Gotcha. I was thrown off by your use of the word “supposedly”.
The OP’s quote is not Bill Cosby.
It’s Morgan Freeman.
Well… ahem… it occurred to me to look it up on Snopes only after I made post #14, heh heh. :o
Since there’s nothing about Jell-O pudding or “THEEEOOOOO…” in the entire diatribe, it’s obviously not Bill Cosby.
You’re such a pup. I’ll remember him as the guy who said, “Hey, hey, hey, it’s FAT ALBERT.”
Oh, now I want pudding. 
Ah, yes…his latter years. I remember when he said, “Riiight. What’s a cubit?”
VOOba… VOOba… VOOba…
Well in that case, it sounds much more reasonable.
If it had been James Earl Jones’ quote it would be indisputable.
Anyone else get an inadvertant laugh out of the line “Except for brief period in the 50’s when I was doing my National Service, I’ve worked hard since I was 17”? Apparently whoever wrote this feels that a few years in military service is a chance to relax.
Snopes has a genuine work written by Cosby.
I’m pretty sure “National Service” was the British term for being a drafteein the 1950s and 1960s.
So we’re looking for a prominent enough to be quotable 76 year old Briton who was conscripted into the military between 1949 and 1960 (National Service duration).
I just don’t see a Limey complaining about “spread the wealth” or spelling it “honor.” Lots of the attitudes (Saudi Arabia has ‘our’ oil money) seem peculiarly American.
I think the piece has evolved considerably from the original. I don’t think whoever wrote the part about National Service is prominent at all - just an old jerk who complains to his computer. I often wonder how people feel about adding their own bits - are they just confused that it claims to be from one person? Do they they not care? Do they rationalize it’s a ‘noble lie’ in service a greater truth?
In closing, I want to hit the people who wrote this in the back of the head with a folding chair.
Or a Canadian who was in “Her Majesty’s Royal Service”. That might explain his not working so hard during this time.
Yep, saw that.
For those not following the joke, the “original” source has been identified by snopes as Massachusetts State Senator Robert A. Hall.
Close reading shows the version quoted in the OP has various changes, including truncations and minor tweaks. For example, the line about “National Service” isn’t in the original. Rather, Robert Hall refers to “one semester in college when jobs were scarce, and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day”. Also, he is 63, not 76, and the line about retirement has been tweaked from “Given the economy, there’s no retirement in sight, and I’m tired. Very tired.”
IANAD, but I feel fairly confident in issuing you a diagnosis of acute Freemanic Paracusia.
Bill Cosby from the future wrote this. Get your shit straight!
IIRC, Bill’s son Ennis Cosby had serious drug problems. So, the rant about how addicts don’t really have a disease made it clear to me that this was not written by the Cos.
Now, if you’ll excuse me it’s time to get my pens and my pencils for Picture Pages.
I knew that Ennis had struggled with dyslexia, but can’t remember anything about him being a drug addict. (though Ennis wasn’t at all public figure like so many children of mega-celebrities seem to aspire to nowadays).
That said, Bill Cosby has railed against drugs and drug dealers in the black communities for many years, calling out other black leaders for blaming “The Man” and unfair policing practices instead of holding young people (and to some extent their parents) responsible for their own actions.
Of course, he has also called out against the skyrocketing rates of single mothers and absentee fathers among inner city black communities, a charge that struck some as a bit hypocritical when it was revealed that Cosby himself had a child with another woman during his marriage to wife Camille.
It wasn’t his son Ennis that had the drug problems; it was his daughter Erinn.