Bill Cosby live

The Wall Street Journal

He's not backing down. At Stanford University Sunday, after a speech to teachers, Bill Cosby didn't mince words when he spoke of parents not doing right by their children. "Some of these children," the San Jose Mercury News quotes him as saying, "have been raised like pimps."

This strong language about irresponsibility and bad behavior comes scarcely a week after the comedian found himself at the center of a firestorm for remarks he delivered at an NAACP dinner commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Just what did he say that ruffled so many feathers? We'll let Mr. Cosby speak for himself:

Lack of responsibility: "Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for their kids - $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.'"

Lack of English skills: "I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth."

Crime: "These are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, [saying] 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"

By week's end Mr. Cosby had issued a statement pointing out that most of the news accounts dropped the context within which his remarks were delivered: a 50 percent high school dropout rate for inner-city African-American males that he rightly characterized as an "epidemic." In other words, Mr. Cosby's argument is that 1) a 50 percent black dropout rate ought to be regarded as a national scandal in a post-Brown America; and 2) dysfunctional behavior is dysfunctional whatever one's skin color.

Surely it says something about Mr. Cosby's critics that they are more disturbed by his speaking out than they are about the underlying crisis he's trying to address.