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.
Bill Cosby was a promoter of the Tawana Brawley rape hoax, and even put up a personal reward and wrote a racist article on it.
"Pay-up time for Brawley: 87 rape-hoaxer finally shells out for slander"
Actually i function in society fairly well. I believe people until I am given cause not to believe what I am told.
I mistrust MSM and their bias.
I mistrust lawyers that go on news programs proclaiming someone is innocent or guilty before that person has had their day in court.
I do not know any of the women personally, i do not know Bill Cosby.
If he is adjudged guilty - you may say i told you so.
until that time perhaps we should let the just us system work its magic.
LOL, does your "real world" contain political slander plots against world famous multi-millionaire media personalities who exhort an entire race of people to get off of the government plantation? Are those the kind of dynamics you had to deal with when you were falsely accused, or are they above your pay grade?
On that's easy. What I do is get together with my friends and see how many people agree that someone is just rotten, and trust that everyone in my group had no agenda, and that my group itself has no agenda, and the women crying rape decades after they said something happened that they have no evidence of but want a lot of money for has no agenda, and that the political issues around this person don't exist, and the political powers against this person have no agenda, and the media has no agenda, you know, to go along with the complete and utter lack of any evidence.
And then, in the great collective tradition of this kind of mob rule, we string the victim up and lynch him. In the good old days we got a rope and tree. Now we use oceans of slander. But hey, what does it matter? Once the group FEELS someone should be destroyed, a halo of purity descends from the clouds upon its members, and then whatever they do is right.
Because as you've pointed out, there simply isn't any other way, and it's better to destroy some innocents than have a system outside of mob hated that might let someone outside of the accepted group narrative get away.
1) & 2) say the same thing, only what stays the same is the slanderous story, in order to reinforce the power of the story for character assassination purposes. Because that's all this is - it will never be heard in court because of no evidence.
3) He is not contesting meeting with them, so why should he not show a preference in women who are asking him if they could come up and spend private time with him?
4) There's no etc., let alone two of them.
LOL, look up nuisance suit, fool - your accusation wouldn't even work on a playground. And how exactly would a civil case put Cosby in a penitentiary? If, that is, he could possibly lose, given that the whole world screaming for his head has not one tiny shred of actual evidence and his entire life is an example of the highest character?
Or did you just want to give a shoutout to your buds still in Lovelock? After all, besides pulling it out of thin air, you seem pretty knowledgeable about the place.
I think you need to look in the mirror when you use the word fool! I get it that you don’t think that there’s any way Cosby is guilty of anything, so you must be Black or a closet Progressive. As far as the Nevada Pen is concerned, I drove by in not long ago on my way to bury a relative.
LOL, (redacted personal info— who i am or am not IMHO should not be important as to the truth, fallacy or anything in between in this matter). But yeah, PC (redacted) acknowledges no pay grade boundaries that I am aware of. Funny it was, funny it is, and funny you are, har har. Perhaps you are correct in that I am ‘not worthy,’ if that is your point. Not that that has anything to do with real justice. LOL.
Extraordinary claims (when made) require extraordinary evidence (Sagan). Some folks here seem to be advancing the hypothesis of a 14 year, 27 (and counting) witness political conspiracy by liberals against liberals. No trial... thereforemust be regarded as innocent, right!?!
So indulge me, please. Let’s say, your hypothetical one and only 17yo virgin daughter attending Temple U calls you up on her cell from a hypothetical nearby cafe. Hypothetically, BC just walked in the cafe’s front door, said hi to her, sat at her table, and asks her if he can buy her a latte. BC is telling her (she says to you over her phone) that he can help her with her career, and she is very excited and flattered. However, her cell phone battery is low, and you have 10 seconds maximum to give her your any hypothetical advice before you lose contact with her for several hours or more. This is all happening in real time— right now. You have no more information than you do at this moment. What advice do you give to her in the 10 seconds before her cell phone battery dies? It’s OK (and the 27 witnesses and probably their families are part of an extended and elaborate long term, ingenious political conspiracy)? Go ahead and accept the latte and the help from BC??
If you weren’t mentioning money when you said “he wouldn’t pay the blackmail”, what were you referring to? What did he refuse to pay?
You’re making false statements. Not all of these women are asking for money or anything from Bill Cosby. Many of them have said so. They simply wanted to tell their story of what happened to them. So far, there isn’t any proof or evidence that they have an agenda.
Actually, I hope some of them change their minds and sue Cosby. I would love to see what Cosby has to say under oath about all of this.
You say you believe people until you have cause not to believe them. What exactly do you not believe? Especially the ones that have come forward and are not asking for anything from Cosby.
>> Just innocent until proven guilty
Exactly.
Certainly the allegations are alarming, but worse is the emotional trial that already has Cosby hanged without due process.
You can’t base fact on the apparent absence of motivation.
FWIW, I’m only defending the Constitution.
Welcome to FR!
Lets do this - you believe what ever you want, i will believe what I want to believe.
I was not looking for argument- just pointing out that there has not been any charges filed, he gets indicted and convicted send me, “I told you so.”
But we all know women don't lie about such things...at least thats what the femi-nazi use to say....only fools believed them.
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Oh, I get it. So you WERE referring to money when you said you weren’t referring to money. You still haven’t answered my question regarding why they chose Bill Cosby when there are so many men out there with billions of dollars more than him. And also please tell me what the motive is of all of the women that have NOT asked Cosby for a dime. And I also think it’s hilarious you’re accusing these women of blackmail, a crime. You should take your own advice and wait until you see some evidence of it before you accuse them.
Not to beat a dead horse, but you still haven’t answered my question. What exactly do you not believe about the women’s stories, especially the ones who aren’t asking for dime from Cosby?
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