Enotes

In 1984, Bill Cosby helped save an entire television network. Thirty years later, he's toxic to an entire industry. It was in '84 when NBC, lagging far behind brethren CBS and ABC in ratings to the point of being a national joke, brought in Cosby and built a sitcom around him. Cosby was 46 years old and though he'd been canceled in the past with other television vehicles, his star power on TV was still heavy. Viewers still had "Fat Albert" and Jell-O commercials fresh on their minds. The sitcom idea was novel. NBC decided to cast Cosby and his TV family as well-to-do African-Americans living in a tony brownstone in upper Manhattan. This was no "Good Times" scenario. The presentation on TV of blacks living a life that wasn't in poverty wasn't new (witness "The Jeffersons"), but Cosby was a doctor and his wife was a lawyer. With all due respect to dry cleaner moguls, this was different. Plus, Cliff and Clair Huxtable had kids---...

Why does the ice cream man have the market cornered on driving trucks around the neighborhood, selling his wares? Think about his clientele---six-year-olds, who aren't exactly loaded. How much disposable income does a first grader have? This may seem like a strange time to bring this up, because we're hardly in ice cream truck season, but I say this is the perfect time to discuss this. With ice cream no longer a viable purchase option at your curb, why not consider other items that a grown up would run out of his/her house to snatch up? Liquor, for one. Can you imagine if there was a liquor truck that cruised the neighborhoods? The driver would make a mint. Adults would be lined up down the street as far as the eye could see. The possibilities are endless. How nice would it be if you could purchase an apple pie from a truck in front of your home? Or a dozen doughnuts? The items for sale wouldn't have to be limited to food stuffs. I'd have killed at tim...