STFU, Phylicia Rashad.
Yes, shut up, Phylicia. We already paid for the torches and pitchforks.
And people wonder why no one has been speaking up on Cosby’s behalf. :rolleyes:
I’m surprised Rashad and Keshia Knight Pulliam haven’t been called rape supporters or apologists yet.
I don’t have a problem with Rashad defending Cosby, except for the “forget these women” part – as if they are worthless, and nothing they ever have to say about anything (much less their personal experiences) should be listened to or trusted. That’s offensively dismissive – “don’t listen to anyone who says something bad about Bill”.
What Pulliam said was fine – ‘that’s not the Bill I know, and I’ve never experienced anything like that with him’ – entirely reasonable. But “forget these women”? No, I think I’ll listen to them and hear what they have to say.
Fwiw Rashad says she was misquoted, and actually just said it’s not about these women but instead is about a legacy. I still find that somewhat objectionable but I understand she is taking about a friend and someone who represents a lot about race and culture that is important to her.
Pulliam’s quote seems to carefully avoid actually defending him.
I don’t think we should ‘forget these women either.’ I think we should question them. Why now? Any other motivation, such as money or revenge? What’s their history with any other similar cases?
The timing of these women coming out with these hard to believe stories is suspicious. Allowing the media to give them open season on Cosby while not investigating their motives is despicable.
You would find any timing suspicious.
I suspect its more about her royalty checks drying up. She must have been getting a regular flow of cash from reruns until recently.
There’s nothing suspicious about the timing at all. If you’re the only persons saying this about Cosby, chances are overwhelming that people will call you a crazy attention whore and worse. You have to be really brave to tell what happened in the face of such certain mass opprobrium.
But if someone has come out to accuse Cosby of being a rapist, it gives you a little protection from the crazy-attention-whore shouts. And the more other people that have come forward with similar claims, the less likely you’ll face a lot of claims of being a liar.
Assuming that the charges are true, this is exactly the timing I’d expect the victims to have in sharing their stories.
Moreover, there’s nothing that’s particularly hard to believe about the stories.
I think it’s because people will listen to them. The Cosby story is a big deal these days, and you know you’ll get a hearing. If it’s not the Big Story of the day you might get ignored. The same goes for the Sandusky accusers and any number of similar stories - this is pretty common.
Which is not to say that there are not also a number of accusers who are attention whores or fast buck cash out artists, who are contriving or exagerating their stories - I suspect that there are (as in all these celebrity scandal pile-ons). But that doesn’t mean that all the stories are bogus or that there’s anything suspicious about coming forward at this time.
When you work with someone and see them a lot, you feel like you know them pretty well. I could see having a very strong vision of exactly who someone is based on working with them extensively. That vision may be right or wrong, but it would be hard to shake.
Well, it is. It’s based entirely on who Cosby is, in one way or another. They can’t decide that it’s fake, but they can cling to the fact that there’s no direct evidence. They want it to be true that Cosby is innocent, so they ignore the evidence to the contrary. They aren’t holdouts on making a decision, they are siding with Cosby as much as they can get away with.
That’s completely different from the average citizen who doesn’t want to make a decision. They aren’t studying the case or trying to figuring it out. They may not know about all the things that make this so likely to be true. But they are also not a part of any discussion.
There just is no way, at this point, for a rational person with no biases to look at this situation and not believe Cosby probably did what he is accused of. Maybe not in every case, but the idea that it is entirely false is just not tenable.
So instead you have people grasping at straws and failing to make a coherent point. Anything to avoid saying, “yeah, he’s probably guilty.”
If someone likes Cosby, then to admit he’s guilty means they have to admit they were wrong about him. Rather than try to reconcile the fact that they admired someone who did bad things, they grasp at straws to maintain their original perception of him.
This happens in a lot of cases. Someone will be charged with a terrible crime, and the parents maintain their child’s innocence regardless of the evidence. They cannot accept that their child is guilty. They’ll come up with all sorts of contrivances that allow them to view their child as innocent. I often take the statements of close friends and family with a grain of salt because of this. Because they want to maintain their own image of the person, they cannot objectively evaluate the evidence.
Bill made a rape joke on stage last night.
“Too soon” might be an understatement.
ISTM that many people assume that people who commit various types of crimes are creepy and/or vicious people whose criminal tendencies manifest themselves in their ordinary interactions with others.
This bias is reinforced when they find out about such people’s crimes before they know them otherwise, in that they find this creepiness and vicousness about them simply based on their predisposition to find it, which then adds to their perception that such criminals are “like that guy”.
But conversely, when they already know someone and found them to be “normal” it precludes them from being this type of criminal in their minds, because “normal” people don’t act that way.
You get a lot of this with people who knew pedophiles and serial killers before being confronted with the evidence.
Of course, in reality, people compartmentalize a lot, and you really can’t tell at all.
That is incredibly disgusting.
I thought the joke was great. It shows he’s completely comfortable with himself. He knows he’s been convicted by many in the court of public opinion. He can joke about it since he’s proclaimed his innocence. I doubt he’d make a joke like that unless he truly was innocent.
… a sexual predator?
… a lizard person?
… unusually attracted to rutabagas?