Speaking for myself, I’m not sure what I would do. And I think most people fit that category. Anything that you say would be criticized and used as proof of guilt by people predisposed to do so, and a lot of people are either frozen by fear of saying the wrong thing, or flail about wildly hoping to catch the right note.
It’s very easy for people who are not in that situation to carefully craft some message and declare that this is the one which works. Not so easy IRL.
As I’ve said previously, I think the evidence against Cosby is overwhelming. But I don’t think his reaction shows anything at all.
Sorry. But the dude is rich and speechwriters craft tricky messages all the time. It won’t win over every single person in the world, but he already lost most of those people a long time ago.
The dude is rich and maybe his high-priced PR advisors have counseled him that the approach he’s taken is the best one available.
And frankly, considering the amount of support he seems to have from the public in spite of the amount of evidence against him, who is to say that this approach was wrong? Sure, you think that his approach proves his guilt. But you would undoubtedly have thought he was guilty anyway. (So would I, frankly.) I don’t see any reason to believe that people who didn’t otherwise think he is guilty tend to think his response points to guilt.
So what I’m gathering from this is that people are are falsely accused of rape and people who are falsely accused of lying about rape actually have a lot in common. We are all of us damned.
Maybe you watch different crime shows than I do, but in most of them, when someone is arrested, they say. . . anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law.
If accused of a serious crime, that would make it seem like it’s better to say nothing. Cosby still doesn’t know if anyone will accuse him in a criminal case that might stick. He’s said that he’s not speaking about it on the advice of his attorney, based on several articles I’ve read.
Even in the court of public opinion, the upside to saying anything is very limited. Anything he says will be scrutinized for contradictions, and he’ll be forced to account for proving things he may not be able to prove.
I’m also pretty skeptical that it would change anyone’s mind.
As I was doing a quick search on what he did say back in 2005, I came across this article. I’m not sure if it’s credible (that’s one of the problems I’m having with these media accounts), but here’s what he’s purported to have said:
I’ve seen statements attributed to him that were more about the accusations and disclaiming them in other articles.
Having read your posts on this subject, I doubt very much that those quotes have changed your mind about his guilt except maybe to make him look worse in your eyes.
This is why I’m against this whole thing being played out in the media. These are serious charges. They should be taken seriously. It’s now a he said/she said being played out in the media with claims of media bias being made along with a lot of “spin” in the writing.
As far as I can tell, Cosby was in no danger of being arrested then, or at any time since.
More importantly, the Miranda warning is significant for statements that would be incriminating. A genuinely innocent person, truthfully attesting their innocence, should theoretically not have anything to worry about.
I think you are very wrong.
Whatever limits there may be to the benefit of a genuinely innocent person speaking the truth, I see no upside at all to lawyering up and keeping quiet as allegations pile up and fester.
Bill Cosby, in particular, was enormously popular, and had tremendous benefit of the doubt working for him, even when he was mostly nonresponsive. If he had actually been innocent and said so, he could have marshalled a great tide of support. But that would have required confronting the accusations.
You’re against the media covering serious stories that are largely or entirely out of reach of the courts, or any other institutions?
You’re looking at the past. Cosby could still face a criminal charge. It’s possible the woman hasn’t come forward yet.
A truthful person asserting their innocence making a blanket statement is still subject to proving that statement. If the statement is too broad, there may be a contradiction in it. The statement that Cosby is not a rapist is being used here colloquially. If Cosby now says, “I’m not a rapist”, it’s actually true if you define a rapist as someone who has been convicted of rape. He could also say it to mean that he hasn’t had sex that he thinks wasn’t consensual. Both of those statements don’t really mean anything. But saying that without a charge facing him can give the implication that he’s trying to cover something.
If you said that you never raped anyone, but someone accuses you of rape, your statement is now in contradiction. In order to prove your innocence, you’d have to look at the individual accusation. The statement by itself it actually meaningless. The perception of consent on one side might not match the perception of consent by the other side, especially in these cases when the stories are from years ago.
Well, he did confront the allegations in 2005 when there was a charge facing him. He defended himselfto the first allegation that he settled:
He denied the second accusation back around that time:
It’s not clear what you want him to have said. If he just says, “I’m innocent”, it’s not clear what he’s innocent about. Each claim is different and requires a different response.
At this point, it’s only been 5 or 6 weeks since the second round of allegations are getting air time. With so many women and so many stories, he would at least have to get some information on who is making what allegation. There’s no actual court case facing him, so a lot of these allegations are stories told in the media. Which ones should he respond to? If he makes a blanket statement that they’re all not true, there may be parts that are true. It might also give the impression that he’s calling them all liars, which would not go over well, from what I’ve seen.
But would any of it really matter to you? Would you really change your mind based on his protestations of innocence that he’s not a rapist, then or now?
He could probably legitimately make the claim since he hasn’t been convicted of rape, but I don’t think that would change anything.
No, I’m not against the media covering serious stories that may be out of the reach of courts or other institutions.
If you look at the quote I’m responding to, none of those issues were being discussed in the quote. Your question is a complete non-sequitur.
I do not. A rapist is someone who has in fact committed rape, regardless of whether the matter ever receives any court attention or what the outcome of that may be. If I were speaking specifically of a court outcome, I would say “convicted rapist,” or something similarly explicit.
Nonsense. I am not a rapist. This is an absolutely clear, categorical statement.
My understanding is that there have been many more than two ‘rounds’ of allegations, but Cosby’s nonengagement with them, and the media’s failure to pursue the matter aporopriately (until recently) has meant that they did not receive broad airing.
Then, yes. Or rather, it would have supported my existing impression of him as not that sort of man. Like most people, I carried for years a basically positive view of Cosby, and was certainly prepared to, and did, give him the benefit of the doubt, until the weight of evidence against him grew to be rationally incompatible with that view.
Now, I think not. It is too late for Bill Cosby. He has not behaved in any of the ways I can understand a genuinely innocent man would in such circumstances.
Very good. So we agree, the media are, collectively, doing their job, now, better than they did then. (At least some journalists, like Ta-Nehisi Coates, acknowledge their prior failure of duty.)
Sam Simon, a Simpsons writer who worked on the Fat Albert show, tweeted a couple of weeks ago that Cosby’s dissertation was actually written by two Fat Albert staff writers.
Thankfully, Cosby has upcoming shows in Canada that haven’t yet been cancelled. I surprised the witch hunt hasn’t forced the promoters to cancel the shows.
Considering I posted almost the exact opposite of that statement two iterations of reply ago, I don’t know how you would come to that conclusion. No, I don’t agree that the media are collectively doing their job better now in this case.
I do agree with Coates that he should have investigated at the time and brought forth both sides. But his failure to do so and his admission doesn’t play in favor of any conclusion except that he failed his journalistic duty.
As for the rest, we disagree on what would have happened had Cosby responded differently to the allegations. It’s a moot point since it’s impossible to go backwards and see what would have happened. It’s also possible that some of Cosby’s response in the past was lost in the present media coverage.
Journalism doesn’t expire based on time. If something happened, it happened, and you report it. The press is doing its job when it publicizes information of interest to the public. It’s not doing its job if it shrugs its shoulders and says “eh, it’s a big deal but since we didn’t report it years ago, we have to cover it up now.”
Perhaps. But other than that you seem to disagree with those statements and that you’re willing to attribute words to me that I didn’t post (and in fact posted the opposite), your point is not very clear.
His point is that if you are sincere about your belief regarding the purpose of journalism, then you must applaud journalists for pursuing a story that was previously unjustifiably neglected.
Let me reiterate my stance that I don’t feel the average citizen has any compelling need to decide about Cosby’s guilt one way or another, nor do I think a refusal to decide he is guilty makes the skeptic a terrible person. I want to make that real clear, because some people have said such things.
That said, the holdouts are really starting to puzzle me. What tips the scale from my perspective is that Cosby has always had this reputation among comedians. For current comedians to come out and say, ‘‘Yeah, he has a reputation for this, finally the shit is sticking to him’’ for us to be able to go back 10 or 20 years and find stories and rumors all over the place, long before any of this got so much attention (hell, it’s even been discussed on the Dope), and for at least a few people to come forward and independently corroborate some of the victims’s stories, I’m really just kind of perplexed that people still have reservations about concluding that he probably did what he was accused of doing.
At the very least *something *happened that left a bunch of people with scores to be settled with Cosby, and that festered for years. I find it hard to imagine complete innocence on his side and pure malicious fabrication on the other.
I think his previous reputation was as a horndog and cheater. That probably annoyed those people because it was the opposite of what he presented to his fans.
I’m one of those ‘holdouts’. I don’t care about his banging groupies. I’m still waiting for the evidence that he drugged and raped them.
I’m convinced that some of the support for Cosby is attributable to his pull-up-your-pants tough talk to African American youth. White male conservatives LOVE Cosby because he inoculates them against racism. “See? Cosby’s black too and even HE says black kids should stop acting like thugs and wearing hoodies and listening to hippety-hop music! So it’s totally not racist to hate and fear black kids!”
If Cosby’s a phony, then he loses that moral authority. Who are they going to turn to then? Wayne Brady?