Reply to Malcolm-Jamal Warner dead at 54

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am surprised by how many see him as an icon and have such strong attachment to him. I do remember him from the Cosby show but haven’t heard or seen of him since. We had a few shows we watched regularly as kids but I haven’t heard anything about most of those actors / actresses in decades and they definitely weren’t central to my life or childhood memories. [/quote]  I also think part of it is people don't understand what the Cosby Show meant to black people. For a lot of Black families, The Cosby Show wasn’t just a popular sitcom; it was one of the first times they saw a successful, loving Black family portrayed on TV in a positive and aspirational way. That representation had a big emotional and cultural impact, especially in the '80s and '90s when that kind of visibility was rare.[/quote]

As a white kid from the 80s with a dysfunctional family, MJW was my pretend brother (and then boyfriend), Bill Cosby was my pretend dad. My home was very strict but somehow TV between 8-9 pm was totally fair game every night in a way that it definitely is not in my UMC circles now. Along with the families from Growing Pains and Family Ties, the characters from all of these shows were as real to me as my own relatives, but far better role models and huge influences in my life. I would never tell anyone this, but I was sincerely disappointed that real college was not like it was on A Different World and one of the reasons I applied to Columbia is because Carol Seaver went there. I even wrote that in whatever short essay asked the "why Columbia" question and they actually accepted me in spite of that.

I follow the actors closely because it's always a little heartbreaking when one of them is a bad person in real life (Bill Cosby, Kirk Cameron). I haven't read a bad word about MJW.[/quote]

Kirk Cameron has been a wonderful role model in real life.[/quote]

Surely this is satire.[/quote]

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