General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSome thoughts about Bill Cosby.
I, along with many others of my generation grew up with Cosby. Listening to his records, watching Fat Albert. The sit com in was in was enjoyed by many, many Americans. So, with the latest news, we are heart broken. Not the Cos!! He could not be like that. He was funny and warm and we loved him.
It's like a big crash.
What if, and this could be my age, where I welcome change because I see so much NOT working, what if he stood up and admitted he did these things? He could start conversations among men about rape that they have not been open or comfortable dealing with before. Problems can't be fixed until it is admitted that it is a problem.
I don't know. Something has to start the change with rape culture, couldn't this be a good starting place?
This is just a thought I had and I wanted to see what others think.
cali
(114,904 posts)logosoco
(3,208 posts)At my age I would think I would have given up on the optimism, but yet I still always have this little voice inside that is saying "hey guys, let's try this!".
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,711 posts)Maybe.
logosoco
(3,208 posts)I am all about alternative sentencing. He could pay a huge part of his fortune to the victims and be required to tour the country and write books, along with perhaps like psychotherapists and the like, talking to men about, well, what they should already know but don't seem to.
CountAllVotes
(20,878 posts)is a has been that finally got caught for his lies and crimes.
I never found him to be funny.
I never liked his pompous doctor act either.
The man is a disgrace, a sheer disgrace!
I hope he rots in hell for the harm he has done to countless women!
HERVEPA
(6,107 posts)But his early comic albums and appearances on The Tonight Show were hilarious.
His blaming "black culture" for the difficulties blacks face has been nauseating.
And there are, of course, way too many of these rape claims for most or all of then not to be true.
CountAllVotes
(20,878 posts)and no, I never liked the man.
HERVEPA
(6,107 posts)cyberswede
(26,117 posts)"Noah...it's the Lord"
I also liked him a Lot in I Spy. I'm sad to learn of his deplorable past behavior.
Edit: Oh shit.. I forgot he was on the Electric Company, one of my ALL TIME favorite shows from childhood.
HERVEPA
(6,107 posts)KamaAina
(78,249 posts)cwydro
(51,308 posts)Had his album as a child.
This is astounding to me.
kelliekat44
(7,759 posts)LawDeeDah
(1,596 posts)that is what I think.
logosoco
(3,208 posts)Memory is a little rusty, but I seem to recall he had received several honorary degrees over the years? Should these institutions come forward now and I don't know, take them back? Obviously they were given during the course of these rapes.
Since they were honorary and not earned at the school?
LawDeeDah
(1,596 posts)Get the sicko in a courtroom, that is my focus for now.
samsingh
(17,601 posts)this is heartbreaking.
too many people have come forward for me to believe that it isn't true.
pnwmom
(108,994 posts)and it would be inviting more lawsuits.
He seems to have done it so often, he might not even know if all the women he assaulted have already come forward. And an admission like that would also invite false accusations.
Happyhippychick
(8,379 posts)If someone cheats on their wife (or husband) and wants to talk about how they have reformed, if someone was an addict, if someone was a tyrannical boss. Yeah, I could see having a conversation.
But a serial rapist?
No.
logosoco
(3,208 posts)I just keep hoping something is going to get people to change!
I think this story has brought up some "issues" with me. I have a nephew-in-law on death row for the attempted rape and murder of a six year old girl. This happened about a dozen years ago, and I still struggle with it. He was someone I loved and cared about, had him in my home, watched him grow up. But I did not stand up for him in court.One of the things I had to do was tell myself, and my kids, that the person we knew was dead now, when he did this horrible thing. That is not easy. I don't love who is he now, even though he is the same person.
I guess this thing with Cosby has opened up that thought process, but it's not as easy because now we know it was happening all along. That hurts a lot to know we spent time and were entertained someone who was basically a monster in the background.
Some things are just too heavy.
Xyzse
(8,217 posts)Even individuals such as Polanski has skirted this for years. With him, we find people actually making excuses for this guy.
The conversation with that, is deplorable to begin with.
I am just glad I haven't found any one giving excuses for Cosby yet or something of that sort.
I don't know, it's just sad.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)As we know in entertainment, what is on the screen isn't reality. Doesn't mean it isn't going to hurt. He was a rock on the show.
Baitball Blogger
(46,757 posts)He is too old to weather the storm it would create and his lawyers will strongly recommend that he just fade into the sunset.
I like Cosby too, and grew up on the messages of that early era. But something sometimes happens to people who reach that pinnacle of success. They assume that their power is absolute and they are untouchable.
I guess we must remember that he was an actor and entertainer who was successful for playing a role. The real Cosby was the person whose opinions were harsh and critical against his own people. Because he didn't live that struggle any longer, it stopped existing for him. You can say the same thing about Morgan Freeman.
KMOD
(7,906 posts)bklyncowgirl
(7,960 posts)They're guests in our house every week. We think we know them but in fact what we are looking at is a carefully crafted public image that often has nothing to do with real person underneath.
That genial, funny Bill Cosby persona very seemed real to me. The idea that he is a serial rapist is shocking--horrifying really. Please, say it isn't so Bill but with all these people coming forward it's beginning to look like it is. Think about it, who better to put vulnerable women off their guard than a genial, funny avuncular guy. Who better to cover it up than a rich, powerful celebrity.
But I would never have thought that Robin Williams would have been likely to commit suicide either.
I am, I'm afraid, hopelessly naïve.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)rocktivity
(44,577 posts)Cosby paid her mother, told his wife they'd had an affair, and set up a trust fund for Autumn -- but there was absolutely no reason to even suspect she might be his daughter? Uh-huh. So, as with 9/11, I am saddened, but I am not shocked by what he has done since.
rocktivity
uppityperson
(115,679 posts)public perception of himself and, well, simply do the right thing and say he was wrong. Fear of being prosecuted must be quite high, unless there is a statute of limitations. If there is a statute of limitations and he is past that, morally and ethically he should do the right thing. It would help a lot.
LawDeeDah
(1,596 posts)There is no other right thing for Cosby to do. Even if there is a limitations of time, he should skulk away in a hole, in shame, for the rest of his miserable life. And whenever he peeks out we should be there to remind him what a vile piece of shit he is.
Jon Ace
(243 posts)I take the accusations seriously, but part of me really hopes it isn't true. Time will tell.
HERVEPA
(6,107 posts)Your comment reminds me of an old Mad Magazine parody of Perry Mason show. (Perhaps you're too young to have seen Perry Mason).
The case involves 70,000 eyewitnesses at Yankee Stadium witnessing a shooting and clearly being able to identify the shooter.
The DA says to police guy (Lt. Tragg I guess) something like "Against Perry Mason, that's circumstantial evidence. We need facts".
BFreeFranklin
(5 posts)Perhaps this current mess with Bill Cosby is a mistake. Or PC has caught up to the past when there pretty much were no rules when it came to sex and or sexuality in America.
I seem to think that social networking among other things takes a lot of shared ignorance out of the closet so to speak and shed some light on matters in a modern global capacity.
That sins like masturbation on the Church list, mortal sins mind you, that they are pretty much considered body function anymore and not sinful but just something normal in the life of the man beast race that remains half ape and is still half imagining the other half is angel. Which is why the guys in dresses at the Vatican don't have a clue about anything sexual - still preaching from the same old everything is a sin textbook as genuinely "moral" - yeah right.
Getting back to Cosby. I always thought he was a grade A phony. If you look at the old I Spy detective shows where he was a so-called breakthrough part for an African American on prime time TV in the mid-1960s. The show was on at 10 P.M. when school children were supposed to be already off to bed in Beaver Cleaver white America.
If you see these old shows, they are poorly written and full of a lot of direct and veiled sadistic violence. Not good fare for mom and pop watching them. But then again few choices then for three TV channel America.
I remember a show with Cosby being a gym teacher which actually fit in with his Temple U degree in Philly for P/E.
Over and above his moderate visual success on TV was his dirty comedy, sexual content, records which to many was his real source of income.
I remember around 1971 when he was on the David Frost show making a big deal about retiring from Show Business and going off to Massachusetts to get his PhD in education. Why? Because he wanted to be an outstanding model for his race and in education etc. PR PR PR BS BS BS Whatever became of his academic career? But the bait and switch entertainment marketing scam worked well to create demand so well that Frank Sinatra, a has been night club singer retired two or three times before his many comebacks. Whatever.
Then there was that bizarre Cosby fantasy show of a successful Harlem Doctor and his cute black middle class gentrified family that it was somehow successful even though I had no desire to watch it. I knew black people and I knew Harlem and the last place any successful black people I knew in New York - they did not want to live and or work in Harlem.
Which kind of leaves us now with the present and all these bimbos coming out of the woodwork wanting an out of court settlement from a filthy rich black entertainer who for better or worse has not managed his private tastes too well. Or these women, groupies in their younger days or whatever never heard the adage that in getting ahead in Show Business is the same as in Wall Street it is not who you know, it is who you blow to get ahead in life.
I have often thought that the death of the hypocritical White Town Square standards in America was the start of the culture wars in the 1980s forward to establish those old standards that were pretty much set by the local town newspaper owned by the local white establishment.
That when someone like Madonna came onto the scene with her skank nouveau marketing model, that the old white standard bearers, the newspapers and national TV media could not shame her or shun her or make an example of her slutty appeal to the rising younger female buying demographic market.
That now with six corporations controlling the top tier (1%) of the information and tech pyramid, I look at this current Bill Cosby sideshow with mild disinterest but realize that Cosby is collateral damage of sorts of the six year plus Fox News TV and Limbaugh radio hate campaign against Obama and trying to reassert the old white standards in the obsolete in a global town square sense, of the old American Town Square. The white GOPs Neanderthal base is going to lynch this guy, in virtual-osity, in the social media.
So much for doing their Ted Cruz - Joe Wilson style of protecting our white women in the burbs from those people. That Rafael Cruz courtesy of the Heritage Foundation endorsement of Cuban white hatred of all blacks including black cubans - and Joe Wilson's "You Lie" white trash talk to the WH N***** from the inbred crowd in South Carolina has a butterfly affect on the all Racist Revival of the old loser Confederate States even in a global age of tech and information movement.
I say this because today, even the casino in Arizona run by the Tohono O'odham Indian nation outside Tucson is cancelling Bill Cosbys scheduled performance in February. That the nation that sells tobacco and liquor untaxed by the Feds and caters to gambling addicts are pimps of sorts or good capitalist businessmen depending on your POV but the point is that they feel comfortable enough in judging Bill Cosby in the social media maelstrom that eats and chews ppl out faster than whatever.
The media sucks.
Good luck Bill in your virtual retirement as an ideal model of whatever it was that you were in your fifteen hours of fame.