Bill Cosby and my dad: A bond now broken -

When I was growing up, there were two dads in our house: Josef Dvorak and Bill Cosby.

My dad spent years listening to Bill Cosby on stage, where he’d riff on parenthood and the dentist and football. Then, my dad delivered room service dinners to Cosby’s hotel room in Lake Tahoe.

My dad knew all of Cosby’s comedy routines, cold. And he repeated them at home until my little brother and I got them perfect — right down to his inflections and spattering invectives. Cosby’s take on parenting and family life became the English vocabulary and handbook for American living in our home.

“Chocolate cake for breakfast!” “I. Have. Had. Enough!” “The beatings will now begin!!”

Cosby defined what being an American father was for my dad, the immigrant trying to find his place in this foreign culture while working nights as a waiter in a casino showroom for 20 years.

My dad loved showing off the autographed photo Cosby gave him, signing it to my dad’s Czech nickname, “Pepi.” And he repeated the story of how Cosby ripped him to shreds — yelling so loudly, the musicians came out into the hallway to see what all the ruckus was about — because my dad didn’t have the change to break Cosby’s $100 bill.

“Nah, I’m just kidding. I scared you, didn’t I?” the Coz told my dad, and handed him the $100 bill and told him to keep it.

This summer, we played a few of the Cosby routines for my kids, inducting them into 30 years of family jokes. And every morning, they come downstairs and ask for chocolate cake.

The slow-motion crash of the legend of Bill Cosby is hard to watch, for all the things we’ve lost. And it’s amazing to behold, for all the ways our society has changed.

“He was such a family man. Everything was family. We loved him because he was so clean and funny. You kids could watch him no problem,” my mom said, as we dissected the tidal wave of accounts from women who said he allegedly drugged and raped them.

“Yeah. It’s bad. All those women. All the same story,” my dad said.

As a waiter in a casino showroom for decades, he heard all kinds of dirt. He was probably there the night that supermodel Janice Dickinson alleges Cosby gave her pills and wine and allegedly raped her.

All those ’70s stars — Tony Orlando, Jim Nabors, Charo, Lawrence Welk, Sonny and Cher — my dad had great little insights and tidbits on them. But Cosby? He was only known to be tough on staff and musicians (nothing new in show business).

Unlike the other characters, there were no stories of Cosby cruising, hustling, groping or seducing circulating among the hotel and showroom staff. Nope, they all loved Bill Cosby.

And for my parents, who lived in a majority-white town, Cosby was — de facto — their ambassador for all African Americans. No, his stage routine and his Huxtable family on television weren’t the reality of all of black America. And they didn’t give a true picture of race relations and history in our country.

But for a lot of white America, Cosby had a powerful pull. And I suspect our household was not alone.

So it’s not hard to see why so many of us persisted in refusing to hear those women’s stories years ago. I know I didn’t want them to be true.

But our culture has changed dramatically in the last few decades. A woman who had a drink with a man can talk about the rest of the evening without being doubted and judged so harshly. Women can talk about sexual assaults without being hushed.

Well, not always. Our 1-in-5 culture — 1 out of 5 American women say they have been sexually assaulted, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — is still heavy with sexism and misogyny.

But there is, without a doubt, progress. That is the stunning part of this story. Exactly same situation that was described 20, even 10, years ago? Crickets. People weren’t listening.

And with the wide reach of social media — the women who all have stunningly similar stories of Cosby’s alleged assaults aren’t dependent on the constraints of legacy media to tell their stories — they are being heard.

“The thing is. You just never know about people. I just can’t imagine this is the same man,” my mom said. “Who do you believe now? How do you know anyone is good anymore?”

Yup, that’s what it comes down to. Whether it’s priests or football coaches, teachers or a beloved comedian, it’s always the ones we love the most who get away with it the longest.

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