The last few years have changed the
game, somewhat. If you've read the title you know which game and if
you keep up with your huge news stories you know how it has changed.
There is nothing particularly shocking about 'Iron' Mike Tyson being
a convicted rapist, nor R. Kelly pissing on under-age girls or even
Gary Glitter molesting the hapless children of Southeast Asia. No the
shock comes with the 'new age' sex offender.
But before going on, a necessary note
of sanity. Sex offender is legally, painted with a broad brush. This
piece does not, in the slightest, refer to acts such as those of Pee
Wee Herman as legitimate sex offences. Rubbing one out in a porno
theatre is a salesman’s Friday night, not a sex offence.
The new age sex offender is the once
darling. There are two specific cases I am going to mention here,
though the upsetting thing is that these two suggest an emerging
trend of good guy perverts to come. If you haven't solved the riddle
the two (once) gentlemen I am referring to are Rolf Harris and Bill
Cosby. Both initially wholesome, PG, beloved figures in the hearts of
their respective nations. Now, something else...
To begin with Rolf, perhaps the more
heinous of the two as he has been convicted. Rolf Harris, an
Australian artist, presenter and weird musician was once a benign
name in Australia. At worst he was non-threatening, at best good old
family fun. Harris was a revered figure in Australia and the UK, to
the point that he was knighted, did a portrait of the Queen,
announced as a living treasure in Australia and performed before her
majesty one year before the shit storm hit and snatched his
reputation.
The offense? Groping two girls aged 14
and 16 in the 80's. Naturally other counts of sexual wretchedness
have emerged in the wake, but the official is horrid enough. In some
respects Rolf was once Australia's grandfather; a goofy old bloke who
wrote novelty songs and captured enough of the Aussie sensibility to
be relevant in his own country, but not niche enough to exclude the
adulation of a global audience. At the very least he was a tolerable
ambassador of our country and civilised enough to marginally deflect
the image of us as wild colonial Neanderthals.
But the truth pulverises any merit he,
or his work, once had. I was truly discovering him and his music
about a year before he was arrested. Now it is awkward, it is a
stretch at best to dodge the image of old craggy hands clutching for
underdeveloped breasts when I hear something like this...
I usually end up
yearning more for this...
It
is a somewhat different case with Cosby. The allegations are just
that, allegations. He has not been convicted of a thing, though if
history is anything to go on allegations of such a scale are usually
true. He likely will not be convicted either, the statute of
limitations has run the cases dry. Like Rolf, he did his dirty work
in his earlier years.
If
Rolf is Australia's grandfather, it is hard to see Bill Cosby as
anything but America's father. The celebrated clean patriarch of
American pop culture. Bill Cosby is so staunchly vanilla that Eddie
Murphy did a famous bit about it.
How then, could
someone so concerned with blue humour, allegedly drug and rape as
many as sixteen women? Common sense would suggest he was brazen
enough to think it wouldn't get out, that the belief was private and
public life were segregated. They are not, and his private deeds have
obviously shaken his public standing. It is understandably difficult
now to enjoy a Cosby Show rerun or see him talking to children saying
darn (significantly not damn) things without thinking of his
transgressions.
Then what do the
two have in common? I mean beside the fact that they were both once
heralded, good taste performers to their respective audiences.
They are both
old. It is one thing to have a legacy tattered posthumously, but to
be living is quite another. Harris was 83 when the past came for him,
above the Australian expectancy but close enough to the end that
death would've been a relative blessing.
Though
allegations have lingered around Bill Cosby for a while, the guy is
77. Had he alluded the truth a few more years, it mightn't have
affected him in any meaningful way.
The two of them
could have shuffled off with a clean reputation, if not a clear
concious. To be blunt, thank fuck things didn't roll that way.
While most of us
enjoyed some element of their work, the adjustment is awkward and
the trust that all our inoffensive idols aren't unabashed sexual
deviants is quickly evaporating; the adoration of a widespread
audience doesn't grant you license to grab, grope and gouge as you
please.
My only hope is
that we don't see Mel Brooks and Patrick Stewart here in a year, or
ever.
