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From: figmo@lll-crg.ARpA (Lynn Gold)
Newsgroups: soc.women
Subject: Cosby exemplifies sexism on "The Tonight Show"
Message-ID: <6304@lll-crg.ARpA>
Date: Wed, 24-Sep-86 04:38:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: lll-crg.6304
Posted: Wed Sep 24 04:38:57 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Sep-86 04:47:34 EDT
Reply-To: figmo@lll-crg.UUCP (Lynn Gold)
Organization: The Kitchen of Panda Programming, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 62

My husband and I just finished watching tonight's edition of "The
Tonight Show" (aka "Johnny Carson") with Bill Cosby as guest host.
His guests were Liberace, Beatrice Arthur, and Linda Ellerbee.

Cosby first spent about 20 minutes with Liberace, first listening to
him "play" (I use the term in quotes because he kept missing notes and
hitting the wrong keys, as he always does) and then prattling on with
him.  After a commercial break, Cosby started the next segment of the
program by plugging Liberace for about two minutes until he jolted and
read the intro for his next guest, Bea Arthur.

I could understand Cosby trying to spend extra time with Liberace and
Bea so he wouldn't have to spend time talking with his fiercest
competition (Linda Ellerbee's show is on Thursday nights opposite
his), but neither my husband nor I could justify what we saw.  Bea
entered, sat in the guest chair, and Cosby said to her -- while
motioning at LIBERACE -- "You know, this man has twenty-one dogs."
The next five minutes consisted of Bill and Liberace prattling on and
on about Liberace's dogs with poor Bea stuck in the middle, trying to
get a word in edgewise.  Finally Bill rather stiltedly said, as if
someone had just prompted him to do so, that Bea "has three German
shepherds."  Ms. Arthur corrected him and quickly tried to change the
subject.  (Bea Arthur is an intelligent woman who has FAR more
interesting things to talk about than her dogs.)  Cosby then remarked
"I understand you had a dress made for the Emmys."  She didn't; she
wore a dress she wore five years ago to some kind of induction
ceremony for Norman Lear.  After showing a clip from her show, they
broke for commercials.

After the commercials came the part we had been waiting ffor: Linda
Ellerbee vs. Bill Cosby.  The tension was so thick you could cut it
with a knife.  Linda came VERY prepared; amongst other things, she had
a little bag full of goodies.  She pointed out that she had inscribed
her book to Cosby and then pulled out a copy of HIS book for him to
inscribe to HER.  It was obvious that HE wasn't expecting his most
formidable competition to be so friendly (or cool, or calm...) as to
challenge HIS staff to a softball game, while she was almost going out
of her way to have fun with him.  Cosby was very stilted as he read
off the canned questions ("What is your show about?" "Is it a history
show?" "How far do you go back?").  Linda's answers often sounded as
if she had rehearsed them to the point where she'd pause for audience
reaction; unfortunately, the audience didn't react as planned.  This
went on for a total of nine minutes.

There were five minutes left after the last break; they consisted of
Liberace "playing" the piano.

My husband, who doesn't normally react to sexism, reacted to this show
so strongly that he plans to send a nastygram about it to NBC network.
He also plans on boycotting Cosby's TV show and concerts.  Did anyone
else out there see this show?  Did you react the same way we did?

--Lynn

-- 
UUCP: ...lll-crg!figmo
ARPA: Lynn%PANDA@SUMEX-AIM

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