Margin Notes: Don Rowing Club, Lancers, Cosby

The Don Rowing Club's boathouse on the Credit River in Mississauga, Ontario didn't look terribly appropriate on 10-February-2009

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Some scenes that look quite natural in the summer look rather ridiculous in the winter. A case in point is the Don Rowing Club's boathouse, located along the Credit River not far the GO commuter rail Lakeshore Line in Mississauga, Ontario. With the river frozen over, it looked far more like a skatehouse than a boathouse in the photograph above.

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A 2009 Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart was on display in the Skywalk between Union Station and the Convention Centre in Toronto on 7-February-2009

Because of the cold, this is a time of year for indoor events. Ever since I moved to Toronto, Mitsubishi Motors has sponsored "canvas" advertising in the Skywalk between Union Station and the CN Tower, mostly located where the pedestrian corridor crosses the railway corridor. For the Canadian International Auto Show running through next weekend at the Convention Centre (no, I didn't go, and why would I?), Mitsubishi has decided to park a pair of Lancers in the Skywalk, one of them a racing variant. It's a little disconcerting to walk over fake skid marks on the pedestrian walkway.

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When I was growing up, my parents mused about getting me a Dodge Lancer after I got my driver's license, but I was never interested. There was overlap between Mitsubishi and Dodge use of the "Lancer" nameplate from 1985 to 1989 (funny how nobody has ever tried to sell me on a Mitsubishi)--I can't think of any other non-numerical name shared amongst automakers off the top of my head.

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Turning to other forms of transportation, I have been outspoken on this blog about a lack of satisfaction with Air Canada's partner airlines in the United States through the Star Alliance. Somehow, I completely missed the fact that Continential Airlines announced last June that it was withdrawing from the Skyteam alliance and joining the Star Alliance. It hasn't happened yet, but at least there's some hope on the horizon--I'd rather fly Continental than either of the two airlines that I have heavily criticized here.

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An Orion VII hybrid bus worked the 82 Rosedale bus at Maclennan Avenue on 5-February-2009

Perhaps I am being elitist about my airline choices, but it seems to me that the Toronto Transit Commission is being a bit elitist in its bus assignments. The 55 Warren Park in my neighborhood and the 82 Rosedale (serving one of the most affluent portions of the city) both require one bus. I have taken some delight in seeing historic "Fishbowl" buses on the 55--but that indicates that it is getting very old buses. In contrast, the 82 had a nearly-new Orion VII hybrid bus when I rode it recently. Is that really fair?

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Comedian Bill Cosby seemed very concerned with fairness when he was interviewed on KGO's Brian Copeland Program out of San Francisco last Sunday. Wondering how this impacted his viewing habits, Copeland asked him, "What do you watch on TV?" The response was classic Cosby:

I don't know. At age 71, it's not even important... the Weather Channel. The Weather Channel is dramatic, it changes every half hour, there's nobody swearing even when the weather is terrible, and we have black weather people who aren't walking with a swagger and bopping back and forth --- you know, it's the weather channel, period. It's very, very fair.

Politics: Cosby as the Role Model

TORONTO, ONTARIO - On inauguration day earlier this week, CBC Television's "The National" ran an interesting report by Leslie MacKinnon on how Hollywood had helped pave the way for Barack Obama, the first non-white person to be elected President of the United States. The report presented a variety of racial milestones from Jackie Robinson to an African-American president on 24. It did mention The Cosby Show, but I think it understated the influence of that sitcom and its role in making the election of Barack Obama possible.

Apparently The Jeffersons had been presenting a Black family on CBS since 1975, but I don't remember ever watching it, and its relatively anemic ratings probably mean I wasn't the only young person in that era that didn't. In contrast, in looking over the episode list in preparation for writing this entry, I must have seen almost all of the Cosby Shows. I distinctly remember that it was appointment television--if it was 8 pm on Thursday night, you tuned in NBC and you watched it. When upstart FOX placed "The Simpsons" against it for the 1990-1 season, there was some question, but Cosby generally won out across the country.

We didn't tune in because it the cast was made up entirely of Black people (in the days before African-American was the preferred term). As pointed out earlier this week, there simply weren't many Blacks in the community in which I was raised. We tuned in because it was funny. Bill Cosby and the rest of the cast were entertaining, and the scripts described family experiences that it seemed like anyone could have when children were growing up. There wasn't anything especially "Black" about it.

If anything, the presented fictional Huxtable family was higher class than most of the families that I was familiar with, being headed by doctor and clearly reasonably wealthy. That was the key to the impact of the Cosby Show. Where other portions of the media might have served to have whites feel in some way superior, the Cosby Show caused people like me to look up to Black people. Why wouldn't one want to raise children the way the Huxtables raised theirs? So, if one could view a Black people as role models for parenting or economic status, then why couldn't one view a Black person as a credible politician or world leader? The leap for a Cosby Show viewer was not that large.

That Bill Cosby and Barack Obama seem almost interchangeable in their commentaries about how to eliminate racial divides that exist in the United States is likely not a coincidence. The Cosby Show demonstrated how to live responsibly--in a way that no person would question--and Barack Obama's family has lived such a life for real. Do we not see Phylicia Rashād (Clair Huxtable) in Michelle Obama? Do we not see Keshia Knight Pulliam (Rudy) in Sasha Obama? One hopes that Malia will not behave like Tempestt Bledsoe (Vanessa) in the White House!

Barack Obama understood that he was elected on the shoulders of giants. It may not be fully appreciated that Bill Cosby is one of those giants.