After doing enough research to make sure it’s not some elaborate prank that will make us all look like fools, we’ve decided to report on the high school kid who is apparently making a statue of a naked Bill Cosby with his genitals covered by a crying Fat Albert. Surely, our hesitation was justified, right? Because who would do such a thing? Well, according to the New Times Broward-Palm Beach and Time and the official press release—seriously, we checked—the person who would do such a thing is a high school freshman from Florida named Rodman Edwards.
The sculpture, which seems to only exist as a computer-generated rendering at the moment, is titled “Fat Albert Cries For Dr. Huxtable,” and it depicts—as we said—a naked Bill Cosby with a small Fat Albert covering up his private area. The actual statue, assuming that it’s real, will be unveiled at St. Petersburg’s Cory Allen Contemporary Art Showroom on February 20.
Now, it’s pretty obvious what point a naked statue of Bill Cosby is trying to make (though Time seems inexplicably confused), but Edwards is specifically positioning it as a commentary on the busts of Cosby that are sitting in the Academy Of Television Arts And Sciences Halls Of Fame in Orlando and California. His argument is that Penn State removed a statue of Joe Paterno in 2011, and that these institutes should do the same thing and replace their Cosby busts with the one he made. Edwards’ spokesman says that he “captured Cosby’s real character” and that it’s “a more appropriate statue.” We doubt they’ll agree, but he makes a good case.