Tuesday, November 17, 2015

The Bill Comes Due!


The grim fall of Bill Cosby is a tragedy, of Shakespearean proportions. A wildly popular and respected man possessed by  uncontrollable passions uses his power and influence to damage and control those around him and make use of them for his own pleasures, but ultimately discovers that the light of truth finds him out and his destruction is slow and agonizing and  complete, the love he once commanded all but disappeared.


Let me be clear, Bill Cosby deserves all the public humiliation he's getting and more, he deserves to go to jail. That will not happen but his fortune will in all probability be considerably diminished as his worldwide fame has already done. But before those who heap that pain on him forget it is the broader society which allowed him to operate with nigh impunity for decades, ignoring the stories told by his victims even as those stories multiplied out of all reason. I still hear folks say there is no actual evidence of his crimes, but what is the testimony of nearly forty women if not evidence. Certainly men and women have been sent to prison with far less such evidence.


Now that Cosby has all but admitted to his crimes out of his own mouth, his defenders have finally slunk away and only the the most brazen few continue to suggest his crimes were merely the nature of the way intimate relations were done back in the day. Ludicrous and dangerous attitudes which point up a strain of thought which still wants to hold women as primarily chattel.

But as always there are larger issues at hand. Cosby's celebrity makes this story an irresistible zinger for the news media, but hopefully this woeful tale will become cautionary and allow the next victim to rely upon a system which won't immediately disregard the evidence when the next crime is committed.

But I doubt it. 

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6 comments:

  1. Cosby wasn't as popular in Britain as he was in America, so his fall from grace doesn't have quite the same impact over here in terms of public disappointment, but it's still a shocker. Britain has had its own share of childhood heroes whose exposed debaucheries have tainted the memories of many youthful memories way beyond the actual victims themselves.

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    1. I'm amazed people still defend him, even with the overwhelming evidence and defacto admissions from the man himself.

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  2. Yep, at least with Cosby, he’s still alive to somewhat face some consequences. Britain’s Jimmy Savile for instance, died before anyone could exact justice:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile

    I’m reminded of an early issue of The Punisher where Castle actually broke into prison to settle the score with a smug molester/murderer…

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    1. I'd heard of that and after looking it up it's pretty staggering.

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  3. I listened to his records all the time when I was growing up. I think of some of his routines on a daily basis. It's probably in poor taste to think about them now :(

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    1. It's tough to compartmentalize his comedy from his life because he seemed to draw on one to inform the other, or so we thought. Regrettable all the way.

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