But I don’t write for Commentary and National Review…
I’ve said it before: Bill Cosby always gave me the creeps. In particular, I hated his sitcom.
But at the time, I remember boring people by pointing out and complaining about that particular credit, which, contra Rob Long, was impossible to miss (if you’re possessed of a particular kind of mind, that is…)
Decades later, Long gets around to writing about it:
Bill Cosby, as everyone knows, made a lot of money, too—about a billion dollars, it is said. His name appears four times in the credits for The Cosby Show. He’s the star, obviously. And he shares a “Created By” credit with two other writers. His name is listed in a production-company “card” at the end of the final credits. He also—no fool, he—co-wrote the theme song.
Curiously, though, his name appears a fifth time—not as “Bill Cosby” but as “William H. Cosby Jr. Ed.D.,” as something called an “Executive Consultant,” tucked away near the end of the final crawl. It goes by so fast, you can miss it if you’re not paying attention.
Whitaker explains the existence of this oddly pompous credit…
