Mother's Jugs & Speed-bumps--here we go again with the master illusionist class.

Those of us of a certain age recognize my reference to a certain movie in my title, and yeah, the person who is Topic A these days was more a comedian than actor...but hey--a poser either way.  Those of us of a certain age remember the flavor of this man's irreverent gags and know better than to mistake him for some kind of saint.  But those of us of a certain age also recall that he experienced something of a major change of direction when he started doing Picture Pages on Captain Kangaroo, too, and from that launched Fat Albert et al.  Time marches on, society's sensibilities change from the norm of smoking on every airline flight while pinching the ass of the stewardess who was hired for her looks in the first place, to a society less tolerant of past abuses.  So, dear public--are we about to sit in judgment on a public character whom we really don't know actually for things he did under a different standard than today's and judge him by today's standards?

Good historians will wrestle with this issue every time they research a particular historic figure, too, as it happens, and good historians would prefer to judge a character by the times he/she was found in.

My regular readers know that I'm fully against abuse, but that I'm also a proponent of historical accuracy, too, and a lot of what we consider to be abusive now was taken in stride as normal not too many years ago, and that what we consider to be abusive today is considered to be abusive today because of all the people who fought to bring these things out from under society's rug and into the glare of the full light of day.  But also consider that people change over time, too, and the people most disappointed if the charges prove to be true are people in love with an illusion.  Not real.  Don't feel duped by the show because you knew it was a show in the first place and you don't really know this person.

Sunday UPDATE, Brian Stelter/Reliable Sources edition: Brian stated that Cosby's questioning of the AP reporter's integrity completely overlooked that such a story = tabloid "yellow journalism" and therefore Cosby had a point in that regard.  I'm surprised that Brian Stelter makes no distinction between serious journalism and tabloid journalism. Something was mentioned on another program which I overlooked: the kids who grew up watching Fat Albert and Picture Pages on Captain Kangaroo--they wouldn't have been adult enough to know that a show is, well, just all for show.  Be that as it may, they're grown up enough to know that now, and fact remains that the illusion presented by a show is not just actor, but writers and producers, too. Anybody mistaking a mouthpiece for a saint remains seriously misguided.

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Yup, I know a lot of my readers are looking for previous posts about the Al Aqsa Mosque, such as THIS one, and my position on that remains the same.  My position on Israel's reprehensible settlements activity remains the same as well.  What's to be mourned is the destruction of artifacts of antiquity, and even if it gets no respect for anything else, the Al Aqsa Mosque deserves respect as a magnificent artifact of antiquity.

As it happens, the post I linked to in the above paragraph is prefaced by remarks about how we in the audience didn't really know Robin Williams, either.  Please review that part as well.

Jews and Muslims, God hasn't championed either side and remains silent, without action, for all these decades you've been fighting each other, with Jews fighting for some legendary structure that hasn't existed for more centuries than the Al Aqsa Mosque HAS existed.  To say that it's all foolish lunacy would be to make an understatement.

...and welcome to the blog, Arabcom Group. I expect you'll find a lot here that's worthy of consideration whether or not you loosely use the terms "orientalist" and "orientalism".