The Cosby Show
Few entertainers, especially comedians, have campaigned so hard to position themselves as role models. Through his signature series, Cosby remade himself into a paragon of responsible fatherhood, marital bliss, and domestic tranquility. Saccharine and square even by the uptight standards of the Reagan era, the show proved through its massive popularity that Cosby's vision of a gentle but firm patriarchal order could cross color lines.
The Cosby Show likely won't survive -- not just because the sitcom's wholesomeness emphasizes the duplicity of Cosby's 2014 persona, but because it's no longer necessary. Even before it went off the air in 1992, it ushered in a burst of black sitcoms during the Clinton years -- Family Matters, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Martin, Moesha, and, of course, Cosby spin-off A Different World -- that exponentially increased the variety of black representation on the small screen. The Huxtables are no longer the only black family on the primetime block.
His Stand-Up
Judging from those recent standing ovations, some audience members may still love Cosby's monologues, but the material that made him a comic legend hasn't aged well. The Village Voice recently rediscovered a bit, for example, in which Cosby jokes about drugging a woman's drink. Divorced from the context of the rape allegations, it feels merely like a hoary sitcom premise. But the intimate nature of stand-up comedy, in particular its crafting of a personality (often based on the comedian) with a history and particularities and likes and dislikes, makes it a medium uniquely vulnerable to scandal and the reinterpretation of statements.
His Politics
After The Cosby Show went off the air, the comedian began using his character, Cliff Huxtable, as a cudgel against aspects of the African American community he considered obstacles to mainstream success. Poverty, mass incarceration, the war on drugs, substandard schools -- Cosby has railed against none of these institutional problems. Instead, he has focused on the need for traditional families and conventional...names ("With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed, and all that crap...all of them are in jail").
The culmination of these socially conservative harangues was the infamous "pound cake speech" in 2004: "These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake. Then we all run out and are outraged: 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else. And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said, 'If you get caught with it, you're going to embarrass your mother.' " In the era of Ferguson, Cosby's characteristic dismissal of law-enforcement racism and civil rights activism reads as particularly tone-deaf. But the allegations of serial rape will likely force Cosby to retreat from public life. You need to possess the moral high ground to tell other people how to live their lives.