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The Horrible, Horrible Bill Cosby Story
If you haven’t seen the headlines already, NBC has officially cancelled its plans for a new sitcom starring Bill Cosby. This comes on the heels of “The Cosby Show” being pulled from re-runs and Netflix’s announcement yesterday that it was “postponing” the release of a new stand-up routine they’d commission from the comic.
Reflecting on his own experience with Cosby, Ta-Nehisi Coates — generally not my cup of tea — explains exactly why all this is so disturbing (wade past the anti-Republican digs; it’s worth it):
I spent parts of 2006 and 2007 following Bill Cosby around the country. He was then in the midst of giving a series of “call-outs” in which he upbraided the decline of morality in the black community. Our current organic black conservative moment largely springs from these efforts. It’s worth distinguishing an “organic black conservative” from a black or white Republican moment. Black Republicans, with some exceptions, don’t simply exist as people who believe in free markets and oppose abortion, but to assure white Republicans that racism no longer exists. Organic black conservatives (like Cosby, for instance) are traditionalists, but they hold no such illusions about America’s past. They believe this country to be racist, perhaps irredeemably so, but assert nonetheless that individual effort can defeat trenchant racism. The organic black conservative vision is riding high at the moment. Thus even the NAACP cannot denounce the outriders of Ferguson without the requisite indictment of “black on black crime.”
The author of this moment is Bill Cosby. In 2004, he gave his “Poundcake Speech,” declaring black youth morally unworthy of their very heritage. Cosby followed the speech with a series of call-outs. I observed several of these call-outs. Again, unlike typical black Republicans, Cosby spoke directly to black people. He did not go on Fox News to complain about the threat of the New Black Panther Party. He did not pen columns insisting the black family was better off under slavery. He was not speaking as a man sent to assure a group that racism did not exist, but as a man who sincerely believed that black people, through the ethic of “twice as good,” could overcome. That is the core of respectability politics. Its appeal is broad in both black and white America, and everywhere Cosby went he was greeted with rapturous applause.
Obviously, I’ve no clue whether the allegations against Cosby are true, either individually or as a whole. If they’re false, then he’s the victim of a wicked conspiracy or delusion that’s robbed him of his reputation and career; as Dennis Prager would say, his name would have been raped. All the commentary on it — this post included — would be contributing to that violation.
Terrible as that is, it’s even more horrifying to imagine what this means if the allegations are true. First, there’s the crime against the women in question, which would be monstrous, full stop. But there’s also the matter of a man whose career has been almost synonymous with decency and the best of bourgeois American values — and who made a second career promoting those values among fellow African Americans — being revealed as a monster of a sort second only to murderers and child-molesters. For the first time, I’m getting a sense of the betrayal many Penn State fans and alumni felt following the revelations that Joe Paterno had contributed to the Sandusky cover-up (not being a college football fan, this was largely lost on me).
Humans are complicated — morally and otherwise — and there’s no shortage of metaphors and aphorisms to described how torn and divided our nature is. I’ve long been partial to Alexander Pope’s take on the matter, but Solzhenitsyn’s is simultaneously more applicable, darker, and — ironically — humane:
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
If the allegations are true, then Cosby must be one of those rare characters able to survive with a heart torn in two, each somehow still beating on its own. If they’re false, then we may be watching his heart being broken before our eyes right now.
Published in General
Lou Ferrigno’s wife
actress Louisa Moritz
supermodel Janice Dickinson
Jane Doe No. 10, Number 10?
…
This isn’t like being accused of saying the words “pubic hair on my Coke” or “Long Dong Silver” which was apparently enough to ruin Clarence Thomas’s life. And what was Herman Cain accused of? Sending text messages and possibly touching some part of a woman’s thigh in car?
And everyone thought Tiger Woods was a great guy until the accusers started piling up.
Joe Paterno turned a blind eye.
At least 1,400 children exploited, likely sexually, in the city of Rotherham.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Edwards had their fans before their love children were revealed.
Just the Republican Party has had Henry Hyde, Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, Bob Packwood, Mark Souder, Mark Sanford, John Ensign, Mark Foley, Steven LaTourette, Strom Thurmond, Bob Barr, Vito Fossella, Ed Schrock, Don Sherwood, Dan Burton, Ken Calvert, Rudy Giuliani, and Republican or nominal Republican David Petraeus.
Yeah, I don’t know what happened either, but the world is often a place too sick to think about. I’m almost shocked when a politician or celebrity isn’t involved in a sex scandal.
What happened was news media started to cover these stories. It’s not like men only recently started being nasty.
I mean, come on, F.D.R. was playing hide the salami with his cousin while his wife was off reading Sappho with Amelia Earhart.
Kay,
We are not in disagreement. I am not saying these girls are totally innocent. I am just saying that the greater responsibility is with the person with power. Does anyone at that age really understand the consequences of their actions? I don’t consider it a fair fight.
You were lucky. You have a backbone. How many women have you met that were as tough as you?
This might seem like nit picking but it is the DRUGGING that sets this apart. We don’t know if this happened. With other scandals this is not a factor. Has there been any other recent scandal like this?
Except that he isn’t a conservative. He went out a few times and told black people to take some more responsibility for their behavior. If that is sufficient to make an Obama-supporting liberal Democrat a “conservative”, then I guess I owe Andrew Sullivan, David Brooks, and several other “conservatives” an apology…
I am reluctantly coming to believe the allegations. Not because the accusers are particularly credible. Because Bill Cosby is acting like a guilty man.
Re comment # 56
Why use the pills ? I can tell you that from my vantage point in the seventies, I saw a lot of people commonly use pills and alcohol together in a recreational way. I can also tell you that in the seventies, and up until the middle to late nineteen eighties aides epidemic and sexual harassment focus, a lot of people who imagined themselves to be very sophisticated got wasted and then sexually active with whoever happened to be around. I don’t imagine the atmosphere at Cosby’s level was more restrained. And my guess is that Cosby didn’t have to slip any pills into the drinks of the vulnerable, self deceiving women he coldly seduced. I’d bet they were practically eating them out of his hand.
I’ll tell you something else : When I was 16 in 1973, if a male invited me to a drink or a joint ALONE with him, I knew he was probably suggesting sex. So I’m having trouble with the idea that these women didn’t understand the nature of Cosby’s invitation.
On the other hand, I agree with you (comment 63). In at least two cases, it wasn’t, as you say, a fair fight. A seventeen year old, or a woman right out of rehab, would have been desperate to believe Cosby’s interest in her was love or real friendship of some kind . And he certainly has to have known that. His lack of compassion for these two, his lack of respect for their humanity, is shocking
I still don’t believe them, because it’s hard to dispute accusations. I am no longer on speaking terms with one of my daughters because she swears and be-damns that I abandoned her at age 7 to my father for two years while he sexually abused her. She refuses to talk to me again unless I admit it.
It never happened. I still have cancelled checks for those years paying for her private school, I have her report cards for those years. Her Scouting badges, all kinds of proof. In her own mind she make this all up about 5 years ago. She refuses to accept my evidence of proof she was with me in Los Angeles, her grandfather in Sacramento. He died BTW in Dec. 1979.
But I don’t have any proof when she claims I stole her SS checks or her child support. She tells everyone who will listen to her that I have done this, and there have been people on the street accost me and call me a terrible person because of her lies. All I can do, as Bill Cosby, is to deny it it true, and hang my head in shame. How is a person falsely accused to act? Let me know, so I can put on the good act and not act guilty.
One could also argue that he’s acting like a man in his 80s whose lucidity has been questioned in some circles for the past few years.
Kay.
My heart goes out to you – I was once suspected of something for over a year before new facts proved my innocence, so I can relate to what you are saying, but you did not have 13 separate psychos making false claims at the same time, with detailed explanations of what happened, the way Cosby’s accusers are. At some point it becomes beyond a reasonable doubt.
Kay,
You take the facts and go with that. If a person is lying then their words do not match the truth. You are right that people imagine things and it becomes for them a form of reality. Believing something to be true and being true are different. As we have witnessed on Ricochet a Member was falsely accused by his daughter but was later exonerated.
Please don’t let your innocence let a bad man get away with it. The opposite is true too. We shouldn’t prejudge a person without proof.
Would I be wrong to think that your daughter has had substance abuse issues? This is where I have seen this type of behavior before.
Having known a lot of these types of people from the 70s and 80s, including my daughter who was dropping pills, using drugs and alcohol, I can believe that if one or two would accuse him, the others flow out of the woodwork like termites, and having heard the story would have no problems embellishing.
Look at some of those stories! A Playboy bunny was kissed so hard, treated so roughly, right there in the house with his wife at hand. “Wanted to be one more to put another nail in his coffin.” Another one claims at 15, “she woke up, but didn’t know if she had been raped, but maybe she had.” If she had been she’d have been sore as heck. All these nut jobs get their name in the NEWS!
She does, and I pretty much raised 2 of her children, and helped the father of 2 more get custody of them. She still has 1 more left at home, age 16, that I cannot see nor have any influence over.
Thing is, she drove a “roach” truck on the studio lots in the 70s-80s, and Cosby was never one of her customers. She had no problems naming off names of her customers, some of whom you would be shocked if you knew. Drugs, cocaine, was so open at the time, they used it like candy. I’m not naive, but do believe condemning a person with nothing more than malicious gossip is wrong. They have no proof, and he can’t prove their words are wrong.
Remember my last post about shaking words into the wind?
Kay,
I am with you on allegations with no proof. I admire that about you.
Thank you, and I’ll give my sister an extra hug when I see her again.
He was punished severely for false accusations, and it may be years before the fabric of his family is completely woven back together. And may never be completed, because some day he may have grand daughters and will always be conscious of how he holds them or hugs them.
Kay, wow, you’ve been through a lot. I wish I could make it all go away.
As far as Bill Cosby is concerned: a couple of years ago, I was looking for something funny to watch when I’m finished working at night, so I started from the beginning and watched the entire 10 or 12 seasons of The Cosby Show.
I came away from it with so much respect for Bill Cosby.
I have never seen in his eyes the belligerence that I’ve seen in the eyes of men who attack women. It’s not about sex with these guys. And it’s something a young woman never forgets.
What about Bill Clinton? Or John F Kennedy? (Both have had alleged misbehavior.) Some men have a Jekyl and Hyde type personality. Some rakes can be really charming. Wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Funny you ask. I don’t know about JFK, but my daughters would tell you that I said the first time I heard him speak that I would never want to be alone in a room with Bill Clinton. That was before so many women sued him. :) Just wouldn’t feel comfortable with him at all.
And you are right about the Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde phenomenon. I’ve seen that too.
But the stories these women are telling about Bill Cosby would put him in the attacker category, and I don’t see that in him at all. Just me, but . . .
There’s a psychology out there of men who really hate women, very much like homophobia. It’s rare, but I’ve encountered that too. And that’s where I’d put Clinton. Although, again, he’s innocent until proven guilty or his lawyers settle with the victim. :)
They have a revulsion toward women. It is weird. A lot of them feel wronged by women.
Again, I did not see that in Bill Cosby.
Re : comment # 70
Do the 13 women have to be psychos to be lying, or partially lying ? Maybe they’re avoiding social disapproval and shame. If people out to discredit a man planned to identify me as one of his discarded, one-time playmates, and if I had been, and couldn’t plausibly deny it, I might be open to claiming he drugged me and then did whatever he wanted to do. I mean, I wouldn’t feel obligated to risk looking like an old hook-up, by being fair and honest about what happened between us, if what happened between us was that I allowed myself to be flattered and charmed into having sex with him, and then he dumped me. (I’m not saying I shouldn’t feel obligated. I’m saying I wouldn’t.)
Under the right circumstances, we can all feel justified acting like those girls who once avoided punishment for listening to forbidden ghost and witch stories by aping delirium and pointing fingers at their parent’s neighbors.
A very interesting article on why “The Huxtable family” needs to be destroyed in the American Thinker.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/11/bill_cosby_why_now.html
Re comment # 73
Which post ? What’s the title ?
This is probably the post.
http://ricochet.com/october-20th-thou-shall-not-bear-false-witness-against-your-neighbor/
For a couple of days now, I’ve been trying to identify what there is about this that’s stirring in my memory. The answer came to me this morning. Has anyone read Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun ?
I still don’t believe them, because it’s hard to dispute accusations. I am no longer on speaking terms with one of my daughters because she swears and be-damns that I abandoned her at age 7 to my father for two years while he sexually abused her. She refuses to talk to me again unless I admit it.
This is a really sad story, and I hope it turns around for you before it is too late. It is also bizarre, if she were 3 0r 4 I could at least understand confusion, but how could a person not know where they were from 7 to 9?!