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Comment count is 18
poorwill - 2014-11-24

Well, I think there's a distinction between rape and rape rape rape rape rape.


infinite zest - 2014-11-24

At this point I think I'd need about 17 more, but I don't want to screw up the lining like that AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA thing did.


Sanest Man Alive - 2014-11-24

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAA is both the best tag AND title on this whole site, zest. Go ahead, shoot the moon.


EvilHomer - 2014-11-24

So... I know that Bill Cosby allegedly raped some women. Many, many women (at least a dozen) over the course of his career, and all of the accounts involve some form of date-rape drug. This is not new info and I get that.

My question is, why the sudden interest, why now? What sparked the internet's fixation on Cosby's rape hobby these last couple months?

I've been poking around, and various news sites attribute this viral "Cosby is a rapist" meme to *his own PR guy*, and a social media stunt gone very, very wrong:

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/bill-cosby

Is this true? Did Bill's own people inadvertently Streisand him? I hope that's true, because that would be hilarious.


fermun - 2014-11-24

No. Allegations of Bill Cosby's rapey past had been ongoing for at least 20 years, it just never really caught on in the media. It'd get mentioned as a minor point and moved past, but we are at a societal point where the media is willing to listen to rape allegations, Hannibal Buress is a popular man comedian who brought attention to women's issues, and now 22 women with likely and compelling stories have so far come forward independently about it.


Bort - 2014-11-24

Hannibal Buress had been mentioning Cosby rape allegations in his act for months, but for some reason, someone happened to be listening a few weeks back who wrote about it. It was just a matter of a spark eventually hitting something flammable, like a virus.

For synchronicity, there's an episode of "Broad City" where Hannibal's character (a dentist named Lincoln) knocks his sort-of girlfriend unconscious to do dental work on her, and naturally he takes advantage of her. By which I mean he professes how he wishes the two of them were monogamous, and he moves her lips while doing a high pitched voice of her saying the things he wishes she'd say.


EvilHomer - 2014-11-24

Yeah, again, I know there've been allegations already, and I remember the Hannibal Buress thing. But that doesn't really explain the sudden *explosion* of interest in Bill Cosby, not necessarily here on poeTV (we've been on Cosby since Burgessgate, IRRC) but rather on the internet as a whole. The media's "willingness" to talk about rape allegations seems to be a response to this sudden upswelling of grassroots anti-Cosbyism†, which as near as I can tell, can be traced back to Bill's poorly-timed #CosbyMeme campaign on Twitter.

I'd also like to add that I really wish Bill would speak on this (although his respect his right not to), or else that it would be brought to trial, swiftly and quietly. Things certainly look bad for Bill - the sheer number and eery similarities between the accusations certainly have me convinced he's a rapist. But what *I* think doesn't really matter, or at least *shouldn't* really matter; not unless I'm on his jury, not unless I've been presented with arguments and evidence from both the accusers and the accused. What we're seeing here is the makings of YET ANOTHER mob-rule trial-by-media, where neither the presumption of innocence nor the principles of due process mean a thing, and both reason and compassion take a backseat to the people's primal desire to watch a good ol'fashioned public lynching.

Which I guess leads me to another question: is this an essential part of the cultural ritual now? Bill is in his late 70s; he may not have long to live, and even if he does, odds are advancing health concerns will mean his career is functionally over. It seems like Western society in particular loves to break down the secular celebrities that they've built up over the years, but only once these celebrities have outlived their functional usefulness. Phil Spector wasn't arrested until he became irrelevant. Michael Jackson needed sagging album sales and hideously botched cosmetic surgery before he was thrown to the wolves. Hell, Jimmy Saville wasn't torn down until *after he'd died*, and Saville was one of the biggest creepers in modern British society (that the BBC will allow us to know about, at any rate). Maybe OccupyCosby is simply our historically inevitable send-off party for the sweater-wearing old codger?



†(as usual, the New Old Media exists solely to regurgitate whatever it sees on the internet, and hope enough shmucks click their pointless links to justify whatever fees they charge their advertisers)


yogarfield - 2014-11-24

I am dumbstruck by the "Meme Me!" thing.


Bort - 2014-11-24

In a perfect world, Cosby would be on trial for rape. And in a perfect world, rape could generally be prosecuted as successfully as, say, cutting someone's arm off with a chainsaw.

But the difficulties of prosecuting rape are only magnified by the fact that the alleged rapist has money, power, and influence in the career that most of these women were trying to break into. So I can understand why they might not have reported rape to the police: they'd sound crazy ("Bill Cosby -- a rapist? WHAAAA?") and they'd be following up the rape with a self-inflicted wound.

I'm not big on trying celebrities in the media -- I still remember the lessons from ruining Fatty Arbuckle's life -- but in this case, there are many women telling very similar stories, with little to gain. I can doubt one woman, maybe two, but all of them? Either there is a conspiracy directing them, or most/all of them have been raped by Cosby.


StanleyPain - 2014-11-24

Cosby's infamy as an asshole off-screen (and womanizer) is something I remember in the 80s and 90s pretty much only ever being discussed by black people. Black comedians were the only ones ever joking about it or calling him out on it (mostly because of his moralizing throughout the 80s about how awful black comedy was because it wasn't family friendly). I think that the media at large had a severe allergy to even wanting to discuss anything having to do with the stories about Cosby sexually harassing virtually everything with two legs because his image had been cemented as the nice-guy black comedian who bridged the gap so well and could be "Accepted" into white culture or something.
This is why I can't stand all the people defending Cosby in this "why did these women wait till now?" garbage trying to shame the victims because this stuff was hovering just over his head for DECADES and it was the elephant in the room that never got discussed except on those rare occasions where a comedian or the rare article made mention of the subject.


Potrod - 2014-11-24

Phil Spector wasn't arrested until he murdered someone.


John Holmes Motherfucker - 2014-11-24

I think that after a long slow trickle, it simply reached the point where the story was "out there", and that meant that a reporter who mentioned it wasn't taking the responsibility for breaking it. Once it was easier for reporters to talk about Women became aware of other women coming forward, and so they came forward. It's just a simple tipping point thing.


Adham Nu'man - 2014-11-24

I hate everyone in this video.


dairyqueenlatifah - 2014-11-24

Agreed.


yogarfield - 2014-11-24

So Cosby's live show consists of him falling out of his chair and talking gibberish on the floor in a pair of sweat pants? My grandfather was pretty good at that.

Guess it goes to show that if you want to make it in showbiz, you're gonna have to rape a dozen or so people.


infinite zest - 2014-11-24

I remember seeing one of his specials once, I think at my grandparents' house and yeah: it's just things like "ooh kids these days" and reminiscing about his life and all the stuff his friends would do and other stories. It was really less "stand up" and more like one of those Hal Holbrook things where he goes around dressed like Mark Twain, telling a few jokes and then getting all serious for a sec.. in other words it's perfect for the Branson crowd.


John Holmes Motherfucker - 2014-11-24

I want to say that a long long time ago he was brilliant, but I need to take another look before I trust the opinion of my former self.


yogarfield - 2014-11-26

Keyframe from "Moralizing Gobble-de-gook Standup" to "Slobbery Gibberish on the Floor" and tell me how long it takes to render that sequence.


Oh snap, I went there.


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