Actor/director Judd Apatow and comedian Hannibal Buress made denouncing Bill Cosby, for his sexual predations, a cause celebre this year. But my commentaries — from “Cosby Escapes Sexual Harassment Charges,” February 25, 2005, to “Bill Cosby’s (all too Belated) Fall from Grace,” November 18, 2014 — attest that I’ve been denouncing him for years.
A judge has now unsealed the confidential agreement Cosby struck to settle the sexual-battery lawsuit that triggered his downfall. Only his 50-plus accusers could be more gratified by this seminal development than I:
Bill Cosby admitted in 2005 that he secured quaaludes with the intent of giving them to young women he wanted to have sex with and that he gave the sedative to at least one woman and ‘other people’…
The AP had gone to court to compel the release of a deposition in a sexual-abuse case filed by former Temple University employee Andrea Constand, the first of a cascade of lawsuits against him that have severely damaged his good-guy image
‘The stark contrast between Bill Cosby, the public moralist and Bill Cosby, the subject of serious allegations concerning improper (and perhaps criminal) conduct is a matter as to which the AP — and by extension the public — has a significant interest,’ U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno wrote.
(The Associated Press, July 7, 2015)
These revelations give perverse new meaning to his signature expression “Hello Friend.”
But, truth be told, anyone who needed Bill Cosby’s admission under oath to believe he’s an unrepentant sexual predator probably needs Bill Clinton’s admission under oath to believe he’s an unrepentant serial adulterer.
This is why singer Jill Scott seems more willful idiot than trusting soul. After all, she made quite a show on Monday of informing the world that it took Cosby’s unsealed testimony for her to finally realize she was “wrong” for standing by this man.
Of course, she still seems too self-absorbed to appreciate how insulting her public confessional is to Cosby’s accusers – dozens of whom have made wholly credible accusations of rape against him.
In any event, instead of waxing indignant anew, I refer you to “Bill Cosby Pays Off Woman Who Accused Him of Rape,” November 13, 2006. It includes this prescient excerpt.
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Andrea Constand (32) regarded him as a mentor. She claims Cosby (69) drugged and raped her. Unsurprisingly, instead of allowing her spill details in open court, he settled her lawsuit on Wednesday … for an amount sufficient enough to buy her silence.
Meanwhile, Cosby’s legal woes have not caused him to retreat from his self-appointed role as the conscience of Black America. In this respect, he acts more like Cliff Huxtable in real life than he did on The Cosby Show.
Perhaps you’ve heard him lecturing about how the lack of individual responsibility, more than “systemic racism,” is the root cause of crime, poor education, and high unemployment in Black America. For this I commend him wholeheartedly!
But this Cosby case serves as a shocking reminder that the best of us are often as flawed as the worst of us. So too does the recent fall from grace of Evangelist Ted Haggard – after a male prostitute outed him as a tartuffe who likes to fuel his gay sex with crystal meth.
More to the point, though, if Cosby thought settling this lawsuit would keep the lid on his past sexual predations, he was/is sadly mistaken. Because a popular online magazine, Media Take Out, is reporting today that – although not preparing to sue him – another woman wants the world to know that Cosby used and sexually abused her too, and even infected her with herpes.
This witless woman scorned expresses her motivation for coming forward now as follows:
When I knew him, he was sleeping with every woman in sight – and that was right in front of his ‘loving’ wife….
He knows what it means to be a lousy Black man, because he was a dirty dog in his day. But now that he’s old I guess he feels he can talk down to people. I had to expose him for the hypocrite that he is.
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Again, I wrote this nine years ago. Back then, accusing Cosby of sexual assault seemed tantamount to accusing the pope of child molestation. Especially given that Cosby was still playing the role of ‘America’s Dad’ — complete with public lectures on the categorical imperatives of proselytizing traditional family values.
Enough said?
Except that, apropos of Cosby’s “loving wife” Camille, I would be remiss not to at least restate my abiding dismay about the way she has turned a blind eye, for decades now, to his brazen predations.
I gave up some time ago trying to reason why purportedly liberated women, like Camille Cosby and Hillary Clinton, stand by men who humiliate them.
The ardent feminist in me would like to think this simply reflects their evolved understanding that marriage is about a lot more than (sexual) monogamy. But it may be that they are riding so high on the power trip these marriages afford them, they couldn’t care any less how much their husbands betray traditional notions of fidelity (or legality?).
(“The Hypocrisy of Eliot ‘Ness’ Spitzer’s Assignation with a Prostitute,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 11, 2008)
Related commentaries:
Cosby escapes…
Cosby pays off woman…
Bill Cosby’s (all too belated) fall…
* This commentary was published yesterday, Tuesday, at 8:25 p.m.
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