Why Phylicia Rashad’s defense of Bill Cosby is so enraging

Et tu, Phylicia?

Barely an hour just after the news broke that Monthly bill Cosby, the as soon as-beloved Television set star whose conviction for sexual assault marked a major victory for the #MeToo movement, would be unveiled from prison on an infuriating technicality, his longtime Television set wife Phylicia Rashad weighed in on Twitter.

“FINALLY!!! A awful completely wrong is staying righted — a miscarriage of justice is corrected!” she wrote in a information accompanying a photograph of the comic searching frail, as if to elicit our sympathy.

It was an example of a hallowed movie star custom, the seriously-no-a single-asked-why-are-you-speaking-correct-now tweet, a single that poured gas on an now incendiary predicament. In no way head that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s final decision in no way exonerated Cosby of the costs against him as Rashad appeared to be arguing.

The actress — or whoever handles her social media accounts — certainly knew her comment would be controversial: Replies on the tweet were confined to the two accounts she follows, a single of which belongs to her sister, Debbie Allen. And inside a handful of hours, Rashad tried using to wander back her assertion, although as of this producing she has not deleted the unique tweet.

Outrage in excess of the stunning reversal of Cosby’s conviction speedily morphed into anger at Rashad, who — until eventually Wednesday, at the very least — remained a cherished performer, untarnished by her longstanding affiliation with and preceding defense of Cosby. (In a 2015 interview she instructed Cosby was the target of a conspiracy). Just very last month Rashad was named dean of the Chadwick Boseman University of Fine Arts at Howard College.

It stays to be seen whether or not the controversy will blow in excess of as readily as Cosby departed from a Pennsylvania prison Wednesday afternoon in a white sedan. If Howard College and the two existing Television set sequence on which she has recurring roles — NBC’s well-liked spouse and children drama “This Is Us” and OWN’s coming-of-age sequence “David Tends to make Man” — make your mind up to say “Bye, Phylicia,” handful of will be surprised.

For a lot of who grew up looking at “The Cosby Show” and have tried using to independent the positive aspects of the sitcom’s legacy from the loathsome alleged habits of its star and creator, Rashad’s provocation was specially distasteful — in part since her character may possibly have been the show‘s best energy.

We all know in theory that actors are not the figures they participate in, but to children of the ‘80s, Rashad was Clair Huxtable, the business but loving wife and mother as well as the no-nonsense law firm who under no circumstances shed an argument at house. As performed with regal attraction by Rashad, Clair was both equally the best sitcom mother and a trailblazing example of a woman who balanced operate and spouse and children everyday living although bucking traditional gender roles. (Cliff did most of the cooking in their residence.)

She was also nearly anything but an enabler and specialized in taking down terribly behaved gentlemen — even ones in her personal spouse and children. In a single celebrated rant, she lit into her daughter’s dopey boyfriend Elvin (performed by Geoffrey Owens) for his antiquated tips about the role a wife must participate in at house. She was also comfortable schooling her offspring on matters of gender equality, as soon as scolding teenage son Theo for studying a journal that includes demeaning photographs of scantily clad women of all ages. More than nearly anything, Clair comprehended fairness and advocated for it in her marriage, spouse and children and expert everyday living.

Rashad’s entire body of operate extends well outside of “The Cosby Show” or “Cosby,” the CBS sitcom that tried using, with mixed results, to reclaim the magic of the Rashad-Cosby pairing. In the previous handful of a long time, she’s starred in “Soul,” “Empire,” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” and has been nominated for two Emmys for her visitor role on “This Is Us.” Though Clair Huxtable stays her most effective-recognized character, Rashad is the a single needlessly tying herself to Cosby’s legacy.

Section of the cause that Cosby was capable to evade authorized ramifications for so long was the cognitive dissonance that the long-swirling rumors about him established. Absolutely America’s Dad, the pudding pop person, couldn’t be a sexual predator?

For individuals of us who’ve fixed the dissonance, it is tricky to know his Television set wife doesn’t feel to have contemplated the likelihood, specifically as a lot of a lot more women of all ages came ahead in journal include stories and in the legal demo. Just after all, she would not be on your own if she distanced herself from Cosby: Lisa Bonet, who experienced a notoriously contentious partnership with her Television set father and was reportedly fired from the spinoff “A Distinct World” when she grew to become expecting, reported in 2018 that Cosby experienced a ”type of sinister, shadow power [that] are not able to be concealed.”

But it is not just our partnership with Rashad, as a result of Clair, that manufactured her response so disappointing. It is that news of Cosby’s impending release and Rashad’s triumphant tweet came amid a dizzying flurry of developments Wednesday in the globe of movie star justice, sending a dispiriting information about fairness and accountability in a post-#MeToo globe.

Earlier in the working day, “Smallville” actress Allison Mack was sentenced to a few a long time in prison — about the similar quantity of time Cosby put in driving bars — for coercing women of all ages into owning sexual intercourse with NXIVM cult chief Keith Raniere. And it was discovered James Franco would pay $two.two million to settle a course-action lawsuit submitted by two former students at his performing faculty who accused him of sexual misconduct. The overlapping news stories manufactured justice truly feel like an arbitrary zero-sum activity in which there are a finite quantity of penalties to go all over. The universe appeared to be saying, “Fine, the ‘Smallville’ female can go to jail, but only if Cosby gets to go house.”

Or, as Dylan Farrow set it in a assertion posted to Twitter, the day’s functions furnished “a ideal example of how not just our society, but our justice method, frequently fails survivors of sexual assault.”

And on Tuesday, TLC introduced it was eventually cutting ties with the Duggar spouse and children by canceling truth present “Counting On” a lot more than two months just after Josh Duggar was arrested on baby pornography costs and a lot more than six a long time just after it was discovered that, as a teenager, he experienced molested numerous girls, which include quite a few of his sisters, who later went on to star in “Counting On.”

As a lot of pointed out on social media, there was an terrible irony in Cosby, a person accused of raping or sexually assaulting a lot more than 5 dozen women of all ages in excess of quite a few decades, leaving jail many thanks to a prosecutorial blunder, when just very last week Britney Spears, a 39-12 months-aged woman with no legal history, informed a choose she was prohibited from managing her personal uterus.

It is turn into a frequent chorus to question if #MeToo has “gone as well far” — frequent ample, in point, that it was asked even ahead of Cosby’s unique sentencing. As Wednesday instructed, the remedy still depends potentially as well a lot on who’s accomplishing the measuring, and who might have cut a offer with the D.A.