It’s one of those questions that seems to have no clean answer, and yet it won’t go away:

When someone’s personal behavior turns out to be reprehensible (even criminal) should everything they created be tossed aside?

Not so long ago Ozzy and Hulk Hogan died, forcing us to think about this. But let’s talk about an even more difficult case today. Let’s take an example that still hits hard: Bill Cosby.

I haven’t done a You Should Laugh More video post in awhile, but I still am checking my “humor” YouTube account every few days just to see if anything there inspires me to do a post. Recently a lot of Cosby clips have been showing up. Hence the inspiration for this post.

For younger folks or readers outside the U.S., the name might not carry much emotional weight anymore. But for those of us who grew up in the ’80s and early ’90s, Cosby wasn’t just a celebrity. He was a fixture. He was the face of family values, sweater vests, Jell-O pudding pops, and fatherly wisdom. We laughed at his ultra-clean stand-up routines about his brother and dad; we followed him as he turned childhood memories into moral messages for kids through his Fat Albert cartoon. He was “America’s Dad” — the moral compass on TV. His show — The Cosby Show — wasn’t just funny or wholesome; it was foundational. It shaped a generation’s idea of what a family sitcom could be.

It’s hard to understand just how central he was to American pop culture if you weren’t around at the time. We held the man right up there with Mr. Rogers. Seriously.

Even when he stepped away from that show, he still remained a fixture of America and was everywhere. Then came the revelations.

Over the course of several years, dozens of women (eventually more than 60) came forward and accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting them. These weren’t isolated incidents. The stories had chilling consistency. One woman might have been dismissed. Two, maybe debated. But sixty? Sixty. That is a number impossible to ignore.

The allegations led to legal proceedings, depositions, a criminal conviction (later overturned on a technicality), and a slow but total collapse of Cosby’s public image. The man once known as “America’s Dad” now seemed more like America’s predator.

So we’re left with this mess. This dissonance. On the one hand, we have the art: The Cosby Show, a series that broke racial barriers, modeled gentle parenting, and delivered genuinely heartfelt lessons in every episode. On the other, we have the artist: a man who, by nearly all evidence, was a serial rapist.

What now?

The Cultural Weight of The Cosby Show

It’s hard to overstate just how groundbreaking The Cosby Show was in its time. Premiering in 1984, it ran for eight seasons and dominated the Nielsen ratings for much of that run. At its peak, nearly a third of all U.S. households with TVs tuned in to watch it. Mine did. We watched every week.

But this wasn’t just a ratings juggernaut. It was a cultural landmark — especially for the Black community. For the first time, mainstream American television showed a successful, upper-middle-class Black family. Cliff Huxtable was a doctor. His wife, Clair, was a lawyer. They didn’t play to the common stereotypical images of black America. They were smart, they were successful. Their children were bright, funny, and complex. They weren’t caricatures or token side characters. They were the story.

But the show’s influence went beyond race. It was also one of the most moral shows on television. Each episode was a little parable: about telling the truth, about respecting others, about balancing work and family, about admitting when you’re wrong. That may all sound corny today, I know, but it really worked. It really did. It wasn’t cringingly wholesome like Leave It to Beaver, but it still delivered genuinely good moral lessons. There was nothing else like it on TV.

Cosby’s character wasn’t perfect, but he was always trying to improve — to listen, to teach, to grow. He also wasn’t an idiot, as TV dads later became, exemplified by Tim “The Toolman” Taylor on Home Improvement. He was a normal dad doing his best. The parenting style on display felt gentle and wise, even when it was firm. No yelling. No humiliation. Just a slow unfolding of consequences and conversations.

It worked. Not only as entertainment, but as aspiration. We didn’t just enjoy watching the show, but we wanted to be like the Huxtable’s.

The Ethical Dilemma

And so, here we are. Knowing what we know now, can we still watch it? Can we still learn from it?

This is where things get uncomfortable. Because the show didn’t just entertain. It preached. And we listened. So now, do we feel duped? Many people do. Many people feel so betrayed that they are willing to burn down everything he created. But is that really what we shoudl do? Do his actions retroactively taint all those life lessons?

That’s one camp: the “throw it out” camp. If someone is that monstrous, the thinking goes, we shouldn’t give them any platform. Watching the show might mean residual royalties. It might encourage streaming platforms to keep it available. Worse — it might send the message that we’re okay with what he did. That the good of the art somehow cancels out the evil of the man.

But there’s another camp, too: those who say No. The art still matters. Even if the artist failed us. The lessons of the art are greater than the artist.

Cosby didn’t make that show alone. Writers, producers, directors, fellow actors — countless people poured their time and talent into that project. Are they to be punished, too? Erased by association?

And what about us, the audience? If we found genuine comfort or wisdom in those episodes, must we now disown that? Can’t we hold both truths in our head at once: that the character Cliff Huxtable was good, while the man Bill Cosby was not?

Economic Questions

There’s also the money question. Watching The Cosby Show reruns does potentially generate revenue for Cosby. Not a lot, but maybe something. So, do we avoid it to prevent that?

But again, he’s not the only one who worked on it. What if Phylicia Rashad, Tempestt Bledsoe, or Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s estate still receive residuals? Should they lose out because of Cosby’s actions?

It’s hard to draw clean ethical lines when the system is so tangled.

Art Is Not a Moral Contract

There’s a temptation, especially in modern discourse, to treat art like a moral contract. If the creator turns out to be flawed (or worse, as in this case) we feel like we’ve been betrayed.

But here’s the truth: artists have always been flawed. Often deeply so. Wagner was an anti-Semite. Caravaggio killed a man. Hemingway was abusive. And don’t even look up some of the misogynistic things Picasso did. The list goes on.

We don’t always throw out the work. Sometimes we bracket it, sometimes we reinterpret it, sometimes we absorb the contradiction and carry on.

That doesn’t mean forgiving or forgetting. It just means we recognize that the art might transcend the person who made it.

Final Thoughts

I’m not offering a final answer here. Just exploring the problem and offering some thoughts.

Bill Cosby was, by all available evidence, a monster in his private life. But The Cosby Show remains one of the most well-crafted, meaningful, and quietly revolutionary television shows ever made.

So what do we do? Do we lock it away, never to be seen again? Or do we find a way to keep it?

For me, I can separate the work from the man. Maybe. It’s disappointing that he was a monster in disguise, and maybe that ruins his more solo efforts like Picture Pages, but The Cosby Show still stands untouched.

But what do you think? Give me your ideas in the comments.

❦

David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Bluesky.

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