This is the line that struck out at me thenewgreen :
- believing Bill Cosby does not require you to take one person's word over another—it requires you take one person's word over 15 others.
To be fair, though, half of me wants to believe Janice Dickinson and half of me doesn't. I've seen her on too many reality shows to not feel jaded about her.
This is a really good article, but I appreciate it much more for some of the larger issues it addresses rather than the Cosby issue.
- Courts belong to the society, not the other way around. This is why many Americans scoff at the idea that O.J. was never convicted of killing his wife. And this is why many other Americans scoff at the idea that the government didn't kill Fred Hampton. Ducking behind an official finding is kind of cowardice that allows us the luxury of never facing hard questions. Cowardice can be insidious. Sometimes it is a physical fear. Other times it's just taking the easy out.
Jesus, what is it with all these veteran entertainers suddenly getting embroiled in rape allegations? It's like if you were an entertainer in the 70s or 80s, you just went round raping whoever happened to be in the same room. It's an enormous shame. If they're guilty then the victims deserve every bit of justice they can squeeze out of the courts, but it's such an ignominious end. These entertainers have not only ruined the lives of their victims, but also tarnished a body of work that can mean a lot to their fans. I still love Rolf Harris' work, but it's almost impossible to watch him now he's been locked up for sexual assault.
- The heart of the matter is this: A defender of Bill Cosby must, effectively, conjure a vast conspiracy, created to bring down one man, seemingly just out of spite. And people will do this work of conjuration, because it is hard to accept that people we love in one arena can commit great evil in another. It is hard to believe that Bill Cosby is a serial rapist because the belief doesn't just indict Cosby, it indicts us. It damns us for drawing intimate conclusions about people based on pudding-pop commercials and popular TV shows. It destroys our ability to lean on icons for our morality. And it forces us back into a world where seemingly good men do unspeakably evil things, and this is just the chaos of human history.
C'est moi. I don't believe Dickinson, but over a dozen other people.. that can't be ignored.
But I can't imagine Bill Cosby raping 15 women. The guy spends half of every stand-up special talking about his family. I'm not saying he's innocent, I just can't imagine him being guilty. Maybe he did a good job of lying then, but there's a distinct, visible difference to me between a much-loved face being honest and a much-loved face lying. I just want some concrete evidence already.
The dude (Cosby) must have wronged someone in some terrible way, at the very least. What would motivate someone to whip up a conspiracy like this?
Thinking that he may have done this makes me think of finding out about Santa. Or, Darth Vader's revelation to Luke in The Empire Strikes Back. Or, both.
Gotta imagine Pudding Pop sales have dropped off some.