Bill Cosby’s implosion over the past few weeks has been almost as dramatic as Tiger Wood’s back in 2009. I have a little sympathy for Cosby, because although I believe he probably did drug and rape at least some of those young women, I also suspect that his proclivities are being used to silence him.
Cosby has said some dangerous things in the past few years. Here’s Debra Dickerson for Slate in July 2004:
Lately, Bill Cosby has been making a comeback—as Shelby Steele. The 67-year-old comedian—who became America’s Dad in the 1980s and America’s Granddad more recently—has launched a series of surprising assaults on the pathologies of low-income blacks. “They think they’re hip. They can’t read; they can’t write. They’re laughing and giggling, and they’re going nowhere,” he said in Chicago at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and Citizenship Education Fund’s annual conference on July 1.
This followed an attack launched at the NAACP’s Brown v. Board of Education 50th anniversary gala at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., in May. No laugh tracks there. The Cos has chastised young black men for “beating up your women because you can’t find a job,” blasted poor parenting in the ghettoes, heaped scorn on Ebonics, and lambasted aimless blacks for squandering the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement. Symbolically, he made his comments in high-profile “public” (read: where whites could hear) venues.
Many critics expressed shock that the beloved figure of Americana—the genial observational humorist; the wise paterfamilias of the beloved The Cosby Show (1984-1992); the winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002—should offer such a pointed, and conservative, political message.
And here’s Cosby weighing in on George Zimmerman, written by someone called “GOTTYtm” for UPROXX in 2013:
In a recent call-in interview with the DomNnate Radio Show, the comedian was asked his unbridled opinion on the George Zimmerman verdict. Cosby’s open to speaking about guns, the prosecution of the case, and the media’s coverage but race isn’t on the table for discussion. In Cosby’s estimation, race was never an issue in the case because, well, nobody can determine if George Zimmerman’s a racist.
“This racial stuff goes into a whole bunch of discussion which has stuff that you can’t prove,” Cosby explained. “You can’t prove somebody is a racist unless they really come out and do the act and is found to be that.”
…
Cosby also disregards Zimmerman’s history of calling 9-1-1 to report mostly suspicious black males and notes that “the prosecution did not tell the story well, and they lost.” Cosby also cites the Casey Anthony trial and used both incidents to state that the media’s a major culprit. “I found the media were jumping and had this woman guilty,” Cosby remarked. “I will never pay attention to information given to me by TV, radio or whatever about a high-profile case until the jury says what it says.”
[The title of this article is Bill Cosby Says George Zimmerman Isn’t A Racist, Naturally.]
As you can see, Bill Cosby’s been biting the hand that feeds him for a decade. Here’s a timeline of Cosby’s legal trouble. You’ll notice that the first charges hit in January 2005, six months after Slate reported Cosby’s “conservative” views.
What’s interesting to me is that none of the rape charges really got traction before a comedian (who I’d never heard of) threw this zinger at a crowd in Philly on Oct 16th:
A video clip of Hannibal Buress sounding off was put online through Philedelphia magazine and went “viral”. [Member how “going viral” was something Benny Johnson liked to study before he got fired? Just a thought.]
So anyway, Cosby was taken “down a couple notches” after saying things that many middle-class black adults say in private. These views are particularly common amongst people who’ve lived in depressed black neighborhoods and who deal with the fallout of what sports personality Charles Barkley terms the “typical B.S.”, or self-destructive behavior. The people who hold views like Barkley’s and Cosby’s are democrats and “conservatives” alike. The problem, readers, is that Cosby’s viewpoint doesn’t sit well with socially liberal media types, nor folks who make money from the self-destructive attitudes that Cosby lambasted– folks who cash in on ‘gangsta’ culture, or who win government funding and tax-exempt status to ‘help’ low-income blacks.
You’ll notice that Cosby’s rape charges weren’t brought up back in 1998 when his politics were safe and his wife Camille wrote the following to US Today:
“I believe America taught our son’s killer to hate African-Americans.”
That quote is part of screed titled America taught my son’s killer to hate blacks. The question on everybody’s mind is if Camille knew that her husband drugged and rapped multiple white women when she decided to use the death of her son Ennis this way.
I see a pattern here, do you?
Andrea Constand, alleged Cosby victim.
Tamara Green, alleged Cosby victim.
Beth Ferrier, alleged Cosby victim.
Barbara Bowman, alleged Cosby victim.
I feel particularly for the black men and women who will read about Cosby’s charges; see these women’s faces; and feel dismay that another successful black man doesn’t want women of his own race. They’ll look at what Cosby has said– observations that Cosby made because he’s being honest and cares about his own people– and discount the truth in Cosby’s words because of the hypocrisy of Cosby’s actions.
Daily Mail caption: “Up in smoke: Cosby hangs out with his arm around his wife, Camille Hanks, at a Four Tops concert at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in LA. He often left her at home when he went carousing.”
Readers will probably say” “Wait, anolen, you’re writing as though Cosby’s already been convicted.”
Yes, I am. I suspect that Cosby did commit these crimes. I also suspect that many of these women would have slept with Cosby to further their careers, but found out too late that he was kinkier than they bargained for. I point to the case of Barbara Bowman in particular, who went back to Cosby’s home with him, alone, and there accepted an alcoholic drink which she says he’d laced.
I also suspect that Cosby’s promoters knew about Cosby’s proclivities, and that this may have helped Cosby’s career. Cosby made his name promoting an image of what mid-century television producers wanted black men and black families to look like. The Bill Cosby Show, followed by The Cosby Show, was propaganda aimed at white and black people alike; they aired during massive white flight from mostly-black inner city areas and during the aftermath of the destructive 1960s race-riots, which I wrote about here. ‘The Cosby Show’ was a charm offensive, one that could be switched off at any moment by outing Bill’s bad behavior. If you think stuff like this doesn’t happen, consider the torpedoed career of playboy Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
But now Cosby’s not being a good boy anymore.
Ironically, Cosby’s going to be undone by the most noble actions he undertook during his public life. Whatever you think of his opinions, he’s brave to air them and he’s probably doing so because he doesn’t want another generation of young black people to be fodder for CIA social engineering.
