SOUR GRAPES, MAYBE?

One thing about having brought Bill Cosby to town is that if you are the one responsible for bringing him, your stars have certainly risen. And if you are among the invited guests, your prestige in the community was certainly enhanced. But if you are among the legions that were not invited, you might be nursing misplaced feelings of rejection.

But, let’s face it. Everybody couldn’t attend. It wasn’t a town meeting. It was a meeting of a small group of important community leaders. And if you were offended at not being invited, relax! No one suggested that it was a meeting for all important community leaders.

Admittedly, the pre-meeting publicity may have suggested that we were all being put to an acid test of who is important and who is not. But it was The Republican newspaper that set up that model. In reality and outcome, it was a preliminary non-event that we hope will yield some significant future results. The Republican printed the only newsworthy items, which were the fact of the meeting itself and the invitation list.

And it is unfair for those who were not invited to blame the poor person who compiled the list of invitees. And that the person who did remains a mystery (word is that at least one person was invited by Henry Thomas,) is perfectly understandable. Would you want to answer to all those people who were left out?

It is equally as foolish to blame those who attended the meeting, especially when they did exactly what the rest of us wish we could have done. Don’t get me wrong. A few of those who attended may have exacerbated our pain by emerging from the meeting with swelled heads and inflated opinions of their own relative importance. But, the fact of their swelled heads and our deflated egos didn’t alter the outcome. Many good people met with Bill Cosby and began a valuable dialogue that may make Springfield a better place in which to live.

Let’s face it; many who complained about not being invited were simply jealous. And some who were jealous certainly could have made constructive contributions to the meeting. But, the fact remains that everybody couldn’t be invited. Those who were invited had the inside track and the rest of us did not. That’s the way it goes sometimes! It’s kind of silly to be negative about such a positive event simply because our politics didn’t line up. (“Petulant” may be more accurate. “Childish” might be a little strong.) However our reactions are labeled, the only relevant issue should be whether or not the meeting with Cosby yielded positive results as, judging by his follow-up visit to Putnam High, it apparently did.

No one can argue that Kevin McCaskill, the new principal of Putnam High, should not have attended. He heads a high school with critical and near fatal problems that demand immediate attention and can use all of the help that Bill Cosby and anyone else can muster. He was able to convince Cosby to visit the school. Who knows what benefit may come from it? Although I seriously question the omission of Black elected officials—something that never would have been allowed in the White community—most others that we have since learned attended were more or less as acceptable as many of us who did not.

And let’s be honest. Some people should not have been invited because they had nothing to offer. I am very mindful of the fact that some in our community think that simply “showing up” is some kind of badge of merit. But it also can waste a lot of time. Altogether too often, the ones who have the least to offer show up and make the most noise. They bog down potentially good meetings with meaningless trivia. It would have been foolish to misuse Bill Cosby’s time with such nonsense.

In spite of our wounded egos, the only real issue is whether or not Bill Cosby’s visits can help Springfield. I think we all agree that they can. Accordingly, while remaining mindful that some might use his visits to promote their own personal and political agendas and others might use them to further divide the Black community, we should stop the petty griping and pull together to make the most of Cosby’s generosity. n