Race, Gender Blame Game Won’t Save Bill Cosby or Mayor Lori Lightfoot
“In recent months, there have been questions raised about your temperament and your reaction to criticism,” Ponce said. Throwing in a reference to a Chicago Tribune editorial’s description of her as “irascible,” he asked “How much of this do you think might have to do with the fact that you’re a woman and specifically a Black woman?”
Lightfoot quickly responded, “99% of it.”
Oh? We can quibble about percentages, but that sounds more than a little high to me, especially considering the many more urgent issues for which she has been criticized, such as surges in the city’s homicide rate and high-departure/low replacement rates of top-level city officials.
Considering the landslide of voters and good will that greeted her election as the city’s first Black and lesbian mayor — and a champion for police accountability as head of the Chicago Police Board — it sounds almost like an act of panic to jump so quickly to playing the race card.
But, as the old saying goes, she knew the challenges she faced when she sought the job. For her to defensively shrug off complaints as 99% based on race and gender bias fills no one with confidence, particularly those who need city services the most. She can’t solve all problems but neither should she add to the noise.
Yet, she does have her defenders and so, it must be said, does Cosby. You’ll know it’s all over for Cosby, for example, when he loses the support of his longtime “Cosby” show co-star Phylicia Rashad, newly appointed dean of the College of Fine Arts at Howard University.
“FINALLY!!!!,” she tweeted triumphantly after his release. “A terrible wrong is being righted — a miscarriage of justice is corrected!”
But that good deed did not go unpunished by students and others at historically black Howard, which distanced itself from the tweet as Rashad’s personal opinion.
Yet, people in show business circles already are buzzing about a possible Cosby comeback in this land of resurrected careers. Count me out.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
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