ArcaMax

Suddenly Bill Cosby has become the Confederate battle flag of the entertainment world. Everybody seems to want to take him down.

For months the iconic showman's defenders have tried to dismiss the parade of women who have accused the now 77-year-old of drugging, raping and otherwise sexually molesting them.

But now his own testimony in a 2005 civil case, unsealed by a judge after an Associated Press request, reveals a creepier Cosby than anyone wanted to know.

And that raises new questions for those who, like me, have defended Cosby's nationwide moral crusade over the past decade, even when his sarcasm toward poor black folks sometimes took on the abusive tone of an Internet troll.

Significantly it was Cosby's famous "Pound Cake speech," as it has become known, at an NAACP event in 2004 that led U.S. District Court Judge Eduardo C. Robreno of Pennsylvania to release the testimony.

In that speech, the world-famous comedian urged his fellow African-Americans to stop blaming racism for their woes as he criticized single mothers, low-slung pants and unconventional names on black children.

"These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake," he said in a widely-quoted passage. "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 would not have used language as grumpy or abrasive as his. But if anyone could get away with it while delivering a worthwhile message, it was the legendary Bill Cosby, a black pioneer and crossover star on stage, screen, TV, comedy albums and Jell-O commercials since the 1960s.

Yet by taking a stance as a "public moralist," Judge Robreno(cq) argued, Cosby had "voluntarily narrowed the zone of privacy that he is entitled to claim" as a public figure.

"The stark contrast between Bill Cosby, the public moralist and Bill Cosby, the subject of serious allegations concerning improper (and perhaps criminal) conduct, is a matter as to which the AP -- and by extension the public -- has a significant interest," Robreno wrote.

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