two women renew Bill Cosby sexual abuse allegations in Newsweek interviews

The epigraph on the phillymag article:

“He did a lot of good works behind which he could stash his crimes of excess.” — Tamara Green

Between - Cosby - and - Jimmy Savile - and - Jerry Sandusky -
all of these fronts of charitable largesse and doing so much good for your community that your dirty secret crimes against vulnerable people are never questioned
I think about it all the time lately
how the fuck can you tell who is a good person and who is a wolf in sheep's clothing

Yeah me too. It's just base-level confusing when a number of apparently decent ppl want to dramatically/violently exploit other ppl. Like it's a disease or sthg.

how the fuck can you tell who is a good person and who is a wolf in sheep's clothing

I mean...you can't? Can you? You can only react to what you know, change accordingly when you learn new info.

goddamn humans

Truth.

with savile it feels like a lot of that is to do with access? maybe not entirely that - there was a lot of establishment connivance at putting him in these places, through a mixture of stupidity and mendacity.

and although these people occupy a different sphere, there is a well-known history of sexual abuse by people in protective positions of authority (priests, teachers, doctors).

I'm a teacher; it's my legal responsibility to my kids be in loco parentis for the hour a day I have them. I feel very protective of them, and it is rage-enducing that someone in my role would not share those same protective feelings, let alone abuse them.

I know you were not accusing me of anything, but that's a fact, that it has happened, hurts my lil heart.

I'm definitely not trying to say that I have magic powers to discern wolves from sheep -- however, in 7th gr I met Bill Cosby and I found his behavior strange. I asked him to sign a piece of paper two times so I could give one of them to my bff Andy, and he said NO, emphatically. I was like, but…you just have to sign the paper 2x, it's for my friend, I'm just a kid why are you being so rude to me and it was a weird moment that I never forgot. I have told this story so many times because it was really surprising to me that Bill Cosby would be rude to a kid. And that kid was me!

That's funny, I was going to say above that maybe if we met some of these ppl personally we might discern a false note, just like you keep away from some people you meet because they're off-putting. But then I thought it might seem dismissive of the skills that manipulators have to hide their evil acts by confusing ppl or just being "upright" enough to deflect suspicion.

I dunno--do you think people around them DO notice something is wrong and just keep quiet? Obvly the staffers who assisted Cosby etc etc are 100% complicit but...he must have known A LOT of people! Power, I guess?

I've heard and read stories that Cosby is "a jerk" for 30 years (and one could discern such a possibility in, say, his Tonight Show appearances of the '80s, I thought). This doesn't connect inevitably to all of the above, obviously.

two sets of rules for two different types of people: those who have power and those who don't. I mean I think people who witness or know abt this kind of thing don't report things out of a combination of fear, self preservation, a wish to not derail their own career, and denial about what's occurring. Or simply not caring out of their own amorality idk.

those who have power ime: men
those who don't ime: women, children

I didn't watch TV really so I knew who he was but it's possible I've never seen an episode of The Cosby Show in my life. So I feel kind of disconnected from this "How could a beloved figure be a terrible person" convo that happens, and hopefully is happening for the last time before something gets done about it.

I just learned that my youngest brother was getting molested by his manager at pizza hut when he worked there in high school.
Cops refused to do anything about it even though there were years of incidents, with multiple witnesses.
It breaks my heart!
What can I do about it? Listen to him; not eat pizza hut pizza.
Doesn't solve the problem though.

People just do not gaf about sexual assault victims. Not one fuck!

it's just insane...cops seems so quick to be like "hey you stole that bike" or "hey you murdered that dude" but when it come to this there's this whole "whoa let's not be hasty" bs

Oh god I'm sorry, Abbs.

When my sister was in jr high, she complained to my parents that the husband in a husband-and-wife youth leader team at our church made her uncomfortable, that he was inappropriate w the girls in the youth group. My parents dismissed her and in fact I think my dad told her that if she didn't dress so revealingly, she wouldn't have any reason to be uncomfortable. The man was later revealed to have been molesting his daughter/s.

I'm 100% sure neither of my parents ever went back and even apologized to my sis for NOT ONLY NOT KEEPING THEIR DAUGHTER SAFE, but also re-traumatizing her on top of whatever micro-aggressions the man was putting her, and all the other girls, through. And I'm sure the church never did any serious investigation of what in their structure allowed this to happen. It was just a shameful, embarrassing thing to have happen in your church so people tsk-tsked about it probably and then dropped it forever.

I've heard and read stories that Cosby is "a jerk" for 30 years

I've always thought it was a weird power trip for him that every child actor from The Cosby Show referred to him as "Mr. Cosby" then, but especially weird now that they're all adults (and Sabrina Le Beauf was an adult then). There are no slip-ups ever. No accidental "Bill" or anything. ALWAYS "Mr. Cosby".

Urgh, Abbs. We had a molester in our midst when I was growing up: everyone knew not to send their sons to work for him, because his fetish was a certain type of teenaged boy, and those who didn't know were soon told on the d-l. The main barrier to sending the law after him was the perception that breaking his popular wife's heart was much worse than a) grapevining the issue or b) punching the living shit out of him, as one of my aunt's boyfriends did, after the man made a pass at him.

I cant think of anyone I know who didnt have a molester in their midst growing up. It is super common.

I remember growing up that there were rumors abt some creepiness on "the other side of the lake" at a different elementary school. I forgot about it over the years but randomly became acquainted with someone who happened to be from my town and told me both the principal and assistant principal of that school were busted for molestation. I mean the top two people at an elementary school. Horrible. And it had been going on for awhile.

I dont know what you can do really besides take accusations seriously and be selective about adults yr kids are alone with

it's hard for me to understand how people make that leap from having horrible or violent thoughts or thoughts of hurting/abusing people to actually hurting/abusing people. it's a HUGE leap! i mean, i've had my share of anti-social thoughts and fantasies, but the idea of actually turning those thoughts into something real with real people involved...it's fantastical to me. what has to happen to you or what kind of person do you have to be to do that?

and with cosby, how do you do these things AND travel the country on lecture tours and tell people how to live and throw stones at all kinds of people. is that like a God psychosis?

If only Jerry Falwell had accused the stars of the 80s of being rapists and child molesters instead of homosexuals and satanists, he might've done some good.

The two are not unrelated. Ppl were so busy freaking out about nonexistent bogeymen, they ignored what was under their noses.

how the fuck can you tell who is a good person and who is a wolf in sheep's clothing

Not to derail but this doesn't really apply to savile, whose "sheep's clothing" was being a leering creepy molester looking molester 24/7/365 afaict. That he was allowed to do what he did is indicative of something far more horrifying than the horrifying thing you describe

yeah not having grown up in england i can't really judge but when the news started breaking and i learned more about savile the first thought that sprung to mind upon seeing pictures of him was 'how is this a surprise to anyone, look at this fucking guy'

confirmation bias aside, i think i would have kept my children out of his reach on general principle

interesting how the official statement from his lawyer mentions his age so pointedly, as if to say "look the guy's 77 leave him alone".

https://www.facebook.com/billcosby

xxp also out-in-the-open mentions of the Savile rumours date way way back. there was a TV show on Channel 4 in either '92 or '93 called The Obituray Show with Steven Wells and they were mentioned on that. woulda had like a few million viewers.

ve always thought it was a weird power trip for him that every child actor from The Cosby Show referred to him as "Mr. Cosby" then, but especially weird now that they're all adults (and Sabrina Le Beauf was an adult then). There are no slip-ups ever. No accidental "Bill" or anything. ALWAYS "Mr. Cosby".

Totally! It's like a reeducation camp.

the entire "let's turn this into a story about how you took personal action that led to your survival/success" is very helpful and inspirational to some, I'm sure, but it really glosses over the fact that you can be victimized, repeatedly, and still succeed. I get a creepy feeling from that, as if he maybe believes you have to choose to be a victim?

xp also out-in-the-open mentions of the Savile rumours date way way back. there was a TV show on Channel 4 in either '92 or '93 called The Obituray Show with Steven Wells and they were mentioned on that. woulda had like a few million viewers.

Louis Theroux straight-up asked him about paedo rumours to his face on camera, Popbitch (iirc) talked about his hospital charity work getting him after-hours access for corpsefucking, etc

i feel like the garden variety "ornery/jerky star" stories in this thread are not really indicative or even suggestive of the horrors of what cosby apparently did to numerous women

i mean lots of stars are snobby, rude, standoffish jerks but they aren't serial rapists

the whole bit about how cosby has spent the last decade or more lecturing black audiences on how to behave is the second most galling part of all of this (the first being the actual rapes, of course). it's amazing how much cognitive dissonance the brain can sustain, or perhaps how much compartmentalizing humans can do when they deem it necessary.

either that or he somehow rationalized his rapes and predation

Meanwhile the commenters defending him in that last story posit that this is a liberal conspiracy.

it is a very sad story, just insofar as cosby really is (was?) an extraordinarily talented guy. on his first TV series, he gave early directorial jobs to melvin van peebles, ivan dixon, and a few other african-american directors. and the show is really very smart and class-conscious and funny. knowing the guy who did this stuff was a kind of sociopath or worse is not a nice feeling.

#jellogate

amateurist otm on all counts.

are jerks more likely to be predators than non-jerks? i guess to be a jerk you need to have a certain indifference to the feelings of others, which could be a flag. but i don't know. i think some people have prickly exteriors, or are just annoying and irritable, but abide a strict moral code.

btw i don't mean to imply that i'm sad /for/ cosby or that it's sad principally because i'm disappointed. obviously the worst part about all this is the women who were raped and then victimized again by being ignored and disbelieved for so long.

i think general jerkiness and the kind of sociopathy (or worse) that seems to be part of cosby's character have no intrinsic relationship. you could be very outwardly friendly and charming and good-hearted and secretly do horrible things. conversely, you could be a standoffish grouch who's never done anything particularly bad to anyone.

its weird how hannibal burress makes a joke/ref onatage and now we're all talking like cos has been convicted.

from what I've read since, sure, sounds like he's guilty but this is a strange route to guilt.

Compared to Woody, the multiple accusers and the out-of-court settlement def look p damning

a bunch of what hannibal said was "go home & google it"; think, like with the ghomeshi thing, the just abundance of testimony makes it not weird that everyone is feeling okay about a tentative supposition of guilt

I've been reading about this on and off for...a year? Two years? But it hasn't gotten this level of attention. And even then, ppl were saying "Yeah I vaguely remember reading one article about this ten years ago and then it went away...." and so on. I dunno, I guess women have to keep throwing themselves out there in the press and being ignored until they've built up enough critical mass that a male comedian does a bit about it, obviously.

I feel the one weird happy upside of this, besides exposing monstrous behavior, is getting more attention for Hannibal Buress, who I think is a v funny dude. (Recanted if it turns out in 45 years he is a sex abuser.)

Not to say "hooray more male voices heard" but "hooray overlooked funny person heard." *shovel shovel*

No no no no shoveling! I don't follow comedy but this was a cool and with it thing for him to do! It's just one of those things...all the other ppl I've seen writing about it were women, you know? And their pieces never quite took off like this. Maybe it's the comedy vehicle that's catchier than the online essay vehicle or the soc media post, too. Anyway it seems like all public attention here is a win.

An African-American male comedian, not just Colbert or the like putting the pieces together. xpost

Can i still practice board lawyering?

no you are disbarred

disbarred = when you are 86'ed from an establishment

you can go to dis bar, but not dat bar

Double jeopardy is based on the legal principle that, if your husband fakes his death and you are framed for his murder and then begins a secret life with your son and ex-best friend, you have the legal right to get out of prison, conduct an investigation to find your husband and then actually kill him without going to prison a second time for his murder

Been there brother

lmao when that movie came out I saw so many hilarious internet arguments about their rong-interpretation of DJ

IIRC the internet was not especially active in 1955.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Jeopardy_%281999_film%29?wprov=sfla1

(1955 film doesn't follow that plot at all. Boo...yah.)

I only watch Ashley Judd movies so I wouldn't know

I did not know there was a 1999 Double Jeopardy and now feel betrayed by my countryman

Reading over and over how an actress I respect like Rashad reacts as if suffering from Stockholm syndrome is a downer.

harbl, thoughts on this? (the initial tweet and the response)? Tend to think the ex-prosecutor makes more sense here.

As a former prosecutor, have to disagree. It’s a question of detrimental reliance. If Cosby relied on a promise - even if. It an enforceable one- government can be held to it. Estoppel. It’s a fact question re reliance. But makes sense.

— peter zeidenberg (@przeidenberg) June 30, 2021

yeah i think the initial tweet is completely wrong and it's annoying how confident he is about it! it's not a question of whether the immunity was valid. it's saying it would be unfair to let the prosecutor make someone believe they are immune, have them act on it, then turn around and prosecute them. i read kind of fast but it sounded like the trial court said it wasn't valid immunity so he shouldn't have relied on the promise not to prosecute.

thanks harbl - that was my thought, that the person you're promising isn't a legal expert and is under the impression of immunity which will still lead them to act in a different way than they would have had they known they did not have this protection.

ok

pic.twitter.com/UqiGznSkiJ

— Howard University (@HowardU) July 1, 2021

Got halfway through We Need to Talk About Cosby at my sister's, but I'm back home tonight and won't be able to finish it until I can get some access somewhere. I was, simultaneously, watching The Ted Bundy Tapes on Netflix--also halfway through, but I will be able to finish that--and the similarities between the two of them in terms of how they presented themselves to the world are eerie.

I don't think we need to talk about Cosby ever again. Fuck him. I hope he dies a slow, painful death in well-deserved obscurity.

another travesty from what we laughingly call the justice system

The film is really good--anxious to finish it.

(In other words, if the suggestion is that the documentary should never have been made, couldn't disagree more. Three or four of Cosby's victims are interviewed in depth.)

the response to Jimmy Savile in the UK was very much to investigate and prosecute individuals, then sweep their entire work under the carpet and never mention them again, which was a complete abdication of responsibility from the establishment/system/culture which enabled them throughout and has still not even started to face up to its mistakes.

I think a conversation about how "the system" failed so spectacularly in the Cosby case, not only in the outcome of the criminal process but in the decades that his behavior was an open secret, is essential. However, as far as Cosby the man is concerned, he should rot.

of course nobody should advocate for Cosby or his like to be rehabilitated in any sense, but we need to hear from the victims and examine how we/they* let this happen. I remember when he was first charged, there was a great deal of pro-Cosby posting on many websites.

*obviously there are multiple wes and multiple theys here

I suppose I was being reactive. Like a lot of people, I revered Cosby in the 70s and 80s. His downfall was spectacular and took far too long. Asking why it took so long, and how he was able in the end to avoid the worst legal consequences for his actions, are of course questions that need to be asked.

something about how the system didn't fail this is just how it works

I thought this was great work btw, definitely the best thing Bell has ever done

"We want to be able to say we can identify these dangerous people. And the really scary thing is you can't identify them. People don't realize that there are potential killers among them. How could anyone
live in a society where people they liked, loved, lived with, worked with, and admired could the next day turn out to be the most demonic people imaginable?"

Not from the Cosby documentary, but the last lines of The Ted Bundy Tapes (spoken by Bundy himself).