I have always loved Bill Cosby. He is a real person. He has his feet on solid ground. If I were President, this man, with a doctorate in Education, would be my Secretary of Education. You want education reform and a real No Child Left Behind? Bill Cosby would deliver. It would be a sacred mission for this man, not just a job with perks.
He spoke at a dinner commemorating Brown vs. Board of Education:
“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 $200 for ‘Hooked on Phonics.’ . . .
“They’re standing on the corner and they can’t speak English,” he exclaimed. “I can’t even talk the way these people talk: ‘Why you ain’t,’ ‘Where you is’ . . . 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!”
The crowd loved it. NAACP President Kweisi Mfume was nearly speechless.
La Shawn has a post with some good comments running.
If only he would never attempt to do comedy again…(sigh)…his TV show in the 80s was just horrible. And have you ever seen “Leonard Part 6”? Yikes.
But he is very smart and full of insight. I like your idea of SecEd.
Comment by david — May 23, 2004 @ 12:48 pm