THE COSBY SHOW: Barack Obama Is in This Show's Debt

When my children were little we would watch THE COSBY SHOW. We loved watching the problems of this family, and we learned so much from some of the more serious episodes (like the one that taught Theo how much it cost to live on your own). Perhaps that early bond with THE COSBY SHOW explains why, when the children were in their late teens and saw the musical SOUTH PACIFIC, they didn't like it. They couldn't understand what the big deal was about the two romances -- why couldn't those couples marry?

Today on a back page of Daily Variety I found a letter to the editor from Mickey Gardner, the author of HARRY TRUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS: MORAL COURAGE AND POLITICAL RISKS. Although I don't discuss politics in my blogs, I wholeheartedly agree with Gardner's letter to the editor, which I found so compelling I'm reprinting it here in its entirety:

As we celebrate the election of this country's first African-American president, your readers and the creative community should take note of the fact that two people in your industry -- Marcy Carsey and Tommy Werner -- made a huge contribution more than two decades ago to making Obama's election possible. By stubbornly refusing in the early 1980s to give up their vision of a Cosby as a professional African-American role model and not the stereotypical black standup Vegas comedian that cautious network officials preferred, these two fiercely independent producers contributed mightily to the colorblind attitudes of many of today's middle-aged and younger voters who grew up on "The Cosby Show."

Obama just did not happen overnight. His ability to be elected president started back on July 26, 1948, when Harry Truman, this country's pioneering civil rights president, did the unthinkable and integrated not just the vast American military but the entire federal workforce. While Truman forced blacks and whites to work, eat and sleep alongside each other at Army camps and on Navy battleships, Marcy and Tom showed their viewers how an ordinary black family could live harmoniously with their white neighbors in a world where they all dealt with the same family issues. They shattered another taboo -- all white neighborhoods were still pervasive 25 years ago.

I hope you will take editorial note of the great contribution made by the Cosby team of independent producers who could have sold out and agreed initially to a noncontroversial Cosby and not the beloved Doctor Huxtable who became a friend and weekly visitor in millions and millions of U.S. homes.

Undiagnosed Learning Disability Is Subplot on Lifetime TV’s ARMY WIVES

I’m always on the look-out for learning disabilities that haven’t been diagnosed. A few years ago I diagnosed ADD in a 10^th –grade friend of the family based on something he said to me. (“I don’t know why I didn’t study for my history exam – I love history.”)

The boy’s younger sister had already been diagnosed with ADD. But because he didn’t present the same as his sister, his went undetected until his parents had him tested after I gently suggested this to them.

Which is why I was pleased that, in episode 10 of Season 2 of Lifetime TV’s ARMY WIVES, Roxy was told by Roland, who’s teaching a GED course, the reason she failed the practice exam even though she knew the material. It was because she had a learning disability that interfered with transferring her knowledge to a written test. Roland told her she wasn’t dumb; in fact, she was smart. She just needed to take the test orally.

True, this reveal was not nearly as compelling as the reveal when fans of THE COSBY SHOW found out along with Theo, when he was already in college, that he had a learning disability that interfered with his test taking. (My tears flowed when Vanessa told her father he should be sorry for all the times he ragged on Theo about his grades.) Or in PUNKY BREWSTER when a 12-year-old couldn’t read the poison antidote instructions that could save her younger brother.

In case you believe that you may have an undiagnosed learning disability, there’s a book that may speak to you. Dr. Mel Levine’s A MIND AT A TIME is a treasure trove of explanations of numerous areas of the brain that can affect things that we do (or can’t do).

The author’s writing style is quite dense so you have to be determined to plow through the material and extract the relevant information. Yet the result may be worth the work, especially if you discover some thing or things that you may have been unfairly beating yourself up about all your life.

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