Voices: Is it possible to still be a Cosby fan?
In this age of constant entertainment, we have the ability to stream, hear or view practically anything at any time.
Want to read Shakespeare while on the treadmill? That's just a download away.
Need Michael Jackson's entire catalog? iTunes to the rescue.
Ready to settle in for a Cosby Show marathon while flying cross-country? Hulu's got you covered.
But what do you do when something as pedestrian as firing up a favorite old sitcom creates an insidious unease — a distaste fraught with tension, guilt and questions of morality?
This is something I've pondered for months as a storm of sexual abuse allegations have swirled around television and comedy icon Bill Cosby.
As a quintessential '80s kid, watching The Cosby Show was as comforting as gobbling a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. When the show ended its run in April 1992, I was 10 years old. I relished the fact that a family on prime-time television could look, sound and act like mine.
To this point, it can't be denied that The Cosby Show and its representations of middle-class black life have helped shape and guide a generation. Still, we can't ignore that more than a dozen women have come forth over the years to tell the same tale of being drugged and sexually abused by the man who created a classic.
His most recent accuser, Joan Tarshis, wrote in an essay for the website Hollywood Elsewhere that Cosby drugged and raped her when she was 19 in 1969. She describes waking up in his bungalow after being plied with drinks.
"The next thing I remember was coming to on his couch while being undressed. Through the haze I thought I was being clever when I told him I had an infection and he would catch it and his wife would know he had sex with someone. But he just found another orifice to use. I was sickened by what was happening to me and shocked that this man I had idolized was now raping me."
Trying to reconcile Tarshis' image of a conniving sexual predator with that of America's most beloved TV dad is an exercise in two-sided guilt.
There's the guilt over having supported a man capable of such abuse. But there's also guilt surrounding the possibility of thinking the worst of an innocent man.
Cosby has not been charged with a crime. Yet in the court of public opinion, he's been indicted by plenty. He refuses to speak about the allegations, as NPR's Scott Simon learned Saturday. But one of Cosby's famous friends, Whoopi Goldberg, says the damage may already be done.
"The cat is out of the bag, people have it in their heads," she remarked on The View on Monday.
Indeed, what's in my head makes it difficult to laugh at the high jinks of the Huxtable family without feeling uneasy. Yet managing our emotions when it comes to fallen idols should be old hat. There have been so many of them.
Should we have felt bad about supporting LiveStrong after Lance Armstrong's doping lies finally caught up to him?
Why did some Baltimore Ravens fans see nothing wrong with continuing to wear their Ray Rice jerseys despite images of him viciously punching out his then-fiancée, now his wife, in an elevator?
When a Michael Jackson song comes on, should we quickly mute it in light of the many child sex abuse allegations he faced?
Is it OK to watch and enjoy Mel Gibson movies despite his anti-Semitic rant and instances of domestic abuse?
If, in the end, Cosby is forced to reckon with and pay for his alleged sins, does that mean The Cosby Show and its legacy are expunged, as if they never existed, never mattered? Or is there a more nuanced way to punish our fallen idols while keeping our values intact?
It's at once fascinating and sad to see the life and life's work of a legend unravel before our eyes. But for those he may have hurt, the dismantling of an icon, and our queasiness about it, pale in comparison to the years of silence and suppression they have suffered. And for that, we owe them, not him, our support.
Thompson has written about celebrities and fashion at USA TODAY since 2006.
