Let’s take a look at Bill Cosby again, shall we?
Distasteful though that process may be.
I wrote a lot about the Cosby charges and the Cosby trial. It’s easy to take a look, here.
The gist of the situation regarding Cosby was and is as follows:
I happen to think Cosby is guilty. I also think he has a scummy sexual history: cheating on his wife, and kinky stuff involving drugged women. But when I say that I think he’s guilty, I don’t mean that he’s guilty of having a scummy sexual history of cheating and drugging, although those things are apparently true. I mean I think he’s guilty of at times having sex with women (or at least one woman) without their consent, having given them drugs. Those were the acts for which he was tried, and it came down to the issue of consent.
If you look at just about all of those posts I wrote about the Cosby accusations and trial, I’m actually defending him because I thought he did not get a fair trial. And that is despite the fact that I think he most likely is guilty. But I think the rules of evidence were misapplied in his case, as I wrote here.
Now, perhaps you may not care if Cosby was unfairly treated by the court because you think he’s a scumbag. I do care, though, because I care more about the fairness of the legal system—and the protection of the rights of the innocent, which is everyone till proven guilty—than I care about putting Bill Cosby in jail.
If that makes me a bleeding heart, so be it. I don’t think it does, though. I think it makes me very skeptical of the honesty and decency of people in power, particularly when they think that right is on their side in addition to might. All tyrannies, or at least a great many of them, begin with people who think they have good intentions.
A lot of people think that Cosby was a scumbag, that he used drugs to sleep with women who were practically unconscious, and so it’s obvious that the women didn’t consent and that they’re telling the truth in their accusations. Such people sometimes don’t care what the prosecutors did to Cosby because they want him in the slammer and they don’t care if prosecutors have to cut a few corners to do it.
I disagree, which may put me in the minority at this point. But it also puts me in league with the Founding Fathers, who were very concerned about such issues. Their deep concern and the protections they built into the Constitution have protected us for a long time, but I fear that concern has virtually evaporated in the face of MeToo. And actually, it’s been evaporating for quite some time.
To turn to that other court, the court of public opinion—a lot of people have pointed out that cases like that of Roy Moore and Harvey Weinstein have accustomed us to think that the accusations of one person are stronger if there are other, similar accusations. Now, we reap the dubious “benefits” of that with Kavanaugh, where even the most suspect accusations are strengthened (in the eyes of some people, anyway) when there’s more than one accuser. But weak, suspect accusations are weak and suspect no matter how many there are. What makes accusations especially weak or suspect? Sketchy memory, a long previous silence, a political and/or financial motive for making the claim, and reading about other claims from other women giving the new accuser ideas for a similar set of charges. It’s not hard to do for anyone who may have had any prior encounter with the accused, and who has the motivation.
Any guesses as to when there’s going to be a Gosnell movie?
Yeah, I’m convinced that Bill Cosby was a rapist. I’m just not conviced he was ever “America’s dad.” I’m not convinced anyone is “America’s dad.” I am not convinced the Dallas cowboys are “America’s team.”
Sez a Raider’s fan.
Gosnell? Oct 12: http://www.gosnellmovie.com/
Here’s why we should hold the prosecution to a very high standard of conduct:
https://reason.com/blog/2018/01/09/kamala-harris-went-to-bat-for-dirty-pros/print
To whom much is given, much is expected.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/arts/television/bill-cosby-sentencing.html
“Will Bill Cosby’s Trip From America’s Dad to Sex Offender End in Prison?”
Thanks, America. I had a dad.I don’t need Bill Cosby.
Why are people so against ugly hollywood executives like Weinstein using his money and promises of career advancement opportunities to compensate for their unattractiveness in their search of young starlets to bed? Not everyone is born Mick Jagger or Warren Beatty.
I assume what Bill Cosby did was a common practice in hollywood among his contemporaries, he just lived long enough to have to face consequences for his action.
Nobody should be prosecuted, convicted, or do jail time unless due process rules are carefully followed. That includes people who are, in my opinion, moral reprobates. I didn’t follow the Cosby trial closely, but I remember thinking from what I heard that he was being railroaded on the specific charge at trial.
What was really sad, for me, about the situation was that I loved the Cosby Show. They showed a black family that was just like any other family, with the same strengths and weaknesses. And it was funny! Plus, Claire Huxtable was the first TV black woman character I remember seeing who was attractive, articulate, and well-educated.
A case involving “sheer numbers” to say the least.
AMartel:
And those sheer numbers are only supposed to enter into it in the sentencing phase. In Cosby’s case, they let women testify during his trial (not just sentencing) to acts that were not the same as that of the case, and were barred from being tried because of the statute of limitations. That’s one of the things that the judge never should have allowed. Cosby had two trials on the same charges. The first jury was hung. That judge did not allow that evidence in. The second trial’s judge allowed it, and Cosby was convicted.
Neo, won’t the judge allowing that extraneous testimony be grounds for appeal?
Kate:
Yes.
I long held Bill Cosby in high regard and to discover him to be in real life a serial rapist is to feel a deep disappointment in him. But I hold the principles neo elucidated far above humanity’s “feet of clay”. I think that much of the blame for the public’s lessening of allegiance to those principles can be laid at the feet of the legal profession. I offer Robert Mueller as exhibit a… and Michael Avenatti as exhibit b…
What was really sad, for me, about the situation was that I loved the Cosby Show. They showed a black family that was just like any other family, with the same strengths and weaknesses.
Specialist physician married to a lawyer, living in a brownstone in New York. They have the time and the money to care for five children without manifest financial anxieties and without domestic help. The whole family have sanguine temperaments or at least a sanguine aspect to their temperament. Just like any other family.
And it was funny! Plus, Claire Huxtable was the first TV black woman character I remember seeing who was attractive, articulate, and well-educated.
OK, you’re too young to remember Diahann Carroll as Julia or Denise Nicholas on Room 222. And, I guess since he’s a man, every character ever played by Sidney Poitier made no impression on you.
Art Deco:
When last I checked, Sidney Poitier was not a woman.
“Julia” was a long time ago. I certainly remember it, but you can’t expect most people to. I have no idea what “Room 222” was. The first woman I remember being portrayed on TV who was “attractive, articulate, and well-educated” was actually Cicely Tyson on this show in the early 60s, and then Uhura on “Star Trek”. “Julia” was after that—late 60s.
Geoffrey Britain:
If you familiarize yourself with the details of the allegations against Cosby, it’s clear he was a serial philanderer, a serial adulterer, a serial user of drugs to facilitate sex. Basically, as I said, a scummy sex life. But it is not at all clear he was a serial rapist. He may or may not have been that.
I concur with the thoughts you expressed in this post, Neo, well said, Madam!
I guess I don’t have a hard time believing that someone who pretends for a living, would live a pretense.
Cosby made lots of $$ pretending…Hollywood & all entertainment industries are built on the foundation of pretending (except wrestling! we all know that’s real) so the varied pretences & hypocrisies…part & parcel of Tinseltown Jake.
I was more disgusted by the sleazy drug-induced sex stories because that’s just wrong. And if he needs to go to jail…as shabby as his trial was from a jurisprudence point of view…then get out the orange jumpsuit.
But even in that there is raw hypocrisy because it appears his fellow pretenders turned on him because he dared voice a few conservative principles publicly even if those too were pretense…because he certainly lived something else.
But what we are seeing in the Kavanaugh nomination pig fight is abject lying being given the sanctity of Holy Writ and that’s going to come around & really bite someone like Crazy Mazie or China’s biggest US ally DiFi…and don’t even get me started on that Flake character. Watch this one…we have seen only the tip of the ugly iceberg.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcaUluahdwM
You 60 this year, no? You’d have been 11 to 16 when this was on the air. I think originally it was broadcast on Fridays. Maybe you out rolling skating on Friday nights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLTb3_-pdU4
Not sure his secretary counts as ‘educated’.
I watched very little TV, actually, until I was in my 20s, and I watch very little now. I do remember Uhuru, Neo, of course. Claire Huxtable was set in real life, not scifi. And, as you point out, Sidney Poitier is not a woman. I noticed that. Our commenting friend didn’t.
Art Deco:
For the times that was educated. Until then, black people (black women in particular) were usually domestic servants on T V. Or something like the characters on Amos and Andy.
Art Deco, I don’t watch You Tube much, either. If you’d care to tell me what those links are about, I could comment, but then, I didn’t watch much TV, so maybe I wouldn’t know them anyhow.
If the point you’re trying to make is that Claire Huxtable WASN’T a great thing for young black women to watch, we just disagree.
“Better a hundred guilty men go free than that one innocent man be [punished].” –Brackets because I forget whether the actual word is “punished.”
The reason is that even though further innocents may be harmed, even killed, at the hands of the free-though-guilty … all of us are at risk of punishment, seizure of property or incarceration or even execution … if someone decides to gin up a case against us and we are found guilty in a process which does not respect the principle that we are to be assumed innocent until properly proven guilty.
The principle of “I/you/we/they know he’s guilty. Hang the bustard!” does indeed lead to the favoring of lynch mobs, death camps, the extermination of anyone who looks as if he might be an “intellectual” (Cambodia), the extermination of people almost at random (“The purpose of Terror is terror”).
That’s the in-your-face practical reason to insist on wise and well-drafted laws, and of sticking to them (due process) even where “technicalities” foil attempts to find the accused guilty even though one is virtually certain that he is.
Thus proclaimeth the priestess to an audience composed mostly of the choir.
And, as you point out, Sidney Poitier is not a woman. I noticed that. Our commenting friend didn’t.
Tell me, Kate, what do you think this sentence means, who do you think uttered it, and when?
And, I guess since he’s a man, every character ever played by Sidney Poitier made no impression on you.
If the point you’re trying to make is that Claire Huxtable WASN’T a great thing for young black women to watch, we just disagree.
It never occurred to me to advance that argument or anything like it. (FTR, I’m skeptical that any discrete bit of mass entertainment has measurable social effects).
My point, and I will repeat it, is that the creators made the social matrix of The Cosby Show rather lush. Which was their prerogative. That’s entertainment and the elements have to work with your narrative. But there’s no need to pretend that’s a ‘normal’ family. That is a blessed family. You want to bring it to Earth, make the father a supervisor at the Post Office, make the mother a social worker, have three children rather than five, make it a blended family – his child from a previous tryst, her’s from a previous tryst, and their joint child; have the father (if not the mother) switch between standard English and black dialect; add some domestic arguments where the mother is being verbally aggressive with her husband; and use unpaid bills as a source of humor. Set it in a suburb of Cleveland, with the mother a graduate of Cleveland State. Oh, not ‘Heathcliffe’ and ‘Claire’. ‘Cleo’ and ‘Geneva”. Not ‘Huxtable’; ‘McFadden’.
If you’d care to tell me what those links are about,
They’re opening credits. You can click on them if you’re interested in content. They’re less than 2 minutes long.
Art Deco: I’m mid fifties and I remember Room 222: Michael Constantine, Karen Valentine.
Mannix had a secretary, Peggy Fair played by Gail Fisher.
Art Deco: I’m mid fifties and I remember Room 222: Michael Constantine, Karen Valentine.
Michael Constantine is still alive at age 91. His last screen credit is dated 2016. All the adolescent and peri-adult actors in the show are now eligible for Medicare.
Art Deco:
Acutally, I’d say the Huxtables were quite normal. Not “normal” in the sense of “average,” but in the sense of “well-functioning.”
Acutally, I’d say the Huxtables were quite normal. Not “normal” in the sense of “average,” but in the sense of “well-functioning.”
OK. I’m recalling the editor Edwin Faust offering that he found sitcom families of the 1950s disconcerting at the time and retrospectively because their inveterate congeniality was not family life as he’d known it and seen it. (Mr. Faust’s magazine articles can be found in The Latin Mass, all offline, I believe). As a youngster, I reacted to Fred Rogers roughly the same way (and I do believe Rogers merits more of a critique than an affirmation).
Art Deco:
There were two kinds of sitcom families in the 50s, the ideal and the real (or if not real, at least grittier). The premier example of the first is “Father Knows Best” and another was “Ozzie and Harriet” and still another “The Donna Reed Show.” Much of it was played for laughs, however, even the ideal. They were meant to present a wholesome, healthy picture as well as being amusing. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s show occupied some middle ground. The grittier shows were the William Bendix show “Life of Riley” and of course Gleason’s “The Honeymooners.” I watched them all.
I’d be careful there. The media usually reports that he acknowledged to have drugged one woman. But that isn’t actually true.
I read the transcription time ago, and it was something like that:
– Did you gave drugs to X?
– Yes
Actually, the lawyer never said ‘without her consent’, neither he asked ‘did you drug her?’. That’s a tricky question. If you bring some weed and pass a joint to a woman, you should answer ‘yes’ to that question, since you actually ‘gave’ it to her. The verb ‘to give’ doesn’t involve lack of consent. That’s the reason because the media always states that he acknowledged to have drugged a woman, but never quotes the exact words.
“But it also puts me in league with the Founding Fathers, who were very concerned about such issues. Their deep concern and the protections they built into the Constitution have protected us for a long time, but I fear that concern has virtually evaporated in the face of MeToo. And actually, it’s been evaporating for quite some time.” Neo
Yes. This is a grave concern. Julie near Chicago succinctly expresses the potential outcome of this unfortunate development. Ignorance of the foundational principles of our Republic is undermining our society. And social media seems to be a huge factor in creating a “mob mentality” about any subject du jour.
This whole Cosby thing is upsetting to me. I grew up with Cosby show and had all of Bills wonderful stand up on cassette tape (youtube Bills Noah bit, its his best IMHO)
Where are the Editors when you need them? (FAQ About Time Travel)
Yann:
Read my sentence again. I composed it very carefully. I do NOT say he gave her drugs without her consent. I said he may have had sex with her without her consent, having given her drugs. I think the preponderance of evidence is that the drugs were with the women’s consent.
My fault, then.
Yann:
No problem. It was easy to misunderstand.