. To a cop audience, he said the shooting...

RALEIGH, N.C. (NNS) -- Former Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class-turned-actor/comedian Bill Cosby took time to honor a local Navy Reservist for her service during his stand-up performance May 15 in Raleigh, N.C. Navy Counselor 1st Class Lauren R. Fyfe contacted Cosby’s management when she found out he was going to be performing in her hometown while she was on leave. All Fyfe said she was hoping for was the opportunity to have Cosby pose in a picture with her holding an American flag she owned. “The flag has been with me everywhere I go in the Navy,” said Fyfe. “Once, I...

In January, almost 2,000 people jammed the auditorium at Wayne County Community College in Detroit in order to hear Bill Cosby yell at them—there’s really no other way to put it—for being bad parents. That was after a crowd had already filled a hall in Newark. And another in Springfield, Massachusetts. And another in Milwaukee. And yet another in Atlanta.Had Cosby not gone into quarantine as the result of sexual-abuse charges that prosecutors say they are no longer pursuing, there’s no question that thousands more poor black parents would have come to town-hall meetings, asking the comedian-activist to harangue them,...

QUESTIONS FOR MICHAEL ERIC DYSON Bill Cosby's Not Funny Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON Published: March 27, 2005 Q Your new book is a rhetorical screed against Bill Cosby, and the title alone is not exactly subtle: ''Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?'' When a comedian throws a pie in the face of a powerful person, it's funny. When he throws a pie in the face of a homeless mother with three kids, that's not very funny. You're referring to Cosby's recent harangue about lower-income black people, whom he faults for neglecting their children,...

CLEVELAND - Entertainer Bill Cosby's message to urban youths was the same by telephone as it would have been in person: Get an education. Be responsible. Make a difference. On Monday, Cosby made up - to some degree - for a canceled appearance at a town-hall style meeting last month after a female acquaintance accused him of inappropriately touching her a year ago at his home in suburban Philadelphia. He denied the allegations, and prosecutors in Philadelphia have said they found insufficient evidence to support the woman's claims. Cosby, 67, spoke by telephone for about five minutes to about 250...