Imagine a scenario in which Bill Cosby wants to rid the world of famous black people who he thinks are debits — and not credits — to the race.
The actor is fronting the Cosby Coon Removal Program, where he wants to transform actors — Pam Grier, Rudy Ray Moore, and Jim Kelly, for example — into dignified representations of the black race.
If they all could act like Huxtables, and not like ghettoized superheroes who sass the man with saucy jive vernacular, then the world would all be a better place, he surmises.
It's his hope that blaxploitation and the presumed embarrassment that comes from the language, storylines, and 'hood black subculture will be a thing of the past.
"You," Cosby tells his adversary, "are scaring white people!"
This is all fiction, of course.
It's a situation that Carl Jones, the executive producer of Adult Swim's satirical Black Dynamite, has masterminded. In the Nov. 15 episode, entitled "Sweet Bill's Badass Song or Cos Ain't Himself," Cosby is now the purveyor of black people appropriateness and the enemy.
Earlier this week Cosby's social media team asked Twitter users to meme him in a poorly thought-out meme generator on his site. It backfired in grand fashion when people used it to create memes referencing his 2006 rape allegations, and was ultimately taken down.
This latest episode of Black Dynamite takes direct aim at Cosby, and had been in the works for more than a year. The fact that it's landing now, in the aftermath of such a colossal social media showdown, is purely coincidental.
But it'll sting all the same.
"To be honest, we weren't actually going after Cosby first," Jones told BuzzFeed News. "The original idea was, we wanted to do a story on blaxploitation and … we came up with the idea of who is somebody who doesn't agree with blaxploitation? Who would want to kidnap all the blaxploitation [actors] and try to convert them into upright-standing citizens? We had a list of villains. Cosby was at the top."
Given that this exact story arc was in the works about 15 months ago, Jones said his team immediately jumped in earlier this week to tweak a few moments in the episode and update it to reflect the recent social media backlash against Cosby.
In a rough cut of the episode provided to BuzzFeed News, Cosby kidnaps all of the "blackity-black" actors in an effort to get them to "stop cooning in Black Hollywood." It's a direct response to the many conversations and speeches Cosby has had these last few years where he's been critical of young black people. Cosby's publicist had no comment about this Adult Swim episode when reached by BuzzFeed News.
In the Adult Swim series, the action is set entirely in the 1970s, and functions as a send-up to the blaxploitation genre. In one scene in the episode, a profane Moms Mabley is cursing Cosby out, and constantly antagonizing him sexually.
But is this Black Dynamite episode yet another example of lambasting the long-famous comic?
Not really, Jones said. But there's irony in Cosby being mocked in comedic circles.
"Comedy has always been used as a healing tool, and I think a lot of times it can be used to heal certain wounds in our community," Jones said. "You can go all the way back to Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor, and Redd Foxx, and these guys were so honest onstage. They talked about things that were somewhat taboo in our community, and they were very, very candid. When you look at a comic like Richard Pryor, he opened himself up for criticism onstage. He talked about his cocaine habit. He talked about his womanizing. He talked about him having a heart attack from burning up, from freebasing. He put his own shortcomings and vulnerabilities out there onstage, and in some ways it was probably therapeutic for him as well."
Jones said this isn't just a cheap shot at Cosby and his recent troubles. Last month, comedian Hannibal Buress joked about Cosby's alleged rapes during a show in Philadelphia. In his set, he talked about how Cosby positioned himself as a "role model" for black people, yet 13 women have come forward to allege that he raped them. Cosby has never publicly addressed the rape allegations, nor have any criminal charges been filed against him.
"I think that a lot of comedians and comics and satirists and humorists look for opportunities to shine some light on their own work," Jones said. "And I think when you have a target that's as big as Cosby and the media is really on a hunt right now for anything dealing with him, there are definitely opportunities there to make a name for yourself. In our case, we weren't looking to strike for blood. We may not necessarily agree with his approach to reach results, but I do believe that his philosophy is right when it comes to how critical he is about pop culture and black culture in general."
However, it's not as simple as that. "The culture that he's criticizing, they don't really have any respect for Cosby because, number one, he's not of the culture, and number two, he's not shining any light on the circumstances that give birth to these things that he doesn't like," Jones continued. "What Cosby is doing is giving somebody Tylenol that has cancer. You might numb the pain, but you're not getting to the root of the problem. You can't just attack the youth for expressing themselves the way they express themselves, because it comes from a certain set of circumstances. This perspective and this attitude that hip-hop and young generations share, it comes from a certain place, it comes from a real place."
As for the made-up Cosby in Jones' fictional world, he doesn't prevail. Black Dynamite ultimately saves the day, but not before the villainous Cosby gets to toss off one last ill-informed zinger.
"I just wanted niggers to do better, Black Dynamite," the fictionalized Cosby says.
Racial epithet aside, it's similar to a wish that many have made of the real Cosby.