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Thursday, March 18, 1999 1:44:08 PM EST

• Teddy Pendergrass: Disabled should have golf courses, too
• Cosby says TV teaching children stereotypes
• O.J. returns as commercial spokesman
• John Malkovich loves being a dad

Pendergrass

ANNAPOLIS, Maryland (CNN) -- Although Teddy Pendergrass can't play golf anymore, the paralyzed soul singer is speaking out on behalf of disabled people who can.

He appeared before a Maryland House committee Wednesday to push for $1.9 million in state aid for a proposed golf course for the disabled. The site in Prince George's County would be the first 18-hole, tournament-quality course fully accessible to people with a wide range of disabilities, according to FORE ALL!, the organization that wants to build the course.

Pendergrass, once an avid golfer, cannot walk and has limited use of his hands due to an auto accident 15 years ago. Yet, he says, he supports the golf course because "it is a project that is so inclusive ... We're not separate and poles apart."

Cosby

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Bill Cosby and other leading African-American businessmen are speaking out against shows that degrade minorities, and Cosby says he believes the shows are perpetuating negative stereotypes on purpose.

"This stereotyping, it hurts because someone sitting behind a desk said, 'This is what I want black people to look like," Cosby told an audience at the children's television conference "Through the Eyes of Children," held Tuesday. The conference was sponsored by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard said he grew up watching a television world without successful black men. "I remember once the Bank of America had a black teller in one of its commercials," he recalled. "My mother was so excited she ran out and changed the family's bank account."

Simpson

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- For the first time since his arrest for the murder of his ex-wife and her friend, former football star and actor O.J. Simpson is returning to the commercial spokesman arena. A former spokesman for Hertz and other companies, he has taped a pitch for Justice Media, a legal representation service. He said he made the appearance as a favor to a friend and was paid only enough to cover his expenses.

Simpson was acquitted in 1995 of the double murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, but was later found liable for their murders in a separate civil trial and was ordered to pay $33.5 million in damages.

He says the Justice Media proposal interested him because it was aimed at minority defendants. "The main thing I have learned is you can't walk into a courtroom without adequate legal representation," he said in a telephone interview Wednesday with The Associated Press. Simpson was defended in his criminal trial by a so-called "dream team" of attorneys including Johnnie Cochran and Alan Dershowitz.

Some wonder if a referral from Simpson would help a lawyer's business. "The message is not bad, but people may have problems with the messenger," said Laurie Levenson, associate dean of Loyola University Law School. "Assuming they are targeting an African-American audience, it's still iffy," she said. "And it's kind of sad. Isn't there anybody else in the African-American community who can speak out for justice?"

Malkovich

(CNN) -- As witnessed by his part as a Russian mobster in "Rounders" and his role as the leader of a band of escaped prisoners in "Con Air," actor John Malkovich has made a career out of his dastardly onscreen deeds. And he'll play a bad guy again, soon -- he's been cast as King Charles VII for "Joan of Arc" (due out this fall).

With such memorably mean-guy parts, it may come as a surprise that his top priority isn't his successful acting career, but his kids, as he tells USA Weekend. "Fatherhood is the only really important thing in the world to me," he says. "It was something I was waiting to do my whole life.

Malkovich, a Chicago native, is now living in France with his companion and their two children. He is philosophical about his acting career: "I've had a lot of failures, but I don't beat myself up over them. You do an art film; nobody wants to see it. It opens, it closes. Life goes on."