Posted on 12/09/2014 6:58:50 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Things continue to look grim for Bill Cosby still more women have emerged to accuse him of sexual assault; his Hollywood-and-Highland star on the Walk of Fame has been repeatedly defaced; and even the U.S. Navy has stripped him of an honorary C.P.O. rating but there are signs that the veteran entertainers luck may be turning around.
For starters, the attorney repping the new accusers is Gloria Allred, the most shameless slip-and-fall lawyer in Los Angeles and a litigator whose presence in any case is a virtual guarantee that it is meritless. (Allred in this case has taken even less care than usual to disguise the dollar signs in her irises.)
Cosby himself has also started to fire back at his accusers, filing court papers against his alleged Playboy Mansion victim Judy Huth, whom Cosby accuses of having tried to blackmail him for years. Among other things, the filing declares that the expert word-slurrer is in fact a lifelong teetotaler, which if true is interesting given how many of the accusations (that Cosby drugged and raped numerous women in incidents dating from 1966 through 2004) center around alcoholic beverages. The filing also gives a fuller response from the shrinking Cosby camp than has been heard so far.
But its also notable that plenty of people have not stopped believing in Cos. Although most of his public appearances have been canceled, the cancelations have come from above, not below. The Tarrytown Music Hall last week announced that the decision to postpone two scheduled Saturday performances had been made by Bill Cosby, in consultation with the promoter. A representative of the Music Hall tells National Review Online that both shows were sold out.
One recent show that did go on suggests Cosby still enjoys a substantial reservoir of public goodwill. The longtime television and standup fixture got a standing ovation and had the audience roaring during a late-November routine in Melbourne, Fla.
Nor is it only self-selecting audiences who still hold a torch for the 77-year-old entertainer. BETs Centric channel will be showing two episodes of The Cosby Show Tuesday night, including Wheres Rudy (Theo and Vanessa are charged with watching Rudy, while Clair enters her squash in a contest at the mall). Magic Johnsons ASPiRE network is giving heavy rotation to Cosbys first two scripted television series: I Spy, a secret-agent buddy dramedy pairing him with the late Robert Culp, and The Bill Cosby Show, in which he plays high-school teacher Chet Kinkaid. ASPiRE even runs interstitials touting the comedians scrupulously non-blue material. They say comedy is hard, and clean comedy is nearly impossible, the house ad declares. Not if youre Bill Cosby.
ASPiRE is available in 20.6 million households, and Centric, according to Entertainment Weekly, is available in 51 million. Centric did not respond to queries about the series ratings and the decision to keep running Cosby programming. An ASPiRE spokeswoman tells National Review Online and other media only that the series are currently running on the network. We are closely monitoring the situation.
While many experts have declared Cosbys career over, a precedent from less than ten years ago suggests otherwise. In 2005, many years of official and unofficial allegations of child sexual molestation against Michael Jackson during which the king of pop reportedly spent more than $35 million on settlements with at least 24 accusers culminated in a criminal trial in which he was charged with 14 counts related to child molestation and intoxicating a minor. Although Jackson was acquitted on all charges, several witnesses for the defense subsequently said the singer had sexually abused them and coached them to conceal incriminating stories. Unlike courts of criminal law, courts of public opinion are not bound to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and yet the public remained committed to Michael Jackson until the end. Though he probably did not suspect it at the time, Jackson (presumably like Cosby, who is quite old and has health problems) did not have long to live at the time of his trial. Yet when he died in 2009 it was in the midst of a popular and high-profile comeback. Rather than hailing quack doctor Conrad Murray as a hero who inadvertently protected the children of California when the courts couldnt, the public cried out for Murray to be punished for having administered a lethal drug cocktail to a beloved national treasure, friend of popes and presidents. (Murray was convicted in 2011 of involuntary manslaughter.)
Though none of the entertainment-industry sources contacted for this article would comment on the potential upside of continuing to serve the market for Cosby fans, its hard to escape the feeling that theres a major business opportunity being left on the table. Simon & Schuster has declined to respond to queries by phone, e-mail, and fax, but Mark Whitakers biography Cosby: His Life and Times has reportedly been a sales disappointment, selling about 6,000 copies since its September publication, according to Neilsen Soundscan, and currently showing up at number 24,853 at Amazon. But what if the widely decried failing of Whitakers book that it lacks any mention at all of the multiple rape accusations against its hero were actually a selling point? The publishing industry is not brimming with innovative thinkers, but it doesnt take the business vision of Jeff Bezos to see the potential in a marketing campaign emphasizing the books family-friendliness, with bookstore displays along these lines: Say No to the Haters: If you still love Cos, buy this book.
Hollywood, along with the history of the Democratic partycontrolled South, has etched in the American memory an image of the torch-wielding mob demanding summary punishment of suspects. But often it is the masses who are determined not to believe the frenzies whipped up for them by the coastal media. As the apparent collapse of Rolling Stones University of Virginia rape story suggests, that skepticism is often well founded. But sometimes it comes from the less rational regions of the heart where love and fandom reside. The American people have been willing to forget credible rape charges against other notable men, including one rape accusation against a president of the United States.
In the few venues where it is still on display, Cosbys charisma which was always rooted as much in his amiability as in the actual funniness of his comedy is not to be underestimated. This reporter is pretty well convinced that there is at least something to at least some of the charges against Cosby. But watching a few of ASPiREs Bill Cosby Show reruns (including one in which the great Don Knotts plays a repo man trying to get Chets TV, and another in which Chet and his buddies argue over whether Josh Gibson could have caught a baseball thrown from the top of the Washington Monument) was like a presentation of forensic evidence leading to an inescapable conclusion: Theres no way somebody as likeable as Cos could have done all those terrible things. Its a stupid reaction, but then gut feelings dont come from the brain.
One common element linking the Rolling Stone debacle, the Cosby allegations, and Lena Dunhams apparent libel of a campus Republican she describes in specifically Ron Burgundy terms has been an assumption that civilization and civilized behavior began just a few years ago, that all these sexcapades took place in a benighted era among people who lacked our fine powers of discernment. (Not for nothing has Mad Men become the go-to pop reference for no-talent hacks from the White House to the Washington Post.) This is clearly false. The Cosby allegations, and the horror of them, were discussed widely nearly ten years ago. (As is often the case, it was Tina Fey who pointed the way for America in an eerily perceptive Saturday Night Live sketch.) That the charges fell out of popular discussion was not a sign that the nations consciousness hadnt been sufficiently raised. It was a sign that people really love Bill Cosby, to the point of not wanting to believe, or at least not wanting to recall, bad things about him. Some of that trust has slipped recently, but surprisingly little, given the extensive coverage of the accusations. According to a company that purports to measure celebrities perceived trustworthiness, Cosbys trust rating fell from 76.3 in March of last year to 57.1 last month. Thats a steep slide, but it also means that as of March 2013, nine years after the first charges against him were made, Cosby was still the third most trusted celebrity in America.
Its more than possible he could get back up there again. Celebrities and politicians fall on the basis of public frenzies, but they also rise on them.
Tim Cavanaugh is news editor of National Review Online.
Guilty or innocent, face it - prominent and powerful men attract women like magnets: “Gotta get some of that high-powered sperm to impregnate me”.
Cosby is still scheduled to appear in person in Cupertino, Califoria next June 7.
3pm at the flint center if anyone wants to go
:-/
On November 16, Cosby broke his silence regarding a series of sexual assault allegations via a brief statement posted by his attorney on his Web site. It read: Over the last several weeks, decade-old, discredited allegations against Mr. Cosby have resurfaced. The fact that they are being repeated does not make them true. Mr. Cosby does not intend to dignify these allegations with any comment."
THINK about it. He is being accused without any evidence. What can he possibly say? That he didn't do it? That these allegations arose in the past and were not proven then, and that no charges were pressed then? And that he's not going to go into all of it all over again, given that absolutely no new evidence has arisen?
Well that's what he said.
Yeah, through an attorney. That makes him guilty? LOL! The entire world is slandering him all of a sudden, and Allred is demanding a hundred million dollars without any evidence or trial, and he's being accused of drugging and raping underaged girls - and having an attorney proves his guilt? What nonsense.
And what WOULD you have him say, other than what he DID say, and which was turned into a refusal to speak by everyone - including you - when it was no such thing? He said the charges were long discredited and merely repeated, and that doesn't make them true. That's legal-speak to protect him from angling sharks, something you hire an attorney to do for you. And see how his fears were right - he gave an answer, and it's being called a refusal to answer.
In any event, none of that is evidence against him. None of it. It's just slander by highly dubious accusers who admit to voluntarily spending private time with him who now admit they want money, whipped up by the media wolfpack - that's it. Yeah, they sound really honest.
And it's not like Cosby ever pissed off the Black Democrat Plantation Overseers by, oh I don't know, telling Blacks to get off of government money and make something of themselves and stop blaming whitey. I mean, if he did that, maybe there'd be a REASON to slander him before an election campaign started, since he was about to get a new TV show. But that didn't happen... right?
No, the Simpson case was a TRIAL thing. With EVIDENCE things that you could assess and verify.
It's a JUSTICE thing - you DON'T understand.
All those points you insist on using .... weren’t they the same talking-points that Team Clinton used against all his accusations?
So to be clear, until the blue dress ... you would’ve defended BillyJeff, right?
If it smells like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck i guess we need a jury to determine what we already know right?
I think other women have said they were drugged via a drink, though.
“Not a hero. Just innocent until proven guilty. It’s an American thing - you wouldn’t understand. “
Innocent? If you believe that, you’re smoking some heavy weed. Just look at all the money he’s spent paying some of these women off ( and the others who were involved with their “procurement”) and on lawyers. A decent man would not have to do that!
BTW, when the dust settles, I hope they jackhammer his “star” off of the “walk of fame.” Otherwise it’s simply a “walk of shame.”
Not quite. Clever and/or powerful people have successfully conned the legal system in the past (eg Teddy Kennedy), and such people continue to con the legal system today. Maybe Cosby is one of that elite group. Cosby might be a kind of legal zombie, innocent yet guilty in the moral sense even though not in the legal sense because he might actually have done some of the things he is accused of, but nevertheless free to walk among us unrestrained and unpunished, on technicalities.
I think it is important to keep an awareness that such people exist and to identify them as potentially negative and harmful people on pragmatic grounds. you never know who you might get trapped in an elevator or subway car with— the same goes for your family members and good friends. if and when that happens, you or your family members or good friends should be on guard.
Oh look, another one who never heard of a famous person paying off a nuisance suit to keep the tabloids from going crazy over the publicity it would take to clear their name in court.
You know there are entire law firms that make their money off of exactly these kinds of threats, for exactly these kinds of reasons, right? Well there are. It's legalized extortion.
Nope. Completely different, since the Cosby accusations have NO evidence and the Clinton accusations were rife with political misconduct, DNA evidence, photographs, documented threats and multiple mysterious deaths, and numerous third-party witnesses.
But hey, if you want to think they're the same, don't let me get in your way.
Well clearly you don't - you just need a rope, a tree and a duck.
I think it is important to keep an awareness that such people exist and to identify them as potentially negative and harmful people on pragmatic grounds. you never know who you might get trapped in an elevator or subway car with the same goes for your family members and good friends. if and when that happens, you or your family members or good friends should be on guard.
I think it's important to keep an awareness that people like you exist, who can make up stories of possibilities out of the whole cloth, with no evidence, of the most bizarre possible threats, and then use those stories to convince family members and good friends to ostracize and shun someone and slander their good name solely based on your paranoia and baseless accusations of what "might" be.
You're one scary dude.
I’ve been a victim of false accusations. So I know the routine more than you might surmise.
Cosby has one settlement out of court with prejudice and 27 witnesses.
In the real world I consider that to be close to a tsunami of indicators in a certain direction.
It is people like Cosby who masquerade as nice guys to unsuspecting women who cause permanent damage to our culture.
I am not antagonistic to you. Why are you making this personal.
Yeah Cosby is being Railroaded and here we are on the ‘Free Republic’ pouring coal on the fire. These women are popping out of the woodwork looking for cash payouts. The worst is the one with the recovered memory.
That’s the one that did it for me... This is an over the top hatchet job. Makes me wonder how he told them that he wasn’t going to toe the line.
At least it’s nice to see talisker over here. Someone in this forum using their brain and not just around employing alinsky ridicule tactics trying to shut down the arguments.
“If it smells like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck i guess we need a jury to determine what we already know right?”
So far all anyone know is what MSM is printing- and we know MSM always tells the truth, does not have an agenda.
Never smears anyones reputation.
I will wait until these allegations are judged in court of law, before making decision.
So maybe it walks,smells,quacks and looks like a duck, but it just an accusation.
too many coming out at the same time raises suspicious about their story.....statue of limitations expired years ago...why are them coming out now....he wouldn’t pay the blackmail.....
too many coming out at the same time raises suspicious about their story....
maybe they want their 15 minutes of fame. maybe they’re crazy. maybe they are upset Cosby didn’t offer a permenant relationship. After Tawanna Brawley I am a skeptic instead of an instant believer of a woman’s rape claim.
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