Posted on 12/06/2014 3:34:58 PM PST by Ken H
Los Angeles police opened an investigation into a woman's claims that Bill Cosby molested her when she was 15 years old at the Playboy mansion, a department spokeswoman said.
In response to the accusation, Hugh Hefner released the following statement about the comedian.
“Bill Cosby has been a good friend for many years and the mere thought of these allegations is truly saddening. I would never tolerate this kind of behavior, regardless of who was involved.”
The investigation was opened Friday after Judy Huth, who is suing Cosby for sexual battery, met with detectives for 90 minutes, Officer Jane Kim said.
Huth's civil suit claims Cosby forced her to perform a sex act on him in a bedroom of the Playboy Mansion around 1974 when she was underage.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
A rose is a rose, my FRiend.
There is mental, physical rape...when some powerful man says “honey, let me help you out in your career...just come on in and lay on this couch.” The same fear exists, that the woman might lose their job. That may/may not happen as much as it used to..I have no idea.
You are far more well read on this subject than I...I admit. But from what little I have read, I don’t know that he slipped them a mickey. One lady said he gave her a pill to help her with her cramps. Most of these ladies took the pills willingly. I’m not downing these ladies in any way. It had to do with the “times” and circumstances. And the desire to get ahead. They were all partying together. And, in most cases, furthering their careers didn’t happen. But a lot of them went back for repeat engagements. One of them had her college paid for.
Do I think Cosby is Cliff Huxtable? Nope. But I don’t think Charleston Heston is Ben Hur either.
I am not confusing rape with consensual sex.
No wonder you post as you do, you don’t differentiate between consensual sex and rape.
I thought that was the case, and so it is.
You have some strange views of sex, no wonder you think rape is the norm.
You seem to be in the Susan Brownmiller category.
Joan Tarshis screwed up by writing in her essay that no one started talking about drugging and raping until 2004.
tarsis essay
-—first, it was an email message from tarsis, not an essay, if I read your source correctly. the essay not authored by tarsis quotes liberally from the email message. so the email message was sent without the expectation that it would be scrutinized from the standpoint of publication.
as to reporting, i think drug style date rape is nothing terribly new. have we not been reading about the use of roofies for this purpose since at least the 1980s if not before? I am just blasting this out from unchecked personal recollection. In any case, just because it went unreported for some time does not imply to me that it did not happen. please recall my admonishment as to the dangers of presentism. Keep in mind that it takes the law some lag time to catch up to the clever methods of criminals using new technology.
2004 cosby speech
— actually constand reported something to canadian police in january 2004, not 2005 (which date is correct?). (ok i see january 2005 being reported now. not sure if this is accurate but i am not sure it is that critical either...) cosby’s speech was in may 2004. to be fair, i have heard anecdotally that cosby was saying similar stuff in tahoe casino monologues for a decade before then. however he had not gotten much media publicity for it before then either. so the entire argument reduces to media spawned kabuki theater IMHO. IOW it seems possible that Cosby’s legal/PR machine planted the speech in the media as an attempt to deflect criticism away from him in the eyes of his (aging, conservative) primary national audience.
predicting outcome of a civil lawsuit in advance
— this seems problematic, especially for third party witnesses. potential witnesses are always told the case will go well if they testify. this just seems overly rosy and everyone probably is aware it is overly rosy. either the women from all these different areas and careers had an agenda or they did not. you seem to claim that they did. really? from 2005? how likely is that?
there does not seem to be any monetary gain since most of the witnesses are not suing for damages themselves nor do some of them seem to be asking for damages. that leaves political damages. someone has to be financing that. cosby is reported to be a lifetime liberal, democrat, republican hating obama supporter. what value is it to democrats or obama that cosby is taken down, given that he is a lifetime liberal, democrat, republican hating obama supporter? why would these women risk alienating their obama supporting white women friends by attacking such a prominent lifetime liberal, democrat, republican hating obama supporter? imho you have to posit the existence of a large conspiracy complete with very expensive liifetime payoffs of at least 12 witnesses willing to risk criminal prosecution and fines, incarceration, and lifetime embarrassment for themselves and their families for perjury. Who benefits?
IMO I think it is more sane to accept the more simple Ockham’s Razor argument that the witnesses are who they seem to be— ordinary women who happen to have known Cosby and are personally familiar with his MO and penchant for sexual abuse. Rather than confront these 12 witnesses in a court of law, Cosby settled out of court. If it were a conspiracy, I would imagine that the chances of more than one slipping up during cross would be astronomically high. Yes, anything is possible. Aliens could have helped populate the continents and build the pyramids. The moon landing could have been faked. Most of us were not firsthand witnesses to any of that. But is it likely given the totality of the evidence available to us? I say not and I also say everyday we are called upon to make decisions based upon imperfect knowledge of our environment. Should we cross the street, given the possibility that we might be run over by a passing trolley car? or not? What do we do in all these cases? Answer: we muddle through. We make the best decisions that we can based on admittedly imperfect information. In practice, we cannot avoid this and continue to exist, because we make dozens or hundreds of such decisions every day. The fact that most of us survive crossing the street every day is a testament to our innate collective ability to heed our commonsense, our gut feelings. I’m not saying Cosby is guilty of anything at this point. Why? I don’t have to, I’m not on the jury. But it’s an academic exercise with potential for practical use. Let’s say you have a daughter. Let’s say it is your only daughter, she is 18, and she is a virgin (i’m trying to make a point here, so indulge me, lol). She is driving somewhere in So Cal, gets stranded on the road late at night. Suddenly a car drives up. Lo and behold, it is Bill Cosby, offering a ride. He even has fixed a drink for your daughter to refresh her after waiting so long in the dark and trying to repair that flat. She calls you. Should I take the ride from Bill Cosby? He says he can help by giving me some advice on my career. What would you say? And by the way the battery on her cell phone is dying. You might want to give her a quick answer. Say in 10 seconds. What would you say?
Do you say yeah, Bill Cosby is the victim of a vast left wing conspiracy, so go ahead and trust him, get in his car? Or wait for the police?
Yeah— Really?? To a guy who has 20 and counting published reports of molestation from women who were young and vulnerable at the times of the alleged incidents??
I answered your hypothetical scenario, so please return the courtesy and answer mine. Let the world hear that you would trust Bill Cosby with your young naiive daughter, alone and vulnerable, refreshment in hand, and no one else to witness anything that takes place between them.
BTW I consider myself the first guy to stand up for men’s rights. 3 or 4 days ago, BC alleged rape was not even on my radar. I’m just trying to educate myself and I am using the dialogue method. Hope you realize. Nothing personal.
PS, please get a new keyboard and/or computer. the q’s for g’s and the garbage are cute, but only up to a point. and refrain from excess capitalization, it is unbecoming.
dna evidence
— recall my admonition about the dangers of presentism. DNA testing did not become available until 1985. Allegations of times of involuntary and/or underage administration of controlled / illegal substance or offering of alcoholic beverages by BC range from 1965 to 2004. Even when DNA testing became available it does not imply that every victim was aware of the importance of using rape kits immediately, or if there were extenuating circumstances that prevented the women from coming forward at that time.
You seem like a nice person, yet you also seem more than ready to blame the alleged victim, each and every time, on BC’s behalf. Perhaps you can take what you consider to be the most potentially damaging victim, indicate why you think that she is the most potentially damaging victim, and show how to demolish her allegations, rather than bash the alleged victims at random. It might be a more effective way to make your point in an efficient manner. Just a suggestion. :-)
You are an interesting poster in your style of debate.
I had to look up Brownmiller, since I had no idea who she is. I find it interesting that you do. But in answer to your accusation...I have no similarities to the lady in my thoughts.
I think you are an intelligent person but your reading comprehension is somewhat lacking. Or perhaps you are just so intent on being right, you refuse to look at another point of view. Or perhaps you didn’t read my posts in their entirety.
FRiend, it isn’t necessary that we agree. I have looked at your point of view...I just don’t agree. I don’t trust the media. You evidently do.
As I said earlier...have to work tomorrow.
Good evening.
To answer my own hypothetical question:
I would say no, hell no, don’t get in BC’s car and never take any drink from him. Wait for the police, lock the doors and roll up the windows, and defend yourself with any appropriate physical measures if he still manages to get physically close and tries anything with you.
I have an extensive feminist library, including her book “Against Our Will”, it is how I could recognize your thinking on rape and your confusing it with sex for favors and sex in general, and consider it “the norm”.
I also own and have read Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin.
It is all part of a widely ranging life and search for knowledge, that has made me so “naive”.
for every brownmiller, there is a crichton
lol
I’d tell her not to accept drinks from stranqers. She’s known that since she was a very little qirl.
You don’t seem to be processinq what I’m sayinq about Tarshis’ timeline boo-boo. These women didn’t flock to Constand after she filed a police report. They plotted toqether with her BEFORE she stuck her neck out on a police report for a year-old alleqation (even thouqh it was never made to US police and so could not be prosecutable as a false report anyway). And that planninq for Constand’s criminal complaint was the first point that the stories of druqqinq and rape had come up - accordinq to one of the involved women.
These women are NOT unrelated. They are intimately connected. None of them would step forward - even to their spouses and close friends over decades - until it was a qroup effort, first discussed in 2004 and then carried out in 2005. Not one of these ladies was willinq to step out until the sheer number of people claiminq the same thinqs would BE the story - not the actual evidence for any one of the claims, because there was no evidence.
And that’s where we’re at. The story is the number of women, not the particular credibility of any of the individual claims, because none of them have any stronq evidence.
It’s too bad that none of them did anythinq to create a contemporaneous record of what had happened. If they had, there wouldn’t be this qanqinq-up, he-said-she-said “court of public opinion” mess.
But that’s a biq part of why their stories seem unbelievable now. Why did none of them do anythinq in immediate response to these alleqed attacks? Why did it take them 2 or 3 decades - until this plan for Constand to file the police report about druqqinq and rapinq - for these women to realize they could qet money out of their stories? What woman doesn’t know that the semen of a powerful man is a qolden ticket if he’s stupid enouqh to share it - because it’s proof of somethinq he probably doesn’t want publicly known. And ESPECIALLY if it’s evidence of rape, statutory or otherwise.
To be truthful I’m qettinq bored of this subject. We don’t know what happened and never will. Some will believe the women and some will believe Cosby. I don’t believe any of them. What I believe is evidence and none of them have any. It’s a crapshoot at best and I’ve already wasted too much time on it.
yeah, i guess i only have so much suspension of disbelief myself from all the conspiracy theories flying about.
now i think you are of course welcome think what you want about the conveeenient, 10 year in the making, 20+ person conspiracy to frame the well known liberal, democrat, obama supporting, republican hating bill cosby. l-o-l, almost all of whom are by your admission probably liberal white women, who constitute obama’s largest voting block.
you seem to be willing to overlook the larger pattern involving a number of showbiz bigshots over decades willing to use drugs to rape young naiive women. bc’s MO fits this larger pattern. IOW it’s not a specifically political issue. It’s a psychological and cultural issue.
from another post, here is the trailer for the Brave Miss World documentary on the general topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4l2D91KrdQ
to be entirely consistent, you’d have to blame a lot of the other women who have come out against other showbiz bigshots. how about it?
anyone is potentially vulnerable to such creeps, even your daughter. all it takes is one moment when one’s back is turned. if it happens to her, and she is too ashamed to report it immediately (what will mom think), will you then blame her?
maybe the reason BC is catching so much flak is not so much because of a 10 year old conspiracy against him, but increased social awareness of rape and an increased willingness to speak out. Including documentaries such as the above.
(But naw, that would be too straightforward... we should rather look through everything through the prism of potential liberal political conspiracies...)
:-)
Duke lacrosse, Tawana Brawley, UVA, Lena Dunham...
Nah, it could never happen, and only women-haters would ever doubt.
And the Lord knows that the media has never had an aqenda to spin Black culture by lyinq about evidence. Trayvon, Mike Brown...
Nah, the media and Hollywood can be absolutely trusted. Only the crazies would ever suspect media manipulation.
Do I need to put the /s?
None of those had anything close to approaching 20 witnesses and growing. And none of those had a lawsuit dismissed with prejudice.
You did not answer what you would do to your daughter if she called you one day and told you she had been drugged without her knowledge and then molested. would you believe her? or blame her?
I would hear her story and ask questions. One of the first ones would be, “What did the doctor and police say when you reported it?”
I’ll add one more thinq and be done with this, Lord willinq.
My qirls have been tauqht that they have a responsibility to help keep rapists off the streets where they can rape more victims. They would do the riqht thinq and would have a law enforcement rape kit done. Somebody here mentioned the tens of thousands of rape kits that have not yet been processed because there aren’t the funds for it.
And yet the LAPD is spendinq law enforcement resources on unprovable claims that are non-prosecutable?
Those thousands of women did the riqht thinq. They have prosecutable cases. And they are beinq shafted because the resources are instead beinq spent on an unprovable witch-hunt. And we’re all supposed to be on board with Huth, who committed perjury in the very act of filinq her civil lawsuit - because if we don’t we’re somehow not carinq about rape victims? If Huth cared at all about rape victims she’d say she’ll foreqo the LAPD’s invitation to waste time and money on her, because the women who had the couraqe to provide evidence deserve to see their rapists do jail time.
I asked people in some thread or other, as to how often police departments prioritize their money to be spent on crimes they can never prosecute. Nobody responded. It had darn well better be NEVER, or it’s a biq bloody middle finqer salute to all the women who did the riqht thinq to take rapists off the streets.
Just once I’d like law enforcement to say that false or non-prosecutable reports HURT WOMEN because they funnel resources away from the law enforcement activities that actually could help prevent more rapes. And I would like to have them say that if you want law enforcement to be able to help you, you need to REPORT the rape WHILE THE EVIDENCE STILL EXISTS. When there is EVIDENCE to refute the claims that it was consentual, that makes a woman’s sexual history moot. So the best way to keep it from beinq a witch-hunt in the courtroom is by documentinq everythinq immediately. If you won’t do that, then it will ALWAYS end up beinq he-said-she-said and any info that reveals credibility will be the ony focus possible in the courtroom. Medically documentinq the presence of a date-rape druq would make all that unnecessary.
These women from Cosby’s past provide an in-your-face teachable moment, and we would be IDIOTS to teach women, instead, that they are better off waitinq a couple decades until the evidence is all qone because then they can say whatever they want and everybody will believe them anyway.
What we need to be sayinq to these women is, “If you had reported this and had the police and doctors collect evidence while it was there to be had, we could believe you. As it is, we have no way of knowinq who is tellinq the truth. The best way you can put rapists off the streets riqht now is to tell women not to make the same mistake that you made.”
To add to my last post.
Presuminq that these women’s claims are correct - If Huth had reported Cosby attemptinq to rape a minor back in the 1960’s, how many women would have been spared these rapes over 3 more decades?
That career that Huth wanted to preserve was VERY EXPENSIVE for a lot of people other than herself. For the sake of her own career, she sold a lot of women down the river, just as she is doinq so now by divertinq LE resources away from processinq rape kits for prosecutable crimes which would result in rapists beinq jailed and kept from rapinq more women.
The decision to not report rape is emotionally understandable - UNTIL you look at all the people hurt by it. It is selfish to wallow in self-blame if that means that other women will be put at risk.
And that is somethinq that we need to be sayinq to women also - so that they have thouqht it throuqh and resolved in their minds what to do BEFORE they are in the emotionally-traumatized state and needinq to make urqent, painful choices.
It’s too late to prepare the women who have come forward now, but we can prepare the next qenerations of women so that they don’t make the same mistakes, because they will realize how many people they may end up hurtinq by their own failure to report a rapist.
A recurring problem with the Cosby versus witness allegations issue is presentism, making the mistake of judging people’s distant past actions by current day social standards. None of us would ever own slaves, and yet, almost all early Presidents and other prominent Americans were slaveowners. We now realize that they were wrong yet they were entirely within their legal rights to own slaves AT THE TIME.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/presentism
presentism
an attitude toward the past dominated by present-day attitudes and experiences
We cannot judge people’s actions in the past morally as if people existed in a society which has the standards of the present.
For the abused women, most rapes have historically not been reported. For reasons which should be obvious, the proportion of unreported rapes jumps higher for rapes in which roofie-style drugs are involved.
When one implies that one would judge one’s daughter by whether she immediately brought the problem to the attention of the police, one seems to be implying that all the women should have done so in the past. However the unfortunate historical fact is that more often than not abused women were not in a situation in which bringing the problem to the police would have helped.
As to the statute of limitations, first, this is a legal consideration and the answer to the concern will vary for each alleged victim. It is therefore much better for each alleged victim to come forward, at least to the police, rather than to remain silent. Second, remaining silent carries forward that the silence collectively enables the rapists and abusers to continue. Law is (usually) not changed without publicity within the community at large as a precursor. Individuals’ behavior and attitude (outside of the law, such as in cases in which the statute of limitations for whatever reason expires) will not change without publicity. This is implicitly the situation that we as a society have reached and it is the reason why I sense some of these alleged victims might be coming forward.
There is another mathematical reason that is postulated that these women should come forward, which has to do with a math theorem called Bayes’ Formula. I refer to a criminology professor who explains it in the context of Cosby in this article:
basically he suggests that the larger the number of witnesses who come forward and accuse a defendant of certain criminal or injurious behavior, presuming some independence between the witnesses, the more likely that it becomes that those witnesses are telling the truth about the defendant’s behavior. Now it seems true that in theory a conspiracy could exist between the witnesses or there could be some collective deniable or semi-deniable motivation why so many witnesses might be motivated to tell similar stories, as has been suggested. However, according to the criminology professor, this chance generally becomes smaller with each new witness. This does not totally rule out a hidden agenda or conspiracy, but there must be some number of witnesses becomes so large that a hidden agenda / conspiracy can be ruled out. What is that number? 25? 30? 50? 100? 10000? We might want to be upfront about that if we are postulating a conspiracy, to give each other a measurable gauge of our individual reasoning regarding alleged conspiracies and/or hidden agendas. Perhaps there is a distribution such that beyond a certain number of witnesses with a certain degree of probability, such a conspiracy or hidden agenda becomes improbable to that degree (eg gaussian distribution, etc.).
The purpose of law enforcement is at least threefold: one, to act as deterrent to harmful behavior. Two, to prevent individuals from hurting society in the future. Three, to do tasks one and two in a manner that is viewed as fair to the population at large. A potential problem with leaving earlier statute of limitations violations alone is that it tends not to deter behavior. It also does not address the issue of behavior that is harmful, but not (yet) criminal. Law is not a static part of society. Laws are continuously made, re-written, and in some cases even repealed. Society has the benefit of freedom of speech to help this process. In this way, situations in which abusers somehow escaped the statute of limitations may in fact not be criminally or civilly within the reach of the law, but might still be punishable in the court of public opinion (reason number one for law enforcement as described previously) and might also serve as a catalyst for changes to the law itself such as to propose, debate, and pass extending the statute of limitations to cover egregious cases of similar abuses in the future. This, too, i would imagine is a valid purpose of law enforcement, viewed as a facilitator of helping the community at large deal with abusers in general, so that the safety and well being of society in general, and the safety and well being of individuals in particular advances, rather than remains static, or regresses. We should not overlook our collective ability to change law by representative processes and to do that we need information, analysis, and discussion. One might even consider that in a free society it is our privilege and duty as citizens to do so.
butterdezillion: i hope i have adequately addressed the concerns you expressed.
Janice Dickinson’s story is fallinq apart. Start at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3234986/posts?page=67#67 and follow my posts.
Basically the photos she claims she took riqht before the rape are of a younqer Cosby wearinq different qlasses than Cosby wore in 1982. The bottle of booze showinq in one of those 2 photos is not red wine, which she said he qave her the pill with. And Cosby had no show runninq in 1982, to try to “qet her to come on” as she claimed was the reason for him to fly her to Lake Tahoe.
The photo must have been qiven to her by somebody else - somebody who was with him when he was in a robe some years before 1982.
IOW, it IS a conspiracy. She first qot these photos from somebody else and then framed her story around that robe he was wearinq.
Do ya think CNN or any of the others will report that?
I would also love to hear Dickinson explain why she took her pajamas with her on her dinner date with Cosby, or where she hid that biq Polaroid camera while they were at dinner.
I am not very concerned about Janice Dickinson’s story. She has been in the showbiz industry and she does have motivation to promote her books on dating advice. This motivation does not disprove the allegations she makes— I just do not know.
I watched the entire CNN show. Dickenson came on at the last 5 minutes or so. I got the sense that CNN put Dickenson at the end because she is in a separate category from the other 5 women, being a published author, model and public figure.
I felt that the 55 minutes that the other women were on in the CNN hour show were more compelling.
In debate, you want to pick your opponent’s best points to argue against, not their weakest. This is because refuting the weakest point still leaves the strongest points unrefuted, so the net effect on the debate is weak instead of strong.
One thing that is strong IMHO with the other 5 women’s statements is that they claim never to have met until yesterday during the taping of the show. Apparently they have never collaborated on their individual stories. Of course they could all be lying but they appeared credible on the show when they claimed that and the danger if it is found out that they did collaborate would severely damage their credibility in a seemingly counterproductive way. It does seem possible that it could never be proven that there is no conspiracy, but I think everyone intuitively understands that, and that is why it might be a good idea to watch the entire program, not just the last 5 minutes which is separate from the first 55 minutes.
At some point, in general, there is some number of witnesses that comes forward beyond which a conspiracy seems less than likely to one’s satisfaction. I suppose this is in the category of some type of supporting collaborative circumstantial evidence, but I would not go so far as to say this does not constitute evidence at all. It does not constitute direct evidence. Yet circumstantial evidence is allowed in trials, and can be used intelligently by juries. Refusing to consider the program in its entirety is like a juror who decides to miss a day of court in which witnesses are scheduled to testify. If a schedule were to be posted in advance, such a juror may have already made up his or her mind depending on the type of evidence scheduled to be introduced that day. In turn, that seems less than scientific of that juror, and more like like prejudice of some kind.
Joan Tarshis said there was no talk about druqqinq and rapes until 2004. If they were talkinq about druqqinq and rapes in 2004 that was BEFORE Constand reported anythinq - which was supposedly the reason that all these stranqers who had never met were all drawn toqether.
IOW, Tarshis appears to be sayinq that they were all drawn toqether talkinq about druqqinqs and rapes BEFORE the Constand police report. They WERE conferrinq/collaboratinq before anythinq was made public reqardinq Constand’s claims.
And the photos that were apparently taken before 1982, showinq booze that ISN’T red wine stronqly suqqests that somebody who was close to Cosby fed Dickinson the photos so that she could make a false claim now in 2014. That would explain why her story doesn’t make sense - includinq her havinq pajamas on and Cosby havinq a robe on when presumably neither of them went out to dinner that way. And her intricate claims about it beinq in 1982 - and how he had sent flowers to her in rehab shortly before this and how he flew her to Lake Tahoe so he could talk to her about beinq on his show..... all falls apart because Cosby had no TV show between 1973 and 1984. 1982 doesn’t work for the stated reason for the rendezvous and 1982 doesn’t work with that photo.
So the claims of the accusers themselves point to 2 different points of collaboration:
1. The first was in 2004 when the accusers discussed druqqinq and rape claims with each other underqround before anybody went public with anythinq. Note that they did not have to meet each other in order to collaborate, so their claims on CNN don’t have to technically be a lie. Most likely somebody qot these women toqether, and my qut-level suspicion is it was Mr. Scotti, who had parted with Cosby on less-than-friendly terms. His story about beinq the “front man” for Cosby but not fiqurinq it out while it was happeninq sounded fishy to me from the very beqinninq.
2. The second (and it may have been related to the first also, if Mr. Scotti was involved in both points of collaboration) was in 2014 when Dickinson was qiven the pre-1982 photos of Cosby in a robe so she could make up a story to qive the rape alleqations a well-known face (which is what made the story be taken seriously, accordinq to Nancy Qrace, so this was a critical part. A hoax was a critical part of this unfoldinq lynchinq. And the collaboratinq and makinq false claims DOES show that it is a lynchinq.)
CNN is propaqanda. I don’t have cable, mostly because I can’t stomach the propaqanda. These people at CNN committed treason with Saddam Hussein and learned NOTHINQ from the experience of beinq cauqht red-handed in that. I have no use for CNN, whatsoever.
tarshis and 2004
—ok, that seems to be a possible discrepancy. I wonder if Tarshis’ original essay was properly vetted for typos and minor errors. if not, this could have been a typo or minor error. it does seem to be a valid catch. however, why would tarshis make such an obvious mistake if this is all a big controversy? One might alternatively expect a small number of typos and minor errors to creep in. most if not all of the other involved parties seem to point to the 2005 constand lawsuit timeframe— they are not all saying that behind-the-scenes discussion began in 2004. all of them have gone on record. ockham’s razor suggests that tarshis simply made a minor “off by one” error in her email essay to her publicist friend and her publicist friend did not catch it before having it published. but i think it would be to the benefit of all the women if tarshis early (and to date, apparently uncorroborated, for whatever reason) claim of 2004 discussion is either confirmed or corrected.
photos
— see my previous response on not relying (exclusively) on dickinson and not considering her as important as the other alleged witnesses.
cnn
—
finally, there are now 27 alleged witnesses. that certainly sounds like a lot of alleged witnesses. do you wonder why someone would manufacture stories for so many witnesses if this is a conspiracy? the reason is that blowing large holes in the stories of just a few of the witnesses could serve to help discredit them all. that in turn would seem counterproductive to the conspiracy itself. so if there is a conspiracy, it seems as if it is so big that it is taking almost incredible risks. again, applying ockham’s razor, the simplest answer seems to be that it is not a conspiracy and that these alleged witnesses are actually independent.
—
these witnesses seem to be “real” people. i have even actually contacted one of them (note: I was not in investigation mode when i did so). that also seems unusual, since if they were manufactured, why does it seem so easy that even a person off the street (such as myself) are able to contact some of these people? If it is a conspiracy, then it would make more sense that they would be kept strictly away from the public because it only takes one slip up to help an investigator unravel a purposeful deception. however, many of them have families and they do not seem to be particularly shy about letting the public know about them. This again is not the MO of a conspirator, who imho tends to be shy if not secretive about his or her personal life.
maybe you can contact tarshis or someone close to her and ask about the 2004 apparent discrepancy. if she is the only person to use that year, it still leaves the other four if they are using 2005. i wonder if news agencies are updating their timelines to reflect tarshis’ 2004 reference (have not seen any but then have not looked exhaustively)
cheers
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