two women renew Bill Cosby sexual abuse allegations in Newsweek interviews

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

i wasnt trying to imply "showbiz jerk" rep correlated with sexual predator, but you probably knew that.

what's strange for ppl of my age btw is that BC was famous for 20 years before The Cosby Show, and circa 1969-73 he almost had more of a niche as a kids' entertainer, what with the presence of Fat Albert on Saturday morning and his endless endorsements of crappy sugar products.

was "I Spy" any good? I've never seen a single episode.

my intro to Cosby was Fat Albert and the Picture Pages segment.

Yeah idk if burress' maleness (or blackness) figures into this blowing up as much as the platform itself. I'm inclined to think that if sarah silverman dropped that in a set it also would've raised alarms.

My intro to cos was fat albert and his comedy records

probably haven't seen I Spy since i was about nine, so i don't know

Burress is not remotely Cosby-level famous or anything but he almost occupies a similar space of being a black comic with an exceptionally warm, ingratiating presence so i think there's something that might've struck a nerve about hearing someone charming and funny say "who cares if he's charming and funny, he's a rapist"

Gawker did run this in Feb when the Woody Allen controversy was at high tide, and something about Burress's wording makes me think he probably started talking about Cosby onstage after reading that particular post, so uh good on Gawker i guess:
http://gawker.com/who-wants-to-remember-bill-cosbys-multiple-sex-assaul-1515923178

Cosby's had the most varied career! I always wanted to see the movies he did with Sidney Poitier.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-l74f0RspBjw/TzcJ0yF7hcI/AAAAAAAACfY/7RACugDLTic/s1600/zuptown+saturday+night_poster.jpg

It's sentimental, but I have some book in my classroom about people who persevered. Cosby's one of them, and he said (paraphrase) he tried to make his comedy about universal themes because he hoped it would help people see the commonality between different races. I think he has tried to do some real genuine good with his career. Also I have been in on so many (well, two) stupid fucking college discussions with all white people talking about if Bill Cosby is an "uncle Tom" or not, which was just so grody.

Actually, this is even worse! The first time I saw a black family in my population 408 rural Idaho town I guess I said, "Look, it's the Cosbys!" I don't even remember this story; my family just likes telling it. I guess the summary here is I grew up in a fucked up place and his show + Family Matters were the only representations of black people I got. So I think he achieved his goal with comedy!

So OTOH back to Buress's bit, if I felt like he were my bossy granddad in the poundcake speech era, well. I would have a different view.

ps. That washington post editorial is #2 google hit for Bill Cosby right now.

Mother, Juggs & Speed was a weird one. It started out a comedy and then got real dark about half way through.

you know, once he got into the late '70s and '80s, his standup got a little less "warm and ingratiating." e.g. "all children have brain damage."

Another account of two assaults, dating back to 1969, by the writer Joan Tarshis:

http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/2014/11/another-cosby-victim-comes/

"The United States of America is a wonderful country but they still haven't built a place where you can get rid of your children."

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.)

― never say goodbye before leaving chat room (Crabbits), Sunday, November 16, 2014 6:20 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my first reaction would be Hannibal! nooooooo.. if he was found to be in the wrong on something

but really, he's funny and also is on Broad City which you should all watch if you don't

I think the thing I get from the idea that Cosby is a really controlling woman-raping entity is that people aren't just capable of great things or horrible things, they are capable of both, even down to the person. And the apparent good that Bill Cosby was doing, it was such that he could get away with evils that the common person couldn't -- well, not at the level he probably did. Our myth of an egalitarian society (hah, as if we have one) is just that.

Our myth of an egalitarian society (hah, as if we have one) is just that.

I think very few Americans really understand what an egalitarian society would be. Most of us probably equate it with everybody having at least theoretical chance of becoming rich. The idea that all people should be treated the same regardless of worldly success has precedents here but it's really out of fashion now, what with Randian notions about "innovators" and such.

for sure, I would like to be able to go out and talk to a random person at the bar at a fancy hotel or just some total dive and relate to a fellow human being regardless of station in life, but when I'm at the poor bar, Bill Cosby would keep hassling me for my bootstraps story

people aren't just capable of great things or horrible things, they are capable of both

this is one of the things that ta-nehisi coates has really stressed about racism, which seems obvious but isn't quite sometimes. ppl are complex and inconsistent, and it's worth recognizing that an otherwise saintly person can have terrible traits and v-v

that is the thing, if you do good things people are willing to overlook small ills, and if you do things perceived to be great there's institutional pressure to not speak up when you do bad shit

which is part of why broke people get arrested for spitting on the sidewalk and the rich can practically murder someone before anyone cares. wealth and social success are seen as moral successes, or at least moral karma

http://i.imgur.com/tNa0xfl.gif

Yeah idk if burress' maleness (or blackness) figures into this blowing up as much as the platform itself. I'm inclined to think that if sarah silverman dropped that in a set it also would've raised alarms.

Burress was "dropping it" in "sets" for months without raising any alarms.

yes.. so, other than improving on the narrative, what was it? the YouTube clip being linked by a couple of the right sources?

I mean, scare quotes aside, what does that add to the narrative other than implying there's another factor?

Yeah, I think this took off because someone caught it on video in Philadelphia.

The Trocadero is a lonely place

my uncle (well, the guy who was married to my wife) used to hang with Cosby in the 70's and early 80's because he was a musician in Vegas and Reno and knew him from that circuit. He (uncle) was a massive coke head and louse. he's now dead so I can't ask him about any of this but this relationship always made me think there was probably something else up with the Cos. I still like his best of album though. too bad.

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).