E.R. SHIPP Thank you, Bill Cosby, for the truth

Bill Cosby, once America's favorite Jell-O dad, has become a whipping boy for his recent father-like, tough-love remarks about certain classes of black people who, he said, are not "holding up the end of this deal" of being responsible Americans.
In a statement after the pillorying began on the Internet and on talk radio, he said: "I think it is time for concerned African-Americans to march, galvanize and raise awareness about the epidemic, to transform our helplessness, frustration and righteous indignation into a sense of shared responsibility and action."
He's dealing with the "airing dirty laundry" syndrome that most ethnic groups insist is not permitted. We can cuss each other out, as long as we don't let those outside the group know how stinky we can be.
I must take exception -- and I think back to 1827 when John Russworm and Samuel Cornish said in the first edition of their New York-based newspaper, Freedom's Journal, "We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us. ..."
Who better to lecture us than a stern father figure like Cosby? Moreover, he's right. This is a bit of what he said at a Washington gala celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation ruling.
"These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids -- $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics!"' About black criminals, he said: "These are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola."
"People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, saying, 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"
Al Sharpton
You get the drift. I say: Right on, my brother! Even Al Sharpton agrees with Cosby for the most part, though he'd place a lot of blame on the blacks with money, many of them entertainers and sports figures, who set bad examples while ignoring responsibility to help those whom Cosby criticized. And Sharpton wouldn't give the cops a pass to shoot a guy with a pound cake.
"Bill Cosby has done more, far more for civil rights and the black community than anyone who's criticizing him. He ought to be regarded and respected. He's one of the rare artists who made money and turned around and did something for people," Sharpton told me.
Aunts Emma and Georgie
Too many people are afraid to do what used to be routine: correct misbehaving young people. If an Aunt Emma in my neighborhood in Conyers, Ga., or an Aunt Georgie on 113th St. and Lenox saw you doing something wrong, she felt no compunction about correcting you -- maybe whipping you -- then telling your mama. Now we are afraid that even the 7-year-old cussing on the street corner will shoot us. So we keep silent, and maybe even cross the street.
Thank you, Bill Cosby, for reminding us of the Aunt Emmas and Aunt Georgies who were not blood kin but who held us to standards. Thank you for challenging us to also speak what we know to be the truth.
X E.R. Shipp is a columnist for the New York Daily News. She won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1996. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services