two women renew Bill Cosby sexual abuse allegations in Newsweek interviews

http://www.newsweek.com/taking-bill-cosby-228495#.UvmIS0yi5eI.twitter

http://www.newsweek.com/another-woman-accuses-bill-cosby-sexual-abuse-228837

good news for Woody Allen at least

Apparently not. Victims must not be on Twitter.

coincidentally, there was a Bill-Cosby-as-ideal-Dad joke on this week's Girls

Hope you're as vigilant in getting both sides of the story with this one as you are with Dylan/Woody.

Every time Bill Cosby comes up, someone shouts "hip-hop scold" and someone else shouts "abuser of women" so I don't know that there's any real groundswell of support or protection around him that isn't better explained by mostly being out of the spotlight for a decade

I haven't heard either one, at least not in awhile, but where I am, his biggest legacy is his sweaters.

Yeah I mean, no one* actually takes Bill Cosby seriously enough for him to have a fall like Woody Allen, which is a conversation in and of itself

* where by "no one" I mean "white people"

he's got a new show coming out

and the last stand-up special was v good

The average American has seen a lot more of The Cosby Show than (s)he has WA movies.

harder for me to lose Bill Cosby than Woody Allen really, this sucks.

^^

yeah, as much as I like Bill Cosby's work I have always found this shit unforgivable (and it's a big portion of why I was still on the fence about checking out his new show when to teen DJP it would have been a no-brainer)

WaPo piece from this week

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/13/bill-cosby-raped-me-why-did-it-take-30-years-for-people-to-believe-my-story/

http://gawker.com/bill-cosby-responds-to-rape-questions-with-silence-hea-1659144804

This is the fucking worst. People are going to start scrutinizing "To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With" and like "why didn't anybody say anything back then?"

that's not what has happened at all in the last year or so that this story has ramped up again (in fact people seem pretty eager to separate the art from the man in this situation). and that is definitely not the "fucking worst" compared to someone committing rape with no consequences for decades.

Was trying to make a joke.

this is an epic piece on all this. the best i've read so far:

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/dr-huxtable-mr-hyde/

holy fuck

. As I told the Daily Mail, when I was a teenager, his assistants transported me to hotels and events to meet him. When I blacked out at Cosby’s home, there were several staffers with us. My agent, who introduced me to Cosby, had me take a pregnancy test when I returned from my last trip with him. Talent agents, hotel staff, personal assistants and others who knowingly made arrangements for Cosby’s criminal acts or overlooked them should be held equally accountable.

I read that phillymag article back during the Woody Allen thing. It made me feel shocked and sick and confused! Everyone has good memories of the Cos, or at least some 'sweaters jello pudding' bit from the Simpsons memory of him. He did Picture Pages! He did that bit about his daughter eating cake for breakfast! He has a phd in education! And he's NOT like R Kelly or Woody Allen, continually making it clear through their art that they have a pervert streak.

I was glad when that Hannibal Buress clip went viral because it was like 'thank god someone else thinks about this shit when they think about Cosby.' So it's bittersweet truth bomb in that Barbara Bowman piece: "While I am grateful for the new attention to Cosby’s crimes, I must ask my own questions: Why wasn’t I believed? Why didn’t I get the same reaction of shock and revulsion when I originally reported it? Why was I, a victim of sexual assault, further wronged by victim blaming when I came forward? The women victimized by Bill Cosby have been talking about his crimes for more than a decade. Why didn’t our stories go viral?"

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

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.

guy who was married to my aunt. my aunt. not my wife.

lol

and it's worth recognizing that an otherwise saintly person can have terrible traits and v-v

― mookieproof, Monday, November 17, 2014 2:27 AM (16 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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

― jenny holzer, ilxor (mh), Monday, November 17, 2014 2:32 AM (16 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

these are so otm and i feel like a key reason it feels like an uphill struggle in specific cases like this, or even in a wider "take sexual assault victims seriously when the perpetrator had more power and higher status than them", is because of how deeply entrenched these huge myths are

While we've obviously entered a whole different realm, it's been quite a while since Cosby's public persona was "saintly," I think? Eddie Murphy was telling him to STFU in the mid '80s and as in that Philly mag article above, Michael Eric Dyson and many others grew sick of his self-appointed moral arbiter status.

ime liberal whites eat the moral arbiter stuff up.

liberal whites are the ones pointing and screaming "it's the culture"?

well no obviously it's conservatives' entire thing. i meant that in addition to those guys i've talked to some people who'd steer clear of, say, charles murray, but will say that cosby is tough-loving.

Cosby, Belafonte -- hard to knock those guys for speaking as leaders. I mean, easy to knock Cosby now for it, but still.

POTUS has made similar arguments

welp
http://www.mediaite.com/online/listen-to-bill-cosbys-1969-stand-up-bit-about-drugging-womens-drinks/

I totally remember that bit, because it was the first time I heard about spanish fly and as an elementary school kid I was like wtf

...yeah, it did cross my mind that, despite the 'kid-friendly' side of his career in his 30s, he was also did Playboy After Dark etc.

The anecdotes told in the routine are likely not fully based on reality and instead used to serve the comedic scenario, but in light of the fact that drugs are believed to have been used in the alleged assaults, the bit takes on disturbing meaning all these years later.

Publishing "Isn't it weird/funny that this sounds like rape" is pretty much just telling a rape joke via hypertext

no it isn't.

"pretty much"

"disturbing" != "weird/funny"

Yes, da croupier, this Death + Taxes post really does have the somber tone of a writer who was disturbed to his very marrow and post this heartbreaking comedy routine with nothing but sincerest empathy for women

Props to self-proclaimed “crap archivist” Alan Scherstuhl for digging this one up:

On the album, forebodingly titled “It’s True! It’s True!,”

Listen to the clip and tell me if you think the Cos is regretting this one about now

sorry i thought you were responding to the link you quoted

Well the link i quoted has this

The anecdotes told in the routine are likely not fully based on reality and instead used to serve the comedic scenario, but in light of the fact that drugs are believed to have been used in the alleged assaults, the bit takes on disturbing meaning all these years later.

which is basically "We admit this comedy bit is probably fictional and not actually about raping women, but bear with us while we make you think it is"

i merely noted that "disturbing" != "weird/funny",

calm down

^ two most inflammatory words in english language

thank you, NBC Nightly News, for interviewing for your two-minute segment a "viral media" expert younger than my neighbor's teen and letting him say that this story will probably die soon because that's how we roll in 2014.

wtffffff

guessing there's wasn't any full disclosure there

Soda otm!

Heard all those incidents were "misunderstandings".

The Playboy After Dark... reminds me that I still really want that DVD set.

That gif is fucking with me now

"We admit this comedy bit is probably fictional and not actually about raping women, but bear with us while we make you think it is"

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Monday, November 17, 2014 6:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

something can be fictional AND about raping women

and yes a piece about a drug that makes women have sex with you that don't want to have sex with you is 100% about raping women

sorry to be dim but these accounts pretty much all suggest that the cos was slipping drugs into girls' drinks, then raping them WHILE THEY WERE PASSED OUT?? i mean all rape is equally intolerable but fucking an unconscious person is seriously mental-patient behavior, it's like one step away from.. i dunno, necrophilia!

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/sep/02/cee-lo-green-it-isnt-if-the-victim-is-unconscious

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/more-on-bill-cosbys-history-of-mentioning-spanish-fly/

COSBY: There’s a thing about Spanish Fly. Do you know anything about Spanish Fly?

KING: When we were kids we used to-

COSBY: There you go. There you go. That’s all. I just wanted the recognition.

KING: Yes.

COSBY: Spanish Fly.

KING: We knew what it was.

COSBY: Spanish Fly was the thing that all boys from age 11 on up to death — We will still be searching for Spanish Fly.

KING: (laughs) That’s right.

COSBY: And what was the old- The old story was, if you took a little drop — It was on the head of a-

KING: Pin.

COSBY: -pin! And you put it in a drink-

KING: That’s right. Drop it in her Coca-cola — It don’t matter.

COSBY: It doesn’t make any difference. And the girl would drink it and-

KING: And she’s yours.

COSBY: -’Hello, America!’ And there’s a story in there about Spanish Fly. So I think that everybody — any guy picking it up will just have a ball reading about that.

Search Results
Childhood

books.google.com/books?isbn=1560549343
Bill Cosby - 1991 - ‎No preview - ‎More editions
In a collection of humorous childhood stories, comedian Bill Cosby discusses such matters as his tenure as a school crossing guard and his quest for the elusive Spanish Fly

There are a lot of problematic things going on beyond consent, in that the routine is about an aphrodisiac and not something that presumably causes a loss of consciousness or memory loss. You still have the element of lack of consent in that it's not a self-administered party drug, it's something you drug someone with, and the routine paints that as funny. I think that social boundary has become a lot more well-defined over time, but the fact many people don't question it leads to the second bit:
objectifying others and using them as a means to an end.

That's the opposite of Cosby's family-friendly message and his perceived social advocacy. If people want to have sex on the basis of physical attraction alone and that's the end of it, fine. But that's the same shit he's decrying to others.

I guess maybe you can claim you have a level of social responsibility if you have a crisis management team to mitigate being a total shithead. I don't buy it.

Spanish fly is mostly an urban legend and his comedy bit is mostly about horny teenagers' fascination with it and how kids buy into a stupid legend. To drag up a 45-year-old comedy routine as evidence of ANYTHING in the wake of like 12 serious allegations is the stupidest fucking thing in the world.

Can you believe Tone Loc wrote a TOP 10 POP HIT hit about DRUGGING AND RAPING WOMEN?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OP5EnaaYjQ

Man, the Beastie Boys talked about putting "spanish fly" in a girl's Brass Monkey, better recall all those MCA tributes

You're missing the point. As far as any of us know, Tone Loc has never been accused of actually slipping a mickey in anyone's drink. On the other hand, Cosby has been over a dozen times.

Yes, and to take those serious charges and be like "Hey, if you listen to this 45-year-old comedy routine about a mostly fictional aphrodesiac and the dumb minds of teenagers in the early 50s .. isn't that WEIRD/PROBLEMATIC/[Clickworthy]"?

It's really insincere, imho

As it applies to these cases, it doesn't even meet the minimum qualifications for circumstantial evidence, yeah. BUT it is worth noting that relistening to Cosby's old bits with a fresh perspective sometimes reveals some o_O moments that were relatively easy to gloss over in the past.

Like that time he strangled that child to death with a piece of chocolate cake

I think the whole Spanish Fly attitude is problematic and of its time, and had he not been really into that routine and also accused of similar behavior, it wouldn't be a thing. But this wasn't some one-time routine, it's basically "old man who joked about slipping aphrodisiacs in drinks in his youth actually put roofies in drinks as a middle-aged man"

then there's the entire beastie boys being apologetic thing and disavowing some of their bad behavior, to the point of attempting to atone for it?

45-year old comedy bit newly offensive for all sorts of reasons, news at 11.

although a hat tip to whiney for bringing up the single most popular spanish fly reference of his lifetime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDsa4uDM3zU

there just isn't a connection between putting this stuff in your art and committing crimes like this. i mean, there is, but it's not causal. the big confounding variable is, it's ingrained in the culture. putting out someone's artistic history as evidence of guilt is an attractive kind of a sidestep from "the problem is in the culture" toward, like, the kind of villainization that serves to absolve ourselves, the subject. it takes a specific person / collection of experiences / traumas etc. to enact this absolution and these people always end up being the sacrificial lamb so we can keep on moving forward as is without questioning or at least being more aware of these deep beliefs around us.

and of course these discussions about x y z who did something similar are always splitting hairs because these are prevalent, mainstream attitudes and it's a matter of defining when and where it is acceptable/unacceptable every time.

Remember when rock stars, actors and other celebrities used to boast of their vast sexual conquests, and then more or less stopped?

there can be a connection, I just agree with Whiney that there's not really one here and that Cosby's leaning on that sketch back in the day really does make him look like a relic in 2014 xp

Like, with Magic Johnson? xp

The content of bits performed by some well-regarded comedy figures of the '60s and '70s sounds pretty gross these days, but that was "pre-liberation" culture, hmmm? (There's a bit on the first 2000 Year-Old Man album, I think, where Mel Brooks plays an Italian auteur whose new film is titled Rape... albeit there's more of a distanced, satirical bent to it; oh those licentious Europeans.)

I think part of his earlier stuff circulating now is the group consciousness trying to wash the idea that he's Dr. Cliff Huxtable out of their head.

It definitely helps.

definitely glad that sort of commonplace sleazy grey area seems to be less of a trade secret now. xp

Value of Coogi sweaters is cratering

lol i wondered if whiney was getting upset because late '80s hip-hop was in the line of fire

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0wa79gQfw1r91f2jo1_500.gif

ban mike d

when people have a hard time believing a man accused of drugging more than a dozen women for his sexual pleasure could possibly do such a thing, i think it's more than fair to acknowledge that he made such a fantasy part of his material over multiple decades. that some people are reporting the information crassly doesn't make it beneath comment.

beneath consideration, rather

btw also he's never been an actual medical doctor so he shouldn't be administering any drugs

sorry, that wasn't appropriate, but it came to mind

i see janice dickinson is back in the news

The first time I read about Spanish Fly it was trying to read all of Snopes at age 13 and finding the most terrifying one of all: "After a young man slips his date an aphrodisiac and leaves her alone in the car, he returns to find that she has impaled herself on the stick shift handle in a sexual frenzy."

Worse than hook hand, calls inside in your house, peanut butter dog, lobster egg vagina, anything. I was also freaked out later when I learned actual Spanish Fly is just an extreme skin irritant. So the idea is to make you want to fuck the itch away?? Awful.

never heard that one before, wow

peanut butter dog! my friend knew a guy who was in that very basement for the surprise party.

one of the rumors about the death of lucretius is that he died from taking too much spanish fly

Cosby was always sus. I'm shocked at how many ppl here are shocked. i didn't grow up with his show, but he seemed out of touch and nasty and mean-spirited in public imo (like all the stuff about what young black men should do/wear/say/etc)

I hate to think this, but I'd have been so much happier if this had all been about a surprise party for Bill Cosby that featured peanut butter balls.

i learned about spanish fly from beavis and butthead

someone please to explain peanut butter dog for the Uk crew?

omar little's friend knew a guy who attended a surprise party in a basement. at that party was peanut butter dog. he was never seen again.

http://www.snopes.com/risque/animals/peanutbutter.asp

man those dogs will lick peanut butter off anything

yeah licking a pussy?
yuck

I kid

i thought this was somehow connected to the bacon-burger-dog off of Cosby Show fame.

Cosby was always sus. I'm shocked at how many ppl here are shocked. i didn't grow up with his show, but he seemed out of touch and nasty and mean-spirited in public imo (like all the stuff about what young black men should do/wear/say/etc)

― ET sippin the wig (spazzmatazz), Tuesday, November 18, 2014 7:02 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah how come no one made the logical jump from 'mean spirited' to 'rapist'

we need to start looking into every old person who doesn't like rap, very sus

http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/netflix-pulls-bill-cosby-special-amid-rape-allegations-1201359886/

This is pretty much like the Savile thing:

Some people know of previous, some people are more "I always thought he was a bit (etc)" without actual evidence.

There was a fair bit of discussion between his death and his excommunication, over on the "Saville is alive" thread, about certain suspicions..

Er, no there wasn't.

insane how that official comment from his people over the weekend, has since had to be clarified and now has been deleted by the same people. i wonder if the same people were behind the 'Meme me!' tweets, also since deleted.

Reading off that Netflix article, Janice Dickinson comes out:
http://www.etonline.com/news/154076_janice_dickinson_details_alleged_bill_cosby_sexual_assault/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/19/don-lemon-bill-cosby-rape-accuser-bite-oral-sex_n_6184618.html

Uhhhhhh

brb establishing kickstarter to fund r&d for a rocket we can strap don lemon to and then fire into the sun

the meme me backfire thing was a textbook misunderstanding contemporary internet culture.

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.

xpost it's not a question of it being "pervasive." people can't believe he could drug women for his sexual pleasure, so it's worth educating fans on the fact that he was attempting to make such an impulse seem cute and common over multiple decades. he didn't have to be primarily known for promoting spanish fly for this to be true.

xxpost
(Which is not to give that type of humor a pass at all, just saying that Cosby was far from the only guilty party in that regard.)

Agreed, croup.

so it's worth educating fans on the fact that he was attempting to make such an impulse seem cute and common over multiple decades.

what?

Anyway way we can backfit the "Faster, faster, you fool, you fool" and "buck buck" routines into this behavior too, just for larfs?

whiney do you really want to be the guy who hops in this thread to post animated gifs any time someone dares to suggest "love potion" fantasies aren't as innocent as we thought as children

no one's saying you have to go to jail because you had a "funky cold medina" cassingle

xpost i will if you keep defending "rape jokes as blogging" as a smoking gun in the cosby saga

whiney for a guy who complains about insincerity you're either dim or ragingly insincere yourself

MEN ARE ANIMALS AND WOMEN ARE TEASES, IT'S IN THE BIBLE, PEOPLE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs9WEExFT0g

as i've said (and no one else seems to miss) i'm not defending crass reportage, etc. i'm simply noting that in a world where people CAN'T BELIEVE bill cosby could want to drug women for sex, it's worth informing them that he had this conversation with larry king

COSBY: There’s a thing about Spanish Fly. Do you know anything about Spanish Fly?

KING: When we were kids we used to-

COSBY: There you go. There you go. That’s all. I just wanted the recognition.

KING: Yes.

COSBY: Spanish Fly.

KING: We knew what it was.

COSBY: Spanish Fly was the thing that all boys from age 11 on up to death — We will still be searching for Spanish Fly.

*case closed*

"judge slams gavel down*

*gavel explodes into dust*

yeah again if your response to this is "IT CAN'T BE USED IN A COURT OF LAW, ARE YOU SAYING ICE-T SHOULD BE ARRESTED FOR SINGING COP KILLER" you're incapable of comprehending the point

whether that's due to defensiveness over the subject matter or simple cluelessness i can't say

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

I got grief here years ago for saying I lost interest in TCS after about a half-season, when it got more cuddly and educational. Early '80s Cosby standup seemed a lot more like WC Fields than "My Brother Russell"-era (as great as that was), eg Alfred's "no place to get rid of your children" quote.

the point is that you are conveniently changing the intention in 45-year-old jokes about a sexual snipe hunt to fit your narrative of bill cosby to make some sinister point

a) i know they're old but that larry king conversation didn't happen 45 years ago

b) what is the "intention" you think i'm adding

c) what is the "intention" you know he had

Yeah that cosby show vs fresh prince thread is a teal treat btw
xp

Real treat even

i'm bored with this and am gonna get breakfast, I'll cede this thread to da croupier the 9/11 truther of stand up, wake up sheeple

sorry to make you feel bad about delicious vinyl

don't want to fget in the middle of this scrap

just maybe the Spanish Fly references seem like a bit of a not-that-urgent footnote to this story in comparison to 15 women saying he raped them?

oh wtf

i apologize for getting in the way of what's urgent by noting that cosby's public persona wasn't antithetical to rape culture

it's so frustrating because i really do feel like he was such a positive force in my childhood and it just makes me sick to think he is an evil monster of some sort. i hate this shit. i understand people are human and fuck up a lot, but, jesus, there is a difference between being a fuck up or privately kinda mean and this kind of thing. ugh. how can you inspire SO many people for generations and be like that? this is one of the most beautiful records that i own and a very definite inspiration in my life for years and i will never ever understand how someone could make this and also hurt so many. it really does boil down to: humans...ugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6hRvwaXzFo

^^^ love that track

croups, don't get mad. I see your point. just feels like the spanish fly argument is going around in circles.

Scott OTM. It's like discovering your kindly and beloved grandfather was a Nazi.

brio, my annoyance with evasive bullshit is a non-urgent footnote to a non-urgent footnote. Don't sweat it.

the other thing that always boggles my mind when stuff like this comes to light is: if you are rich and famous ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE WILL HAVE SEX WITH YOU!! like, millions of people! for free! even weird dangerous sex or any kind of sex you can think of. people will actually let you drug them and have sex with them if you are rich and famous enough!!!

sorry. but it really does drive me crazy.

"let you" is problematic in this context

We were on a works night out, a particular restaurant, and one of our group at the end of the night was definitely trying to get into the car of a famous local celeb who does quiz shows, before he'd even finished in the restaurant. I can only assume his chauffer didn't want to give him that, as she was back into our minibus a matter of mins later...

Less vaguely (ha) a family friend was school-pals with Olivia Harrison, and by all accounts she was very cautious about having girl pals over when George is around, because too often if George pops in to say hello, there is a certain amount of over-reaction that happens too often. Of course, come the day he did say hello, she was very careful to keep any reactions calm and measured.

These are two specific things that happened, not a general observation, OK?

scott, that track is great. i hadn't heard that album for a long time.

i should note that anyone paying attention to cosby over the past 15 years or so has known he's a blowhard or worse -- what with his making a second career of publicly shaming poor black people. but few knew that he was a rapist/ sociopath to boot.

(change is to was, and other present sense to past, there, obv) (xpost to myself)

xpost

i should say, third or fourth career.

there is a difference between being a fuck up or privately kinda mean and this kind of thing.

Yeah. I think one danger here (not on this thread, but more generally) is that this goes into the celebrity-scandal file rather than into the things-that-would-seem-horrible-even-if-the-person-wasn't-famous file. Drugging and raping women repeatedly for decades is pathological predatory horror-show stuff. It's not just that it's at odds with his public persona -- it's that he drugged and raped women repeatedly for decades. Obviously the celebrity stuff matters because it's what gave him access to his victims and what allowed him to get away with it. But this would be equally awful and shocking if it was your fifth-grade teacher or your kindly postman.

I largely attributed Cosby's public persona in recent years to a combination of advancing age and (rampant speculation, I admit) anger over the murder of his son.

that's pretty speculative! it's not like he was going around chastising russians for letting their sons run wild (iirc his son was murdered by a russian).

Some of the friction you're getting, croup, is because the point you're arguing against is just that Woody Allen's creepiness was on-screen and visible, but Cosby's wasn't for a long time - when you say that there's always been an element, it's more accurate (as I understand it) to say that there was and then it was smothered under a million sweaters, and the sweaters is the aspect that a lot of people in this thread know - as in grew up with as a public good.

Some of the friction is of course because Whiney.

this is one of those things i will remember about bill cosby until the day i die:

"It's the little things that count when you're a daddy. Like taking your little girl for ice cream. First, you have to teach her about the concept of gravity. I can't tell you how many ice creams I've had to pick up off the floor, rinse off and stick back on my kid's cone. Now that may sound strange, but have you bought ice cream lately? Good gosh, it's up to 75 cents a scoop. A scoop! What's in it, gold?"

re the blowhardism, I'm wondering if y'all read the Ta-Nehisi Coates piece that both caek and i posted -- we can argue about the nuances (or lack thereof) his "shaming" / culturally conservative stuff but he wasn't exactly a black Republican in his rhetoric.

I think I saw footage of some reception for this William & Camille Cosby Collection show that just opened at the Smithsonian, and when I noticed Chris Rock in the b.g. it reminded me of his old "black people vs n*ggers" monologue and why CR got less grief over that (did he?) bcz he is a generation younger than Cosby.

that Coates piece is great

yeah, i tread that coates article, which is the best thing written about that aspect of cosby i think. he's no black republican, but his argument relied on much the same sort of bootstraping/self-improvement rhetoric that fuels right-wing "post-racial" attitudes (i.e. racism), and even though cosby wouldn't overtly deny structural racism his arguments denied some of its effects.

i agree that chris rock's comments were pretty dubious too (and i like him a lot). he did get some flack for them (mostly in left-wing publications IIRC) but not nearly enough.

I didn't mean to suggest that Cosby's recent ranty persona was in response to black-on-black crime (which I know his son's murder was not), just that the timeline seemed right and that I could see a celebrity with a murdered son hashing out his misdirected frustration in public just because the forum was there. Fully acknowledged as armchair speculation.

xxxp similar to his bit about ordering off the room service menu, that the price for "one egg, any style" was $1.69 and "two eggs, any style" was $1.99. "What the hell is wrong with the second egg?"

xxpost

i should clarify: COSBY's argument relied... (not coates's)

chris rock perhaps got off lighter because he was criticising his own generation, sorta.

never liked that skit, not least because the first time I heard it it was being performed to me by a white welsh punk group in their tourbus, having just seen that concert movie the night before.

yeah and i think the jocular way that rock tells it -- less obviously scolding/old-man cranky than cosby -- makes it go down easier for some folks. but it's still, at best, a nasty instance of classism.

Gentlemen, I think we're agreed! Now, who'll tell the coloureds?

In the years since Rock did that bit, shooting up movie theaters has been appropriated by crazy white kids.

One of the articles posted here mentioned that Rock stopped doing that bit when he realized white racists were getting too much mileage out of it

honestly, i think the reaction to that chris rock thing was better than the actual thing. on that live special. pandemonium! he was very exciting at the time.

pryor, rock, chapelle, they all had that moment where they looked out at their audience and went...uh oh...

My reaction when I first heard the Chris Rock bit was, "Huh, this is exactly what a white kid in 8th grade told me: 'They're not ALL n-ggers, just the bad ones.'"

when you say that there's always been an element, it's more accurate (as I understand it) to say that there was and then it was smothered under a million sweaters, and the sweaters is the aspect that a lot of people in this thread know - as in grew up with as a public good.

i wasn't arguing that i knew and we all should have known. i'm saying the information (however shitty some of the people reporting are, though anybody posting animated gifs to a thread about serial rape should think twice about accusing others of being insensitive) should be shared so that we can move past "b-b-but Bill stood against this kind of thing!" and accept that he didn't. if this makes people feel bad, and makes them want to throw up a million other examples of popular love potion references in culture, they can grow the fuck up and accept such things weren't as delightful as we may have once thought. a lot of "boys will be boys" humor wasn't.

they can grow the fuck up and accept such things weren't as delightful as we may have once thought.

u gonna post the lyrics to Korn's "Shoots and Ladders" next?

the depth of your defensiveness on this is pretty stunning

the depth of your fascination with this is pretty stunning

sure

Girl in work today was moaning and wailing about this story, "Oh I don't want it to be true, I used to love him, I don't want him to be a paedophile!" I said, "He isn't a paedophile, he's a rapist". Not sure that placated her much.

impressed that anyone can actually name a song by Korn, let alone know what the lyrics were about. I've filed that band away in a dusty "Mook Rock of the '90s" file that need never be opened.

Joel Gordon @JoelGord · 23m 23 minutes ago
Looks like Cosby's got Marty Singer on the payroll--celebrity shorthand for "I'm never apologizing. Fuck each and every one of you."

he can't ever apologize since that would leave him wide open to civil lawsuits, I presume.

See also: Martin 'Mad Dog' Singer.

(there's that story of the man who raped an acquaintance in college, was never caught/brought to trial. he then emailed her an apology 20 years later as part of some AA self-improvement campaign. she turned the email over to the cops and he was tried and imprisoned. can't imagine Cosby wants anything like that to happen.)

(btw I should add that of course the asshole in that story got exactly what he deserved. I'm just citing it as evidence that Cosby will probably never own up to even some small part of all this.)

hasn't the statute of limitations expired in a couple of these cases anyway?

it probably depends on the state where the incidents happened, no?

the coates piece makes a point that these cases can't be prosecuted now iirc

when is the most recent incident that's come to light?

iirc, 2004 but that's the one that he settled

No doubt when the dude settled he thought, perhaps reasonably despite its innate unreasonableness, that, well, that's that. It's settled. I never have to talk about it again. And every time it comes up again, or someone asks him, he thinks, didn't I pay for this already? No way they're getting anything else from me, especially not for free. I paid my bill, now leave me alone.

ugh, 16th accusation

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/20/therese-serignese-bill-cosby-rape-victim_n_6188270.html

ugh, this is one of the worst instances of celebrity criminality i can recall. indeed it's not just that a previously /relatively/ benign-seeming celebrity has been tarnished, it's that the acts are so odious that they would be utterly, exceptionally horrific without the celebrity angle. this man appears to have gone through life regularly drugging and raping young women, and he's faced not a single arrest much less a trial or conviction. i really hope he has something coming to him.

an underattended funeral is about the best we can hope for

seems likely he'll probably head to that funeral widely loathed

pre-funeral ignominy would be nice

I never especially liked Bill Cosby but all of this is shocking to me. Why did he spend his life acting (often misguidedly) like he gave a shit about issues like education when he didn't even care enough about other people to respect their autonomy over their own bodies? This is a good example of how you never really know someone unless you actually know them.

yeah, being that he was already a rich and powerful celebrity who probably had no problem getting women to sleep with him willingly, but invariably CHOSE to drug and rape multiple women anyway, is some truly dark evil shit right there. if we only know about 16, god, imagine how many there are must be out there?

yeah, ten years ago his ignominy was Leonard Part 6.

I guess the word re his social activism is "compartmentalization," but I was not a psych major.

I've never understood why people think they know any artist, popular or rarefied, no matter how immersed in their work they are. Cuz you don't know.

i imagine that even many of those close to him over the years have been shocked by this. what of his wife, to whom he's been married for 50 years? we will never know what she knew or what she might have chosen to do or not do with that knowledge (Cosby's many affairs have been common knowledge for some time). one imagines that she's another kind of victim, but who knows.

Morbz otm

i keep reading your username as OU812

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6c/Van_Halen_-_OU812.jpg

jerry sandusky, michael jackson, countless priests - cosby's hardly the first powerful person accused of being a sex offender that also engaged in lots of philanthropic and socially-minded efforts. it's heartbreaking, but it makes sense. it serves not just to deflect negative attention, but self-examination. "how can i be a bad person when i do so much good?"

hey Morbs, do you still think Dylan Farrow is lying about Woody Allen

In the AP video Mrs. Cosby sports this automatic smile that looks like the saddest thing I've ever seen.

xxp: How do we feel about Michael Jackson these days? The last time I brought up the accusations against him, someone responded that he had been cleared in court, and I remember going and checking out like, the wikipedia about the cases or something and it seemed to make sense up that he was probably innocent. But would people be more skeptical about it today?

Make sense up = make sense

in the michael jackson case in which he was found innocent, several of the jurors publicly stated that they thought he was a pedophile but that the state hadn't proved abuse in the specific instance. not that this is definitive, mind.

i've tried to figure out the michael jackson thing a couple of times and every time i just wound up getting sucked into a million wikipedia links and articles and feeling more confused than ever. maybe someday someone will write a decent book about it and we can figure out what really happened there.

He wasn't cleared of all accusations - some were settled financially. I won't pretend to know what MJ specifically did or didn't do but he was repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct and publicly displayed an unhealthy fixation with them - admitting to one-bed sleepovers as an adult - that matches with the behavior of predators. Whatever its legal standing, its enough to make saying "oh he's proven innocent" seem a bit delusional, and I try to engage with his work accordingly.

Allen case is v different from cosby case which is also v difft from mj case. Cosby case is actually probably closest to sandusky's, if we need to draw comparisons (which we don't, really)

jackson's public God complex (and the vagueness and "uplift" aspect of his lyrics) seems to increase around the same time as his private life was coming under increasing attack, which would seem to reflect the dynamic that da croupier describes upthread.

do you still think Dylan Farrow is lying about Woody Allen

I believe you're lying about me, howzzat?

Weren't you trying to impugn Mia and Dylan when the latter published her piece about Woody earlier this year or did I just imagine all that

Pretty sure Morbs never said that, only that people were rushing to judgment.

Just wondering why Morbs isn't doing the same thing in this instance

you're an idiot.

that's great, i clearly don't think that highly of you either, but i'm still curious

Man, this Danish commentator just wrote a long facebook screed on this program series that has been running called 'shut up woman' (ti stille kvinde) about harassment of female politcians. And his argument is that politicians should accept/ignore harassment because they deserve it. Which, whatever, but at one point he talked about the kind of harassment one cannot dismiss, and he seriously mentioned the allegations against Cosby as obviously injurious and something that should be taken to court. Christ in hell. And one of my friends liked the post.

I can only shudder imagining the shit rich and powerful people have done over the years, with impunity. If anything this is an example of how the democratization of contemporary discourse vis a vis the internet not only makes it virtually impossible for accusations like these to disappear or get buried by complicit editors/handlers/lawyers/whomever, but also for people to easily research and explore what information exists on their own with relative ease. Obviously the Cosby stuff started before the internet came into its own, which may be how he's been able to bury or suppress it for so long. But think of Jian Ghomeshi, how amazingly quickly that spread and spiraled. And I think that encourages other victims to come forward, knowing that people are paying attention and that the story is not going away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB2A98jta0A#t=17

Morbz otm

― Οὖτις, Thursday, November 20, 2014 2:54 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if you are rich and famous ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE WILL HAVE SEX WITH YOU!! like, millions of people! for free! even weird dangerous sex or any kind of sex you can think of. people will actually let you drug them and have sex with them if you are rich and famous enough!!!

Me and K were just talking about this. And the awful conclusion is that he needed to have sex with them in this specific way. Unconscious and without consent to be so.

He has to be not just nuts but deeply deeply fucked up, like head injury, visible neuroscience fucked up. The whole thing gives me the spins the more I think about it.

Sorry to use the word nuts. As a minor league mentally ill person myself.

if you are rich and famous ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE WILL HAVE SEX WITH YOU!! like, millions of people! for free! even weird dangerous sex or any kind of sex you can think of. people will actually let you drug them and have sex with them if you are rich and famous enough!!!

Me and K were just talking about this. And the awful conclusion is that he needed to have sex with them in this specific way. Unconscious and without consent to be so.

He has to be not just nuts but deeply deeply fucked up, like head injury, visible neuroscience fucked up. The whole thing gives me the spins the more I think about it.

― a drug by the name of WORLD WITHOUT END (Jon Lewis), Thursday, November 20, 2014 7:10 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

rape isn't really about sex. there's a really specific pathology involved in drugging and raping people. i doubt bill cosby was like *bites fist* if only i could...wait....*sprinkles roofies in martini*..it resembles sex but is really parallel.

Glenn Beck rising below expectations there

Whatever kind of brain malady he was talking about having last week is seemingly still thriving.

the woody allen case and this one are... very different.

here we have over a dozen grown women relating stories that are remarkably similar, even identical, describing behaviors that occurred over decades.

in the woody allen case you have the word of a child and her mother again that of her stepfather in the context of extraordinary rancor. i think even those who can't imagine a situation in which dylan's version of events is anything but the complete truth, there's still a great difference in the respective epistemological bases of these two situations.

i kind of garbled that. i just mean, in this case there's a degree of certainty that--except for the principals, and maybe even for them--will never be achieved in the other case.

Sad that that needs to be pointed out

Nah, maybe you guys need to delineate further as to why it fucking matters whether it's one woman or fourteen and whether it's women who have historically had it out for a guy (maybe deservedly so) or not

Either way, I'm an idiot, right

Talk about certainty all you want but we're never gonna get the complete story so we might as well deal with what we know and maybe I'm being simplistic, but it usually comes down to believing women

what does that mean?

maybe i can clarify a bit: there's a reason why lawyers--if they are able to--call multiple witnesses to a criminal act, or multiple character witnesses. simply because numerous people testifying to the same thing is always going to create a greater sense of certainty than one person testifying to the same thing. of course, that can be a false sense of certainty. witnesses can be colluding, or more insidiously, we can have a situation where those testifying were subject to the same form of suggestion (e.g. the McMartin preschool case). but i don't see how either of those things are even a remote possibility in this case.

i just read this: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/upshot/bill-cosbys-sudden-fall-explained-sociologically.html

kind of an unsatisfying analysis--seems tautological to me. "people pay more attention when people pay more attention." the question is how something became "common knowledge" so quickly in this instance. i don't think buress's comments explain it all.

yeah that article's explanation isn't very insightful or even substantive

https://twitter.com/slate/status/535870848650207232

maybe I'm being simplistic, but it usually comes down to believing women

yes you are being simplistic. every case is not the same, and applying a strict rule regardless of context is how stupid conclusions are drawn.

the question is how something became "common knowledge" so quickly in this instance. i don't think buress's comments explain it all.

― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, November 21, 2014 9:29 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Buress' routine was succinct enough, but it was Jezebel that clipped it into a headline, on the heels of Gawker's February post randomly putting this out there more widely. A one-two setup from a very specific media outlet. Hats off.

and presumably someone somewhere read the Feb Newsweek thing at the top

Looks like it's up to 17

Roxane Gay on reflexive skepticism about accusations of rape: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/21/bill-cosby-rape-accusers-women-stories

celebrities are deathbags - why do people assume they are sweetchildren???

^^^

so everything happened outside the statute of limitations in the US, and he can't be charged? am i understanding that correctly? Canadian law is different on this.

tons more non-denial denial in this

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/21/bill-cosby-lawyers-threaten-sue-national-enquirer-2005-investigation

Despite everything swirling around the 77-year-old longtime entertainer, fans filled a sold-out theater in Melbourne, Florida.

Though an announcer before the show said disruptions were possible, none ever came. A radio station had offered $1,000 to anyone who would interrupt Cosby. Instead, the comedian — wearing cargo pants and a shirt that said "Hello Friend" — was greeted only by a cheering, whistling, knee-slapping audience. He never came close to referencing the allegations.

At least twice, someone shouted, "We love you, Bill Cosby."

His 90-minute set wandered from a childhood fear of God to the loss of freedom in marriage to the rocket-speed Spanish of a piñata-store worker. He sat for much at first, then grew increasingly physical, impersonating jujitsu and gymnastics poses, lying on the floor in stocking feet and thrusting a fist upward in describing everyday quarrels with his wife.

At every turn, even when he blew his nose, the audience howled.

"I think people went in there with him as Bill Cosby from the TV show, not the guy they heard about on the news," said Travis Weberling, 40, of Melbourne.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/21/bill-cosby-florida-show_n_6202628.html

Tickets had to be upward of a c-note, it's not surprising he's playing to a house of friendlys at those prices

I lived in Melbourne, FL for several years and I find none of this surprising.

awful beaches

rape beaches

awful beaches

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, November 24, 2014 1:09 PM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's no way to talk about the woman who bill cosby assaulted

not funny

agreed. i think this thread has served its purpose, if any.

sorry, i know it was in bad taste, but i have a hard time resisting a bad pan. sorry.

bad PUN

agreed. i think this thread has served its purpose, if any.

― things lose meaning over time (Dr Morbius), Monday, November 24, 2014 2:11 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks, mom! i guess i'll move on over to one of the politics threads where i can read the 54,000th iteration of the comment you have been making for years.

with zero shitty rape jokes

your taste in Gabin movies sucks too

guys don't forget that the real enemy here is bill cosby

i'm pretty confident in my taste in jean gabin films, thanks. :)

do you ever ask yourself why you spend almost every waking hour of your life on a website where you routinely profess to despising nearly everyone you interact with?

xpost

http://prevos.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/abyss-761656.jpg

i am still incredulous about how cosby got away with this for so long and i am thinking more than is useful about weird details of the case. like, what did his wife know about this? so many people's marriages end for offenses that are 1/1000000000000000000000000th as serious as this and yet she stuck with him for fifty years

i imagine his wife knew he was a philanderer (how could she not?) but probably has chosen not to believe the rape allegations. but who knows?

that sounds plausible. if she is just now facing the fact that she has spent the better part of her life with a violent predator i feel really sad for her. that sounds like a nightmare.

stfu amateurist

nah

almost every waking hour of your life

not quite, sugartits.

I notice when I look up old threads of any type that you've p much always been an asshole, tho.

only since 2005 or so :)

anyway, back to bill cosby...

stfu amateurist
― jello my future biafriend (roxymuzak), Monday, November 24, 2014 2:32 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...

sorry, i know it was in bad taste, but i have a hard time resisting a bad pan. sorry.

― I dunno. (amateurist), Monday, November 24, 2014 8:19 PM (Yesterday)
bad PUN

― I dunno. (amateurist), Monday, November 24, 2014 8:19 PM (Yesterday)

fuck off, asshole

I hope everyone is saying, "AND that's coming from Crabbits"

i don't even know who you are

a woman who thinks you should fuck right off with your nonsense

sassy!

i made a horrible pun in poor taste for which i immediately apologized. but if you guys can vent some righteous anger for another 500 posts it will have served a positive purpose. i mean that sincerely.

Keep digging

http://ilxor.com/ILX/FullTextSearchControllerServlet?terms=i+don%27t+even+know+who+you+are&offset=30&searchtype=text&startdate=&enddate=&artefact=messages&idtype=null&sortorder=Relevance&boardid=0

Not to change the subject or anything, but I liked this article by Jelani Cobb:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/shielded-bill-cosby

that's a smart piece that effectively answers the question that the one i posted earlier did not, which is why the floodgates seemed to open after burress called cosby out in public -- even though the allegations had been around for years.

i think it has to do with the new media environment, which lacks the old gatekeepers. no amount of money can silence the wind.

That's true, but the new media environment was there long before Buress's set.

from the new yorker article:

If the damning charges swirling around the comedian are true, then we lack a proper metric to detail the scale of the hypocrisy that he represents. It is one thing to wear one face in public and another in private, a dichotomy that we all practice to some degree or another, though usually not to cloak serial predation upon semi-conscious women. But it’s quite another to do so while stridently, consistently, angrily denouncing those who have failed to meet your own moral standards.

Long line of TV preachers and politicians there.

but that's the essence of their career. cosby didn't benefit at all from becoming a public scold in late life.

crabbits otm

this bit from David Carr's piece, recalling a profile for an airline mag:

My job as a journalist was to turn down that assignment. If I was not going to do the work to tell the truth about the guy, I should not have let him prattle on about his new book at the time.

But I did not turn it down. I did the interview and took the money.

I paid for that in other ways. The interview was deeply unpleasant, with a windy, obstreperous subject who answered almost every question in 15-minute soliloquies, many of which were not particularly useful.

After an hour of this, I mentioned that the interview was turning out to be all A. and no Q. He paused, finally.

“Young man, are you interested in hearing what I have to say or not?” he said. “If not, we can end this interview right now.”

Mr. Cosby was not interested in being questioned, in being challenged in any way. By this point in his career, he was surrounded by ferocious lawyers and stalwart enablers and he felt it was beneath him to submit to the queries of mere mortals.

re. that david carr piece, i hope to god the phrase "the coarse, self-defeating urban black ethos" is used ironically.

I wonder how Jim Breuer is reacting to all this.

“Young man, are you interested in hearing what I have to say or not?”

that line made me sick. just b/c it somehow seems to bridge the gap between cosby's persona and what he's done.

it forces me to envision this grotesquely self-important man who must imagine that he is such a superhuman force for uplift and rectitude that he deserves to take advantage of a few women from time to time.

an email exchange between Grantland’s Wesley Morris and Rembert Browne

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/bill-cosby-rape-allegations-the-fall-of-an-icon/

What took so long is that those in the know kept it mostly to themselves. No one wanted to disturb the Natural Order of Things, which was that Mr. Cosby was beloved; that he was as generous and paternal as his public image; and that his approach to life and work represented a bracing corrective to the coarse, self-defeating urban black ethos.

Only the first of those things was actually true.

Seems pretty clear Carr is describing Cosby as a "corrective" to a "coarse, self-defeating urban black ethos" as a completely false narrative on all sides of the equation.

I think Carr's story - and Coates' - are really great.

Seems pretty clear Carr is describing Cosby as a "corrective" to a "coarse, self-defeating urban black ethos" as a completely false narrative on all sides of the equation.

that's what i thought, and hoped. i guess i was hoping for the security of scare quotes to make that absolutely clear.

the grantland piece is great

yeah, this part from rembert browne is what i was trying to express above, that hearing about cosby's intimidation of journalists kind of made all the horror fall into place for me:

As the standoff continues, you can feel other speakers who have joined the conversation attempting to fulfill Cosby’s wishes. When Cosby says to a second person off camera, referring to the interviewer’s superior, “You need to get on the phone with his person — immediately,” you can already feel Cosby gaining full control of the situation. You can see how he’d executed damage control for years, how he can manipulate his surroundings in such a staggering fashion. And it truly begins to make sense why people stayed silent and the media turned a blind eye. Because Cosby can convince you that he can end you.

For the past week, my opinion of him has centered on what he has been accused of and how terrible it is. But since I saw that AP interview, it has all existed through this idea of some nasty old man.

Now, Bill Cosby is terrifying. He scares me.

had no idea about the Breuer/Cosby connection, that's weird

But since I saw that AP interview, it has all existed through this idea of some nasty old man.

also, one reason I soured quickly on the Cosby Show is that just before it premiered he'd guest-host Tonight a lot, and he was REALLY FUCKING MEAN. You can imagine how much more I liked that than Dr. Huxtable.

― Dr Morbius, Thursday, July 12, 2007 2:11 PM

mean old real interviewee Cosby not so entertaining

the "respect your elders" thread running through that grantland piece is a strong reminder of how patriarchy and this symbol of the paterfamilias are intertwined. this kneejerk respect for it is why it feels like we can't do shit about it so much of the time

huh

Cosby records were the first place I even heard of Temple & Spellman

Cliff Huxtable was a great man. But Cliff Huxtable was not Bill Cosby, no matter how hard we all tried to treat the two as one. We all thought Cliff Huxtable was great because we thought he was an extension of Bill Cosby. That’s the great trick of naming the show The Cosby Show, even though there are no Cosbys in it. It provided Bill with the much-needed mask of Cliff.

This is what has really nailed it in place for me.

yeah, that was kind of a truth bomb, as far as cosby naming the show after him encouraging a melding of his persona w/ cliff huxtable.

I dunno, wasn't it common practice back then to name the show after it's big star? So you had The Dick van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart, etc, all of which featured the eponymous actors playing characters with a different name than what was in the title. Even Cosby himself had an earlier series called The Bill Cosby Show, where he played a man called Chet Kincaid. In retrospect, it's tempting to see the naming of the show as an attempt by Cosby to cover what a horrible human being he was, but I think it was simply a standard marketing practice of the era, put the name of your star in the title so people will know he's in it.

Though the melding of Cosby and Cliff Huxtable is definitely a thing. Here in Finland The Cosby Show was huge, while most of Cosby's earlier and later stuff is not well known, so people probably equate him with Dr. Hustable even more so than in the US... And this whole rapist thing hasn't really been in local news, so the folks I've told about it have had a hard time believing it, and I guess that's partly because the only image of Cosby in their heads was the friendly doctor from their childhood. (As it was in my head too, before reading about the rapes.)

I dunno, wasn't it common practice back then to name the show after it's big star?

so what?

All I'm saying that naming the show that wasn't necessarily a "great trick" pulled by Cosby to conflate his real persona with Cliff Huxtable. That kind of naming practice was common in American TV, so I'm not sure if it was all part of Cosby's masterplan or whatever... And people conflate actors with their most famous roles anyway, regardless of whether their names were in the title or not.

"The Phil Silvers Show"

.. which was never billed like this in TV listings magazines over here..

Tuomas' anecdote has me wondering how well Cliff Huxtable played around the world.

This paper suggests it was big all around the world, except for Latin America. In here I think it was the most popular American sitcom on the TV, at least for its 80s run.

I wouldnt read too much into the title for the reasons listed by Tuomas. Except it probably promoted Cosby's name abroad.

The Phil Silvers Show, Sgt Bilko, You'll Never Get Rich were all used at different times for the same show.

Tuomas and Morbius OTM

my dad loved working on the bilko show. he thought phil silvers was great and great to work for.

it's nice when people are nice!

course phil silvers might have been a serial killer.....

never trust a millionaire

Even Cosby himself had an earlier series called The Bill Cosby Show, where he played a man called Chet Kincaid.

so I was flipping through the cable channels the other night and this was on and I stopped on it and the episode was about how Chet thinks a younger female student has a crush on him and he has to figure out some way to deflect her attentions. o_0

Sting had the same problem. He did sing "De do doo doo, de dah dha dha" to her instead.

I am so glad to hear Phil Silvers was cool and Bilko was fun to work on. I love that show.

the only person my dad really hated from that time was jack paar. he said he was the worst and everyone loathed him.

phil silvers and ernie kovacs were his favorite people to work for. he loved those guys.

wow, kovacs is a hero to me; would love to hear some stories.

my dad said that sometimes ernie would come up to him in the studio and say: let's go for a walk. and they would go outside and walk around manhattan. not saying much. just walking.

what did kovacs do on those walks? was he observing or thinking or just enjoying the company?

probably thinking up cool stuff and wanted a companion.

http://m.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Woman-sues-Bill-Cosby-claiming-underage-abuse-5930934.php

Tuomas' anecdote has me wondering how well Cliff Huxtable played around the world.

We have a trendyburger chain here called Huxtaburger. I have wondered if theyre now cringing...

they still have 'bills' burger on the menu (why it's not cliff i have no idee), maybe they should change it to BUD

Huxtaburger? If they were able to cringe, they'd have put themselves in the hospital before they opened.

xpost

Remember how Obama let slip that he was traveling in Pakistan & the campaign was caught unawares? He was visiting some gay Pakistan friends.

This is the scandal that never, ever ends. Wow.

http://jezebel.com/so-about-that-episode-where-30-rock-called-out-bill-co-1665994930

they still have 'bills' burger on the menu (why it's not cliff i have no idee), maybe they should change it to BUD

― don't ask me why i posted this (electricsound),

his name is Kenny!

so not only The Cosby Show, but The Bill Cosby Show are running on cable channels? Does that continue indefinitely?

"Remember how Obama let slip that he was traveling in Pakistan & the campaign was caught unawares? He was visiting some gay Pakistan friends."

what?

so not only The Cosby Show, but The Bill Cosby Show are running on cable channels? Does that continue indefinitely?

Cosby Show reruns were going on TV Land, which pulled them. The Bill Cosby Show ep I caught was running on Aspire (sort of a B-list BET)

probably thinking up cool stuff and wanted a companion.

chris rock's new york mag interview includes a line where he says it's been a bad year for comedy. "We lost Joan, we lost Robin and we sort of lost Cosby."

yeah i wish rock had expressed more support for his victims rather than repeating, "i hope it isn't true." because, yeah, i hope it isn't true too, unfortunately it's almost certainly true.

If he had said anything else, it would be the headline, and he has a movie out next week.

The thing I'm uncomfortable with is picturing Bill Cosby doing that. A selfish reason why I wish this would go away.

Bill Cosby has defenders, thanks them....Jill Scott and Whoopie Goldberg weigh in.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/03/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/bill-cosby-defenders/index.html

Beverly Johnson:

Now let me explain this: I was a top model during the 70s, a period when drugs flowed at parties and photo shoots like bottled water at a health spa. I’d had my fun and experimented with my fair share of mood enhancers. I knew by the second sip of the drink Cosby had given me that I’d been drugged — and drugged good.

I dialed the private number he’d given me expecting to hear his voice on the other end. But he didn’t answer. His wife did. A little shocked, I quickly identified myself to her in the most respectful way possible and then asked to speak to Bill. Camille politely informed me that it was very late, 11:00 P.M. and that they were both in bed together.

I apologized for the late call and explained that I was in Los Angeles and had forgotten about the three-hour time difference. I added that I would call back tomorrow.

I didn’t call back the next day or any other day after that. At a certain moment it became clear that I would be fighting a losing battle with a powerful man so callous he not only drugged me, but he also gave me the number to the bedroom he shared with his wife.

wow

he drugged her COFFEE?!
man
even after everything we know this still manages to be shocking to me.

The fact that she motherfucker-ed him to the point where his ego had to step in and go 'Ok we're done here.' Like, all of the stories have been super upsetting and horrible but this feels like one of the grossest details of all.

I SEE HOW YOU ARE

like how far down the levels of disgust do we get to go with this guy

Final South Park of the season has him trying to drug Taylor Swift with mulled wine for Christmas.

how far down the levels of disgust we get to go with that show

how far down the levels of disgust we get to go with that show

― jello my future biafriend (roxymuzak), Friday, December 12, 2014 12:57 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's a reason I haven't willingly watched it since the 1990s.

Yeah, in this story we should definitely be saving our disgust for South Park.

ime disgust is a renewal resource, there's plenty to go around

fair, I just find it surprising that anyone still has the energy to be "outraged" by that show any more

also I haven't really been talking about this because, as the allegations mount, I don't think there's all that much for me to say beyond "fuck Bill Cosby"

I haven't gone comments section exploring in a while now, but I can't imagine his support is hanging on to the numbers it had a month ago.

DJP otm

DJP otm

― example (crüt), Friday, December 12, 2014 3:01 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

DJP otmmmmm

Kinda hated him from the days of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids in the 70s and on reruns.

But I was too young for his stand up, and coming from a dysfunctional family I've never found any family sitcoms funny.

So I guess I feel vindicated for the wrong reasons.

I grew up listening to his comedy records, and then later, watching the Cosby show. My dad was from Philly, and always loved Cosby as one of his own. A few months before this deluge I thought, you know, Cosby Show is probably something good we could all watch as a family. But now the very idea makes me kind of sick to my stomach.

i think he was a great comedian, really great, and cosby show was one of the best sitcoms of all time. but yeah, i couldn't face watching any of his stuff now, not after this.

this whole Dexter villain in the flesh just makes you want to believe it's not real... but it is

Here in the Bay Area Willie Brown wrote a pretty lame defense of Cosby in his weekly column. It was the old 'judged in the court of public opinion without a means of defense' argument. But he's clearly had the best defense one could have for years and years- money, power, and generally being loved by the whole country. I grew up on his records, 'Himself', and of course the Cosby show. Now just the thought of this guy makes me ill.

#shutupwilliebrown

he's definitely one of the greatest stand-ups ever. and incredibly influential. so many people who came after him who memorized his routines and modern stand-up (for better and worse) owes a lot to him. i kinda don't remember a time in my life that i didn't know who he was. he was as much a part of my life as woody allen was growing up in the 70's! the fact that he might be one of the EVIL people alive is just...i don't know. kinda feel like i should take all his records out of my store. one of his daughters has been in here a couple of times. he lives right up the road. sorta. you know, not far. a couple of towns over. i never really liked the cosby show at all. i watched it, but it was definitely the beginning of his weird/mean/smug era and he bugged me by then. always making those kids feel like shit...

i watched this whole thing not long ago. so strange. and long! kinda like a drug dream.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6vMTZZZMqQ

howard stern found a clip from janice dickenson from an 06 appearance on his show, way before the allegations were public, basically saying that her book publisher made her pull cosby stuff from her book for legal reasons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BOkX4EmL98

and that he's not a nice guy who preys on women fresh out of rehab. damn.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/bill-cosby-accused-raping-ex-girlfriend-sammy-davis-jr-article-1.2052890

Man I had no idea Cosby dated Sammy Davis Jr.

I didnt wanna say.....

I make jokes because otherwise all I'd have to say is what DJP nicely summed up itt.

In the mid-90s I was an IT grunt for a talent agency who (at the time) had Bill Cosby as a client*. Inevitably over the course of fixing computers, running network cabling, changing backup tapes, etc. you're going to be around Famous People but because i was the IT guy - I was invisible to whatever daily behind the scenes madness was going on. One day I was updating OS/apps in the office of the agent who was handling Mr. Cosby's comedy engagements when Mr. Cosby's assistant called in to tell us that Mr. Cosby would be calling in five minutes. I wasn't a Cosby Show guy, but Wonderfulness was the first comedy album I bought with my own money and I loved I Spy reruns when I was a little kid and cool I'm gonna be a fly on the wall to Mr. Cosby (what's with the constant "Mister" anyway?)

...and aw man --- he was a colossal a-hole! Not in a traditional Hollywood dickishness/anger-as-a-tool way, but officious, aristocratic, and belittling. Repeatedly. On more than one phone call (he never came in). There was an unwritten but understood edict from Mr. Cosby that everyone was to address him as "Mister Cosby" at all times. I never witnessed anything legally actionable and maybe he was friendlier to his movie/TV agent, but ever since - even when his son was killed next to the 405 the following year - my first association with him is that he was a dick to the office help.

*I can bust entertainment biz omertà on this because Cosby left WME (where he had been for 48 years) for CAA two years ago.

https://twitter.com/simonsam/status/545383007767392257

"Are you lacking attention Mr. Simon? Why would you say something now? Have proof? What are you trying to gain? Sound familiar?"

dude is terminal and has been giving millions and millions away to animal welfare for years, don't think he's thinking in terms of gain

Yeah, I read that like, I'm dying and idgaf

I think it was a parallel made with the questions other ppl might be faced with after making claims against Cosby after so long?

Yeah, that girl's twitter account makes it really clear she's no fan of Cosby's. It was just half-baked sarcasm.

Sam Simon @simonsam · Dec 22
I'm not taking anything away from Roger Ebert, but, honestly, if he had my will to live, he'd still be alive.

^^ Glenn Frey's secret Twitter name

Camille Cosby profile:

While Camille Cosby was having babies, her husband was womanizing and becoming a regular at the Playboy Mansion, according to a recent biography by former Newsweek managing editor Mark Whitaker. (The couple’s five children — Erika, Erinn, Ennis, Evin and Ensa — all had names beginning with the letter “E”; Cosby has said it stands for “excellence.”) “Decades later, she would confess to the pain that her husband’s ‘selfish’ behavior caused her in their L.A. years, as he indulged his roving eye,” Whitaker wrote.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/camille-cosby-a-life-spent-juggling-her-role-as-public-figure-with-desire-to-be-private/2014/12/23/575ad31e-8528-11e4-9534-f79a23c40e6c_story.html?hpid=z1

long "hot mess" piece by a gay black male integrating his feelings about Cosby's career (and hatred of Dr Huxtable) with the revelations (via JBR):

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/24/bill_cosby_himself_narcissism_fame_and_sexual_violence

Meanwhile, Cosby’s masters and doctorate degrees were similarly granted thanks to a reportedly starstruck dean who lured him to UMass Amherst’s education program, where Cosby was allowed a very flexible attendance schedule—which, according to one member of his doctoral committee, Reginald Damerell, consisted of “at least one weekend seminar.” It also gave him course credit for appearing on TV shows like The Electric Company.

Ultimately, Damerell says Cosby’s doctorate was bestowed on him by a committee whose sole full-board “dissertation” meeting took place during a “sumptuous meal” for all the board members, hosted by Cosby at the sprawling, 16-room, restored farmhouse estate he’d purchased near campus. And of course, it was all based on a thesis that was, essentially, a report on how great Bill Cosby’s own television show was. And now, according to Simon, he didn’t even write that.

http://www.avclub.com/article/bill-cosby-never-asked-special-treatment-except-al-213246

I suspect Clair Huxtable would have smacked Phylicia Rashad:

"Forget these women," the Do No Harm actress said of the 20-plus women who have come forward with accusations of sexual assault. "What you’re seeing is the destruction of a legacy. I think it’s orchestrated. I don't know why or who's doing it, but it's the legacy. And it's a legacy that is so important to the culture."

"This show represented America to the outside world," she added of The Cosby Show. "This was the American family. And now you're seeing it being destroyed. Why?"

Ugh. I mean, I suppose she has a vested interest in not seeing future rerun residuals disappearing, but, c'mon.

So deeply disappointing from her.

gross

just as an aside, residuals used to only be paid for a fixed number of syndication cycles, not sure if that's still the case.

I think it’s orchestrated. I don't know why or who's doing it

it's the Black Crusaders

a couple of weeks ago, I overheard this between the young guy working at Petland and his female coworker:

"It started when he tried to buy Sony. Every time he tries to OWN something he shouldn't OWN, people start these ~allegations~"

unless any of these allegations go to court (which seems highly doubtful, if not impossible) then this is what's going to happen, there's going to be a long, grueling pushback campaign by the Coz and it's gonna be ugly

just as an aside, residuals used to only be paid for a fixed number of syndication cycles, not sure if that's still the case.

Ah, I wasn't sure how this worked or not.

http://www.backstage.com/news/calculating-sag-residuals/

For television shows, SAG residuals are calculated using a formula that utilizes the number of runs and percentage of minimum rate of compensation for the actor. For example, for reruns in syndication, the actor is paid 40 percent of the applicable minimum rate for the first rerun program, dropping to 30 percent for the second rerun, 25 percent for the third rerun, and so on until it reaches 5 percent for the 12th rerun and beyond. There are also residuals for foreign telecasts of the program; these are arrived at using an entirely different formula based upon the distributor's foreign gross.

While I am still on board with the "fuck Bill Cosby" sentiment, I think you all should really think a little harder about how devastating it could be to see one of the most successful, beloved and positive representations of an African-American family torn down in a maelstrom of horrifying behavior on the part of the man who created it, especially if you grew up in a family that was like the Huxtables (possibly not in earning power but in stability). Right now I'm getting a lot of "shame on you black people for not wanting to let go of one of the most visible positive representations of you in modern media" from a lot of you.

Thanks! I was looking up various SAG sites for information but, y'know, actual WORK was interfering.

xpost

read elsewhere that there was a limit, but it was lifted in the mid-70s, so rudy & claire should still be getting pennies

i can understand not wanting to let go of Bill Cosby as an icon and still be bummed out that Phylicia Rashad would straight-up say "Forget these women."

"forget these women" hits so hard

not surprised by Rashad's comment tbh

"shame on you black people for not wanting to let go of one of the most visible positive representations of you in modern media"

there's no need to let go, the show was a landmark for a reason and it holds up

as always, separate the art from the artist

it is a little unfortunate that it was called THE COSBY SHOW and not the Huxtables or something similar though

come on dude

She's as much a part of the Cosby Show cult vibe as any of the child actors. She doesn't call him Mister Cosby, but there's still some kind of blind allegiance.

I think that's why Lisa Bonet fell out of favor there, because she was like "fuck this!"

it's a bit glib to just say "separate the art from the artist" when bill cosby went to great lengths to blur that line

i can fathom enjoying aspects of the cosby show again, acknowledging the quality/cultural importance of his work, but the idea that we have some kind of responsibility to not let the private lives of celebrities influence our estimation of their creative efforts is a convenient ignoring of the cult of personality. it's not like anyone ever says "don't forget to separate the art from the artist" when people are PRAISING a celeb for seeming awesome.

She's as much a part of the Cosby Show cult vibe as any of the child actors. She doesn't call him Mister Cosby, but there's still some kind of blind allegiance.

Or... she's known him for years and during those years he used his power and influence to present a face to her that is so unlike the person described in these allegations that she can't see him in that light, particularly when weighed against the work they did together and the impact it had on a generation in representing an upper middle-class African-American family as a normal, loving, supportive unit.

You could call that "blind allegiance" but it seems more like "human nature" to me.

xpost i have no idea what timothy olyphant is like in real life, but no one's going to warn me about that if i start talking about what a chill bro he seems like based on his tv shows and conan o'brien interviews. it only comes up an escape hatch when we learn something awful about someone we previously thought the best of.

i sympathize with anyone who has a microphone shoved in their face and is asked to respond to allegations that a powerful, supportive figure in their life is a serial rapist. i can't even imagine what that's like, and pray i'm never put in that situation. but rashad goes past diplomatic evasiveness to full-on contempt for god knows how many women who've come forward and that's really, really sad to me.

puliam's evasiveness is far more understandable

even beverly johnson, iirc, states that she was loathe to bring her story about cosby to light because of the positive black icon he was. if even one of his victims has issues with letting that go...

Last week I had a FB debate with two other music crits about our discomfort with the tendency to use cute PR department names like QUEEN BEY or even to call actors and musicians by first name (the latter is less unavoidable than the latter), precisely to avoid any kind of identification. I admit this is easier said than done and much of the audience wants that "buy-in."

when people are PRAISING a celeb for seeming awesome

yeah well I don't really do this unless the celebs are doing something extra-curricular that is genuinely awesome which tbqh is not all that often

DJP I've not and don't plan in the future to sweep under the rug the impact The Cosby Show had on culture and the world's perception of upper middle class black families when those families had never been represented on tv before by anyone other than George Jefferson. It was a landmark by any measure.

However, I've always found the reverence/worship aspect of that cast for Cosby to be slightly weird, and it's far weirder to me now than it ever was in the past.

yeah well I don't really do this unless the celebs are doing something extra-curricular that is genuinely awesome which tbqh is not all that often

so it's different when you do it because it's genuinely awesome

bill cosby went to great lengths to blur that line

he did, which is kind of gross in and of itself and even as a kid I thought it was weird/off-putting that he insisted on that "DOCTOR Cosby" stuff

xp

so it's different when you do it because it's genuinely awesome

did people praise Cosby for his non-entertainment-related stuff? honest question, but I can't recall any off the top of my head.

I watched a 40-min interview with Rashad about five years ago and she def called him "Mr. Cosby."

did people praise Cosby for his non-entertainment-related stuff? honest question, but I can't recall any off the top of my head.

dude how can you be like "since the 80s i never liked his demand for extreme levels of respect" in one post and "people gave him extreme levels of respect i never noticed" in the next?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qij_4pytnD0

good interview btw

i think hes just asking about non-entertainment endeavors - which, yes ppl praised and praise him for a lot iirc! - not saying no respect was given

but yeah identifying with celebrities - thinking you know anything about them as people at all, really - is not advisable imo. it doesn't interest me. tons of artists I like are probably horrible people, some of them have definitely done horrible things in their personal lives, some of them are probably okay. beyond advocating for their equal treatment under the law, who cares? it's the work that matters.

dude how can you be like "since the 80s i never liked his demand for extreme levels of respect" in one post and "people gave him extreme levels of respect i never noticed" in the next?

I'm confused by your point here - people gave him extreme levels of respect because of his show, his position in the culture, his books, etc. I'm unaware of them giving him extreme levels of respect for ... well, anything unrelated to his work as an entertainer. Like, he wasn't showing up at protests or testifying before congress or advocating for social policies, at least not before he got on his "pull your pants up/rap music is terrible" high horse (which people seemed to be annoyed by more than impressed, and that was well past his heyday anyway)

xp

he had a rep for being very charitable if nothing else

I mean what does it say about our culture that "you are really funny" can get translated by the audience into "of course I will consider you a Doctor! sure!" That sort of adulation is pathological.

xp

his shows, position as one of the most visible black men on the planet, positions on education – all made years before "The Cosby Show" btw – ARE political positions.

My father has a PhD in chemistry and often asks, especially in professional contexts, that people refer to him as "Dr. Perry", largely because he was a lead scientist in a company full of white people who weren't often around minorities and would often undersell/discount his ability and work at a glance. He is about Bill Cosby's age. I have no problem believing Cosby faced similar issues.

What one generation sees as needless self-aggrandizement is actually part of another generation's baseline criteria for being taken seriously.

(ftr the allegations that Cosby faked his PhD really break my heart because of the reflection it casts on people like my father)

(don't give me "but your father is completely unrelated to Bill Cosby" bullshit and consider the US for what it really is)

DJP shuttin it down itt

My father has a PhD in chemistry and often asks, especially in professional contexts, that people refer to him as "Dr. Perry", largely because he was a lead scientist in a company full of white people who weren't often around minorities and would often undersell/discount his ability and work at a glance. He is about Bill Cosby's age. I have no problem believing Cosby faced similar issues.

didn't think about that – true

I admit I'm kinda surprised that arguing that his work is still good/enjoyable is such a contentious position

sorry but it's genuinely surprising to have someone express such a cynical stance about cosby's stature and then have them act like they've never heard about his philanthropic efforts - esp considering all the media about his relationship with temple university and other non-entertainment institutions recently

xpost (ftr the allegations that Cosby faked his PhD really break my heart because of the reflection it casts on people like my father)

while i'm glad people are coming forward about people who used power and cultural significance to cloak their crimes (cosby, sandusky, countless priests, etc), it is heartbreaking that now anyone that goes to great lengths to have a positive cultural influence seems suspect

I think you all should really think a little harder about how devastating it could be to see one of the most successful, beloved and positive representations of an African-American family torn down in a maelstrom of horrifying behavior on the part of the man who created it

I'm still experiencing a huge amount of cognitive dissonance from this whole thing just in terms of the impact The Cosby Show and Bill Cosby: Himself and his albums had on me (not to mention his general public persona) so, yeah, I can't even imagine how that extra layer of devastation feels. Beyond the egregiously evil shit he's done, the extent to which he's undermined the positive representations you mention (and the extent to which those representations were probably crafted as a smokescreen for the egregiously evil shit he was doing concurrently) makes me basically think
http://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/cuoyTcjoDUrmBciItcS2V7XsjMD.jpg

esp considering all the media about his relationship with temple university and other non-entertainment institutions recently

everything I know about Temple University I know from his old comedy records tbh

which - idk - rich guy gives a bunch of money to his alma mater, doesn't seem that unusual

are you being willfully obtuse here

probably

to take it back to his signature achievement, the Cosby Show, that is obviously a fiction, a very well realized fiction that had a huge impact and is compelling and funny and rich. I don't really have any problem watching it and not thinking about Bill Cosby, the Asshole.

i know it gets some people reallll defensive (crossing fingers nobody acts the fool and pretends i'm claiming what i'm talking about is evidence of guilt) but i truly think part of the value of acknowledging the "boys will be boys" shit in his work is getting past that "cognitive dissonance" and realizing that he didn't actually stand in strong opposition to the stuff he's accused of. that we acknowledge our blindness to rape culture's presence in what was seemingly the most benign comedy out there.

as always, separate the art from the artist

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 11:18 AM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is great in theory but practically speaking you probably won't see the cosby show on the air ever again and i bet the DVDs will go out of print, too.

but yeah to the extent that cosby exerted a powerful and positive force once upon a time, that had its effect and it can't really be undone entirely.

re. bill cosby having other folks write his PhD thesis -- i believe it, in large part because how the hell would Bill Cosby have time to research and write a dissertation?

If somebody doesn't find watching Bill Cosby - the rapist play an ob/gyn jarring, that person is deeply weird ime.

black cable networks (Aspire and Centric) are still running Cosby Show and Bill Cosby Show reruns fwiw

i sympathize with anyone who has a microphone shoved in their face and is asked to respond to allegations that a powerful, supportive figure in their life is a serial rapist.

Weirdly, I never grew up conscious of Cosby's blackness or whatever, largely because my dad was such a huge fan of his that I grew up listening to his records. So when the show hit - and I was peak audience - it was more a matter of, hey, it's my dad's favorite comedian, and someone he respects as a fellow Philadelphian and a stan for higher education. Admittedly, being that I was peak audience age, I probably wasn't aware of discussions re: race. But wasn't the show around the point where he started becoming a tad more reactionary? He was more overtly political in the '60s and '70s, wasn't he?

and the Bill Cosby Show rerun I saw where he had a female student crushing on him *was* really creepy. I think I mentioned that upthread.

there's not a lot of ob/gyn stuff in the Cosby Show beyond occasional references to babies being delivered which, idk, is not a very sexual thing imo

xp

black cable networks (Aspire and Centric) are still running Cosby Show and Bill Cosby Show reruns fwiw

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 12:06 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wow, that surprises me. i guess it seems kind of like a good thing? i dunno.

Is it really hard to believe that a lot of black people still don't think he's a rapist?

after OJ etc nah not really

That only works anecdotally as a juxtaposition.

the Cosby Show was such a huge cultural moment I can't really see it being excised entirely from histories. Plenty of things by execrable people are still (rightfully imo) noted for their cultural significance.

enty of things by execrable people are still (rightfully imo) noted for their cultural significance.

Most of the people I can think of that this is true for are white.

sure but are you adding it to your netflix queue in the next few weeks?

xpost

How many of those things were trying to be as warm and wholesome as The Cosby Show?

xp

there are enough people accused of sex crimes and domestic abuse whose creative works i could enjoy today that i can't throw stones at people who will laugh at Sleeper or a Cosby Show episode this evening, even if i'm so not in the mood myself. but i think the important part of "separate the art from the artist" isn't "don't judge the creative work by the personal life" so much as "don't assume a great personal life from their creative work." that praise of that work should be focused solely on the work. it's far more important to respect the potential victims of a criminal than to respect the creative work of a criminal. if you can not want to watch a tv show because of the actor's voice, surely it's fine to not watch it because of what they've done.

no one says "hey, separate the art from the artist" when someone says "i hate that movie because omgggg richard gere is such a choad"

I moved my Cosby Show DVDs out of sight. Seeing them just bummed me out.

Is it really hard to believe that a lot of black people still don't think he's a rapist?

― tsrobodo, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 10:09 AM (3 minutes ago)

I'm not at all surprised that people of whatever sort don't think he's a rapist. I hardly expect "all right-thinking people" to agree even when the evidence seems clear-cut to me. Personally, I'm agnostic about the whole thing.

Most of the people I can think of that this is true for are white.

this is inarguable. at the same time, something has monumental as Kind of Blue or the Cosby Show is not at risk of being written out of history, really.

but i think the important part of "separate the art from the artist" isn't "don't judge the creative work by the personal life" so much as "don't assume a great personal life from their creative work."

totally agree on this point

but i think the important part of "separate the art from the artist" isn't "don't judge the creative work by the personal life" so much as "don't assume a great personal life from their creative work."

Yeah, I've finally reached the point where I'll just assume that celebrities are garbage people and be surprised if it turns out I'm wrong.

Yeah, I've finally reached the point where I'll just assume that celebrities all people are garbage people and be surprised if it turns out I'm wrong.

fixed

also I reached this point when I was 13

I hope I never do

I think the fact that Cosby has been such a self-righteous scold has muddled things. It's almost as if he's daring you not to divest.

honestly that seems like a difficult heuristic to apply in practice (=assuming celebs are awful people) as much as it might inoculate you against disappointment

i don't think we (?) can help having some ego investment in the personalities of artist --musicians, filmmakers, whoever -- whose work we admire. it's possible to detach but that doesn't mean that the tendency to idealize and identify isn't very seductive and-- i would have thought -- inevitable.

xpost again!

basically my stance is that i will think warm thoughts of timothy olymphant and dream of him being a chill bro, but if someone came forward and said he wasn't a chill bro, i would not say "fuck that hater, he is a chill bro i saw him on conan and deadwood was the best"

i also try not to hand out Chill Bro Of The Year Awards and make statues of dudes for being chill bros

i would push back against people trying to take down that olyphant hardcore

http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/141/cache/670934_14181_600x450.jpg

you have to admit that timothy olyphant has gone a lot of good for the reputation of scottish-americans. that can't be undone.

a good example of this for me is marky mark. i have enjoyed him in countless roles where he played charming assholes and this year he reminded me that whether he was more violent in his drug-addled youth, he is clearly still a narcissistic if occasionally charming asshole irl. and if he turned out to still be violent, it wouldn't be out of character so while i still think Four Brothers is awesome i should avoid waxing rhapsodic about the man who played bobby mercer in four brothers just because he played bobby mercer.

mark wahlberg does indeed seem like a borderline sociopath and always has :(

Is it really hard to believe that a lot of black people still don't think he's a rapist?

― tsrobodo, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 10:09 AM (3 minutes ago)

I don't interpret pushback as "I don't think he's a rapist" even if that's what people literally are saying--I hear it as a ready-to-hand expression of what's in people's hearts, which is "You've always villainized our heroes and you criminalize us right up to and after our deaths, I'm not giving this one up to you."

I wouldn't argue with that. I think one antidote to it, though, is that if 20-something women, mostly white and with some resources, waited decades to go public, there must have been many, many times more victims over 30 years (or whatever) who we'll never hear from. And the ones we never hear from will be the least powerful (and the missing), and that means Black and brown women--poor, maybe very young, women of color who are just erased. He did that to them. ...I don't know how to finish. There's too much sadness today.

that's why "forget those women" is unforgivable no matter how much cog dissonance rashad is in rn.

I don't interpret pushback as "I don't think he's a rapist" even if that's what people literally are saying--I hear it as a ready-to-hand expression of what's in people's hearts, which is "You've always villainized our heroes and you criminalize us right up to and after our deaths, I'm not giving this one up to you."

OTM

I wouldn't argue with that. I think one antidote to it, though, is that if 20-something women, mostly white and with some resources, waited decades to go public, there must have been many, many times more victims over 30 years (or whatever) who we'll never hear from. And the ones we never hear from will be the least powerful (and the missing), and that means Black and brown women--poor, maybe very young, women of color who are just erased. He did that to them. ...I don't know how to finish. There's too much sadness today.

also OTM, although I would think of it as a response rather than an antidote.

"forget these women" /is/ a particularly grotesque phrase, which kind of obviates any desire to explain away her attitude.

xp Yes, good point--not that the first view is "poison," I was thinking of the response as a neutralizing agent, something to take the sting out...in any case, yes. (Also I'm reading a book about a poisoner rn incidentally.)

no one says "hey, separate the art from the artist" when someone says "i hate that movie because omgggg richard gere is such a choad"

― da croupier, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 6:18 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

chill bro, imo

i was watching new year's rockin' eve and i had no idea that donnie wahlberg was married to jenny mccarthy!!! there they were together on national t.v.! now i don't know if i can still keep watching blue bloods which i kinda love...

i can separate art/artist if the artist is just a jerk...don't know if i'll be watching old cosby stuff ever again. i finally found a nice copy of the 2nd badfoot brown album - i've wanted a nice copy for 20 years! - and i was so bummed out i sold it to a japanese dealer who came to the store. i figured japanese record dealers hadn't heard about all this yet. he was happy to get it. still debating getting rid of all the comedy records from the store. i have so many...

i mean it's one thing to say separate the art from the artist, which in theory i guess great....but it's also pretty obvious why there are big reasons in the art itself why it's much easier to separate "kind of blue" from miles davis and "rosemary's baby" from roman polanski the person than it is to separate "manhattan" from woody allen the person and "himself" from bill cosby the artist

eh I don't agree about that last part. Allen and Cosby's personas were performances.

artists have fun with blurring the lines but that's all just misdirection

no more woody for me either. yuck. did wanted to see the scojo ones cuzza boobage but i can live without. plus, they probably suck anyway.

nah the first one w her is really good

i honestly don't know enough about miles and women. i never read any books. i still listen to ike & tina records...i do kinda assume that most old time men were horrible to women. i think everyone was kinda horrible to women forever. i don't know the specifics, i should say. i hear stuff about jimi hendrix too. like, really horrible stuff. and poor beverly martyn. sheesh. read excerpts from her memoir and it kinda takes a lot of the ethereal beauty out of a john martyn record when you hear one. and yet john martyn was just a better THING when he was singing and playing. better than a human anyway. art is weird.

artists have fun with blurring the lines but that's all just misdirection

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 3:14 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so woody's sexual obsession with young women was just misdirection?

are you talking about his character in "Manhattan" (who I would say is not actually obsessed with young women but whatever)

in the film Isaac is obsessed with *a* younger woman, but this is depicted as an aberration, not a fetish, and his other relationships are with women his age.

don't want to derail this thread w Woody talk anyway, my opinions are all p clear on the Woody thread iirc

i love all the 'ehs' and 'nahs' you're putting in your posts, so casual

i think there is a big difference between hearing ike turner's guitar licks on a record and watching a 30-minute TV show where bill cosby himself is the visual and narrative focus.

what if Tina is singing about how much she idolizes Ike Turner

it doesn't seem like such a big difference to me, I guess

(threw that "I guess" in there just for you m@tt)

music conveys values, personalities, narratives just as much as any other medium imo

but it's easier to abstract the non-corporealized voices particularly when ike's literal "voice" is absent

this is reminding me of that article where Marcello equated the booming drums in "Be My Baby" to the sound of Phil Spector's fists hitting Ronnie

which on one level is ridiculous, but emblematic of how there are a lot of ways the audience/listener/viewer can read real-life narratives into works of art regardless of whether or not the performer is literally presenting themselves in the work, if they are so inclined.

i guess i'm just kinda boggling and you thinking that it's weird to see a connection between woody allen marrying his teenage step daughter and the literally pretty much every movie he made for decades involving him having sex w/super younger women

literally pretty much every movie he made for decades involving him having sex w/super younger women

this is not even remotely accurate

it's more like 5 out of 50

this is reminding me of that article where Marcello equated the booming drums in "Be My Baby" to the sound of Phil Spector's fists hitting Ronnie

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 10:20 PM (27 minutes ago)

lol, wish i could manage to forget that article

Manhattan
Mighty Aphrodite
Husbands and Wives
Curse of the Jade Scorpion (and the love interest here, while significantly younger, is still a middle aged woman)
maybe Deconstructing Harry, I can't remember

xp

for marcello every moment and gesture and detail is charged with urgent and typically melodramatic (as in: both florid and hackneyed) political significance. it'd read as parody if i didn't know better.

i feel bad for him, actually.

Marcello's often an inspired critic, and I anticipate his blog updates. I make allowances for his New Pop-as-summit thesis and other crochets.

i find it impossible to take him seriously, there's a pattern of conspiratorial thinking embedded in nearly all his work that seems both unhealthy and unhelpful.

he can be entertaining but agree it seems like a schtick, not to be taken seriously

Keep in mind: I'm defending him after he blocked me from Twitter last year for writing what he called a misogynist dismissal of Lily Allen's "Hard Out Here."