two women renew Bill Cosby sexual abuse allegations in Newsweek interviews

lmao @ people thinking that people are bringing up the spanish fly bit as "evidence"

first time I ever heard the phrase:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41W1ZS5PKZL.jpg

NBC scraps series in development. He has a standup gig in Melbourne, FL on Friday.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/19/bill-cosby-nbc-show_n_6186498.html

is the fact that something is referenced in 80s beastie boys lyrics really supposed to help

I'm still kinda surprised Janice Dickinson was the tipping point

thought this was good

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/11/the-cosby-show/382891/

wait, how was janice dickinson the tipping point? didnt her story just come out in the past couple days

i mean leading to his Netflix and NBC shows getting cancelled today

i suspect that specific account didn't set anything off; also Netflix was yesterday.

re: spanish fly

A friend of mine in middle school told me once that he found "spanish fly" in his dad's medicine cabinet. I think he was under the impression that it was like a magic something-or-other dudes take to make them irresistible to women. "So what happened?" I asked. "Nothing," he replied. "I took a few. They just gave me burps that tasted like tuna." He had taken fish oil supplements.

Anyway, fuck Bill Cosby.

Given that all of these are single incidents versus ongoing relationships, I wonder how many more will come out of the woodwork.

xpost Yeah, she's just another nail in the coffin, really. Sounds like this has been ready to tip for some time. I never would have guess Hannibal would be the guy to tip it.

wait, how was janice dickinson the tipping point? didnt her story just come out in the past couple days

Janice's story has been around since she wrote her book in 2002, but Entertainment Tonight's interview either relaunched it or she elaborated on it with an actual rape accusation.

xps seems like a pretty honest and self-damning piece by Coates
if i understand correctly, she was told by her lawyers/publishers to deliberately leave it out and is going public now

yep

never thought I would be supportive of Janice Dickinson about anything but there ya go

Lemon: Can I ask you this, because -- and please, I don't mean to be crude, ok?
Tarshis: Yeah.
Lemon: Because I know some of you -- and you said this last night, that he -- you lied to him and said "I have an infection, and if you rape me, or if you do -- if you have intercourse with me, then you will probably get it and give it to your wife."
Tarshis: Right.
Lemon: And you said he made you perform oral sex.
Tarshis: Right.
Lemon: You know, there are ways not to perform oral sex if you didn't want to do it.
Tarshis: Oh. Um, I was kind of stoned at the time, and quite honestly, that didn't even enter my mind. Now I wish it would have.
Lemon: Right. Meaning the using of the teeth, right?
Tarshis: Yes, that's what I'm thinking you're --
Lemon: As a weapon.
Tarshis: Yeah, I didn't even think of it.
Lemon: Biting.
Tarshis: Ouch.
Lemon: Yes. I had to ask. I mean, it is, yeah.
Tarshis: Yes. No, it didn't cross my mind.

don lemon: asking the hard, insane questions

jesus christ

Lost Neil LaBute script found.

he really monday morning quarterback'd for a rape victim O_O

his pseudo-apology seemed to hint that his disbelief came from there being a second incident with cosby - that she didn't avoid him entirely after the first. but like, if you want to discuss that with a victim, let them know and do it with some respect. don't just ask them why they didn't go kill bill on his ass.

to be clear, i'm referring to things he said in his follow-up interview with tarshis, i.e. "“As you do know, there are a lot of people who don’t believe you, and they say, ‘Why didn’t you got to police, and why would you put yourself in a position to be with him a second time if he had raped you once?'"

what does don lemon think bill cosby would or wouldn't have done after that happened

is lemon going to be fired or...

saville, cosby, all of it just underlines the gross human swamp that i try so hard not to think about

ie that power/fame/wealth naturally, easily, opens up this carpool lane for you in life where assistants & friends & whoever are literally just bringing you women/boys/children to fuck, or helping you fuck them or not telling anyone that you are a heinous, heinous creep even when you are someone on the periphery who maybe sees these victims & looks them in the eye afterwards & STILL just carry on with this carpool lane

& that the whole point of that carpool lane is just the basest exploited privilege of the worst kind

and then years later in your old age to come off like you are legit confused by the backlash

i mean

the amount of cognitive dissonance required to live your life that way for decades boggles my fucking mind

sorry it's all cap obvious stuff & i dont mean to pile on all emo but aaargh

love the carpool lane metaphor

it is tragic almost beyond comprehension yep

behind all great fortunes is evil

at :35, "No no, we don't answer that."
at 1:36, "Can I get something from you that none of that will be shown?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI6z97Efw3I

I just saw that TV Land has yanked all scheduled Cosby Show reruns.

the amount of cognitive dissonance required to live your life that way for decades boggles my fucking mind

i think about this a lot and am thinking about it now. i will never fully understand how this works. people who do horrible things, repeatedly, i believe they have to convince themselves, and it probably happens very slowly and imperceptibly, that they're justified and normal, in order to live in the world. so i am actually curious whether the lies about it, or accusing other people of lying, or just seeming confused. i mean i think it is possible that the confusion is not all an act, it is in part real to them because of what they have had to do to their minds to be able to do evil things. or that it is an act but it feels so normal because they are so used to performing.

sorry for sentence fragment

I think people (myself included) often assume that others would feel the same bad feelings if they were to do bad things, but I just don't think that's true. I think there's a real range of conscience, or whatever, that makes it hard not to project when trying to understand what's going on in the mind of someone who does abhorrent things. Maybe empathy just involves projection to begin with? I don't know.

I just saw that TV Land has yanked all scheduled Cosby Show reruns.

One of the sad and unfortunate tributaries in this river of awful is that the legacy of this show (not to mention everyone else who worked on it) is going to be saddled forevermore with the taint of Cosby's actions.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120338/bill-cosby-rape-allegations-why-america-took-so-long-wake

And then there was gender. "The Cosby Show" was, on its surface, extremely progressive on the issue of domestic and professional power balancing between the sexes. Clair Huxtable was a lawyer, ambitious and funny and brilliant and demanding of respect. She and Cliff had an equitable, loving, sexually charged relationship; they offered an idealized vision of a feminist hetero coupling. He was a nurturer to their children; his engagement as a father and as a domestic partner was the basis of the whole show. Even his work had a feminist dimension: He was an obstetrician. He took joy and pride in delivering babies, in treating the impending parenthood of his patients and their husbands as a project that would be a shared one.

actually "The Cosby Show" if anything looks more iconic and singular after this shit

omg that headline

No One Wanted to Talk About Bill Cosby's Alleged Crimes Because He Made White America Feel Good About Race

like, lots of articles conflate "everyone" and "white people," but usually they catch it in the title

That headline is really disingenuous, particularly when the passage that Eazy quotes is more reflective of what's causing me such cognitive dissonance.

actually "The Cosby Show" if anything looks more iconic and singular after this shit

I'm not sure I understand what you mean, Alfred... The Cosby Show is sublime, but I'm not sure how the recent events don't make it tough to watch TV-Cosby's loveable derring-do as we learn more and more how risible Real-Cosby was.

Like, I know it's been said already, but it it's not nearly as difficult to process the possibility that Woody Allen might be a creep, given some of the messages he's promoted in his art. Not to suggest that themes in an artist's work are damning, just that they can be suggestive of a certain sensibility. Cosby's output, in general, is seriously at odds with how he apparently lived his life behind closed doors.

I'm just going to start assuming that all creative types are cannibalistic necrophiles so I can be pleasantly surprised to discover otherwise.

I dunno. The first two "Cosby Show" seasons show a nastier, more impatient Cliff than what he would become.

xpost that underscores why it's worthwhile to acknowledge his repeated "spanish fly" routines (even if they obviously shouldn't be used in a court of law, even if it makes tone-loc fans feel defensive). people who can't accept the accusations need to know his public sensibility always included fantasies of sexual conquest - "if only there was a magical way i could make women my sexual playthings"

yeah, but I don't know how these revelations make the show more singular or iconic, as you say. xp

I see what you're saying. If someone can no longer watch "The Cosby Show" because it's too painful, I get it. For me the show's fantastical parts look even more fantastical. It's like Polanski movies, and we had this discussion in that thread. I can still watch Repulsion and Chinatown and think "These are great films by a director who should be in jail."

you're dangerously close to saying that an idealized family fantasy is made all more notable by the fantasist being a rapist, which is different then just saying "i can still watch it knowing what he's done"

Yeah. Like, I watched a bunch of Cosby Show episodes the other day, but it was in spite of this knowledge, not enlightened by it.

I've just been watching Fat Albert clips and being bummed.

I'll need to revisit his standup (I'm relatively familiar with a lot of his albums) but I don't recall sexual conquest being a particularly pervasive theme. For better or worse, I would've assumed before this that a routine like the one about Spanish fly was more reflective of that time period than that it was a reflection of his particular sensibilities. It's really easy to forget that rape was often the subject of a lot of "light" humor even up through the '80s.

I've been watching episodes of 70s british sitcom Butterflies in the background at work today, and - despite being a relatively post-women's-lib show with much nuance, and written by carla lane - there's a ton of glib references and jokes about rape. it's really weird and unsettling.