Wednesday, November 26, 2014

All The Good Ones Are Sex Offenders


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.  

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