Cosby on 'Meet the Press'

Bill Cosby and others spoke on Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press about the condition of the African-American community in the U.S. and the significance of Obama's election. Host David Gregory and the panelists had a completely amiable discussion, during which Cosby promoted his new book about the need for effective parenting in low-income, minority communities as a key to success.

Not once, however, did Gregory challenge Cosby's opinions on the causes of the African-American community's economic stagnation. Here is just an example of a controversial remark that Cosby has made in the past, this one from a 2004 speech:

Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle economic people are [not*] holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. (clapping) In the old days, you couldn’t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye (laughing). And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had one and where you got it from. Parents don’t know that today.


I’m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? (clapping) Where were you when he was twelve? (clapping) Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you don’t know he had a pistol? (clapping) And where is his father, and why don’t you know where he is? And why doesn’t the father show up to talk to this boy?

Cosby has been criticized by African-American leaders and liberals for largely ignoring racism, discriminatory incarceration, and structural accounts of poverty as explanations of the plight of African-American communities, in favor of blaming individuals' behaviors and attitudes.

Now it is up for debate whether Cosby's opinions are valid, but David Gregory absolutely should have addressed Cosby's critics and asked the comedian about his controversial statements during this interview. Viewers got no sense that Cosby was anything but a motivational speaker, which was invariably misleading.