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The Rise and Fall of Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby was charged
today with alleged aggravated indecent assault by Montgomery County (PA), and his bail set at $1 million. The action has been a long time coming as the 78-year-old comedian has been hit with numerous allegations of sexual assault by a variety of women.
Earlier this year, Ricochet co-founder Rob Long reviewed a poorly timed hagiography of the TV legend for Commentary and he shares his perspective on his rise and fall:
Published in Entertainment, LiteratureFor most of his astonishingly successful half-century in show business, Bill Cosby was in the right place at the right time. He emerged onto the comedy scene in the early 1960s, when the audience taste in comedy was moving from the tuxedo’ed nightclub comic to the storytelling style Cosby pioneered. By the middle of the decade, when American television audiences were eager for racially integrated casts, he co-starred with Robert Culp in a hit action-adventure show, I Spy. In the 1970s, he reaped a financial bonanza as one of the most sought-after commercial pitchmen in the country. And, in 1984, The Cosby Show premiered on the last-place television network, NBC, to ratings so celestial that they actually saved the network from collapse. In comedy, in business, in the culture, Bill Cosby was a master of timing.
Not so lucky, though, is his official biographer, Mark Whitaker, whose Cosby: His Life and Times was published last autumn directly into the teeth of the more than 30 rape accusations that have dogged the 77-year-old comedian. The book is a tedious and mostly slavish rehash of the ups and downs of Cosby’s amazing and trailblazing career in show business. We get snapshots of his early life, his teachers, his first halting experiments with stand-up comedy. We get endlessly detailed—and eye-glazingly boring—anecdotes about his early television series. We are told stories, pointlessly, about which hotel he and Culp, his I Spy co-star, decamped to in Tokyo during a trip to Japan. We are told stories about ponderous lectures he gave to his friends, his imperial (though always civilized) interactions with the writers and producers of his hit television shows, his struggles with fatherhood, his devotion to his wife.
When the sticky issue of Cosby’s infidelity forces its way into the narrative, it’s always cast in the past tense. He and his wife, Camille, are forever “working harder on their marriage.” They are said to have “moved on.” Cosby is described many times as “cutting back on his womanizing ways.” When he is accused, publicly, of fathering a child out of wedlock, his wife says: “All personal negative issues between Bill and me were resolved years ago. We are a united couple.”
In other words, Whitaker’s book manages to make sex and infidelity uninteresting…
“A high-tech lynching,” one might say, Duane.
Boy, there are some sickos on Ricochet today.
I wouldn’t get too far down the liberal/ conservative trail with Bill Cosby. He campaigned for Jesse Jackson’s presidential bid and Hillary Clinton’s senate campaign. He loudly supported Obama in two elections. He donated money to the Clinton Global Initiative shakedown operation. He is, and has always been, a Liberal Democrat.
Yes, he spoke out against a disturbing trend in the nation. But Bill Cosby is not a Conservative. He sounded like one on one distinct issue and it was refreshing but that’s no reason to believe that 4 or 5 dozen women are all lying about his seduction-through-chemistry techniques.
I too loved his comedy act. When my sons were young my mother-in-law took three generations of our family to see his live show. It was great fun. I hated seeing Cosby get out of that SUV yesterday. I pray that justice is done no matter where it leads.
Leftists always reserve their greatest wrath for those they regard as traitors. And Cosby was deemed a traitor after he attacked several essential tenets of leftism during his national tour and with the publication of a related book, Come On, People: On the Path from Victims to Victors.
Just as Juan Williams, also a liberal Democrat, was deemed a traitor after the publication of his book, Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure that are Undermining Black America – and What We Can Do about It.
Is it possible to defend Bill Cosby from his myriad allegations of being a sexual miscreant, and to not defend William Clinton from his myriad (although many less) allegations of being a sexual predator? After all, all we have are unsubstantiated allegations of bad behavior….. And lets throw Clarence Thomas into the mix…. can you defend any of them while giving a pass to one of the others?
BTW I actually think there is substantiated allegations (namely eye witnesses who have come forward with accounts of misbehavior against all)
Clinton admitted to having done at least some of the things alleged (e.g., been intimate with Lewinsky, lied under oath, etc.). Thomas never admitted to the wrongdoing alleged by Hill and nothing was ever proven.
yes but clinton never admitted to nonconsensual sexual activity with anyone, you only have allegations of wrongdoing from women (the same with cosby and Thomas)…
actually with cosby you have him admitting in a deposition to having drugged a woman against her knowledge.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/bill-cosby-scandal/judge-explains-why-he-unsealed-bill-cosby-court-documents-n387861
Well, there it is, then. I don’t believe in implied consent to being drugged where the person doesn’t know.
As for “how could he,” I’ve never ceased to be amazed at what people can convince themselves to do.
yep… like someone pointed out earlier… Clinton and Cosby had no shortage of available sexual conquests.
I think the point here is that Clinton got and still gets a pass (if not active help) from many in the press and elsewhere on the left, even those who, like NOW, are ostensibly opposed to what he did.
Cosby has received rather different treatment following his political tour and book that broke with leftist orthodoxy.
As for the alleged crimes, innocent until proven guilty is the standard, of course, no matter who is the defendant. That’s not the view of the left, however, when it comes to heretics or conservatives.
My point would be that just as the left gives Bill Clinton a pass for political expediency… many on the right give Cosby and Thomas a pass for political expediency. No crimes of a sexual nature have been proven against any of the three.
Many comments have mentioned the number of claimed victims. I think in a strictly criminal law sense that will be the key issue in this prosecution.
Generally, bad acts by the defendant, other than the specific crimes charged and being tried, cannot be mentioned to the jury because they are deemed overly prejudicial. But an exception applies when they are deemed to be a part of a “common plan or scheme.” This is a question of law for the judge to decide, usually ahead of trial so each side can properly prepare.
What’s a common plan or scheme? It is a situation such as when a bank robber or a rapist always wears the same mask and says the same words, then that might come in a prosecution of one particular bank robbery or rape. If such a ruling is obtained here to allow the prior bad acts to come in, it will be hugely easier to convict Cosby of these charges than if not.
I do not know what PA law is regarding the relevance if any of the civil settlement, but that may also be a fertile battleground. If Cosby does not testify, the prosecution won’t be able to use his deposition testimony from the civil case, where he reportedly admitted to giving the woman Quaaludes. Still, it will be a jury issue over her voluntarily taking them, etc, whether there was consent, etc. Stay tuned.
Cosby’s best line of defense might be to bring an equal number of women onto the stand to testify that he didn’t rape them.
I see them all very differently.
Cosby we know about.
Clinton was accused of assaulting various women to varying degree, but skated because he was a governor or president. He lied under oath. He was recently implicated in flying to “Pedophile Island” with Jeffrey Epstein to have sex with underage prostitutes. This last thing, as with all the rest, the press seems to have very little interest in.
But what did Clarence Thomas supposedly do? Assuming he’s guilty as charged by Anita Hill, if memory serves all he did was to ask her for a couple of dates, and make a couple of rude comments about pubic hairs on Coke cans, about well-endowed porn actors and actresses, and about his own sexual prowess. I don’t recall anything more serious than that.
Compare those minor peccadilloes to the assaults, perjury, rapes, etc., that the other two are charged with. Thomas doesn’t need a pass because he didn’t do much wrong.
I do agree, that the accusations as I recalled amounted to just really boorish sexual behavior. If Hill had not been under his direct supervision at the EEOC, then none of it would have come to light, and none of it would have been disqualifying for appointment to SCOTUS.
I see the cosby and clinton cases as very similar.
God I love that guy.