One reason that we have collectively plugged our ears against a decade of dismal revelations about Bill Cosby is that he made lots of Americans feel good about two things we rarely have reason to feel good about: race and gender.
In 1970, the average woman had her first child at 21.4; by 2012, it was almost 26, an age by which many young adults are at least a few years deep into jobs or careers.
After Emancipation, black women married earlier and more often because they were legally free to do so for the first time, and that was true until after World War II. But middle-class white women married less and later.
A very successful woman, Palin has the wherewithal to move forward consciously. What she did was move forward thoughtlessly and overconfidently, without considering that her abilities or qualifications would ever be questioned.
I had thought a lot about unmarried life during my years as an unmarried woman - which was all during my 20s and into my 30s. I was someone who didn't have a ton of relationships as a single person - and so I had a sharp identification with singlehood.
'The Cosby Show' was a show about black people that was fundamentally and unequivocally friendly to whiteness and to white people. The Huxtables had white friends.
