CULTURE WATCH : American Dream

On Thursday night, while fires still burned in Los Angeles, Cliff and Clair Huxtable bade us farewell. The last episode of “The Cosby Show,” one of the most successful series in television history, would have been bigger news on a quieter day. But as Los Angeles residents watched under dusk-to-dawn curfew, the meaning of the series came into a paradoxical focus.

“The Cosby Show” was about “the American Dream,” as we all still call it, a dream with no official status, coming from no document framed by any Founding Father, arising from the social, not the political, history of our democracy.

That dream is of something so small, so ordinary, that aristocrats have found it depressing. Nothing but the dream of a decent life, the family at home, prosperous and secure, finding comedy and tragedy enough in the challenges of growing up, growing together, growing older, growing old.

Is that too much to ask? Alexis de Tocqueville, for one, thought it all too little to ask. But it is and will remain who we are, and for millions it has been a healing humor to join Cliff and Clair at home with their children living out their African-American version of our common dream.

The political expression of the American Dream is just as modest as the social expression. It is not a dream of privilege or omnipotence but of simple fairness, of equal protection under the law. For African-Americans, however, and not for them alone, the King verdict has shattered that simplest of dreams. Bill Cosby’s exit line--his timing, alas, as flawless as ever--was not a joke but a prayer.