The accusations are clearly untrustworthy, a mixture of clear extortion, bandwagoning and revenge. This is the exact same bullshit that has been deployed against Republican politicians and appointees to poison the well for them, and also men like Gian Ghomeshi, that comic guy that women are salty about pumping and dumping, and we also have JD and so on. There is a clear pattern of bullshit.
See, this is what's at the route of the issue, IMO. People are confusing (and the media is intentionally conflating) a few different things. 1) Weaponization of Title IX against normal sexual and romantic behavior among young adults. 2) Partisan accusations meant to prevent certain people from taking office. 3) Degenerate hollywood elites taking advantage of pushback against the first two in order excuse their own immoral and criminal behavior.
(Also, with 2) there are probably people who
did do it, and were allowed in precisely
because there was blackmail against them, who pissed off their handlers or got careless).
It is clear you are reaching. You want him to be guilty, because you were wrong and people hate to admit they are wrong. And there is a good way to slice this, the times were wild, insane and utterly degenerate and Hollywood itself is degenerate- so when you are the mire it is hard not to participate in it. And that Bill Cosby in fact pulled himself from the mire and bettered himself, which is why all of these accusations are old as hell.
"All of Hollywood is like that though!" Yeah, okay, so? We're just going to throw out morality because Hollywood types are scum? I don't care if he was the least scummy one of them - something that's entirely possible - they're all still scum.
The accusations aren't all "old as hell." The accusation he was convicted of was from 2004. The accusations themselves run up to 2008. There's another from 2004 and 2000. So three in the 2000s, seven in the 90s, twenty-two in the 80s, twenty in the 70s, seven in the 60s. Plus a number who testified in the 2005 civil case, where the date of accusation isn't publicly known. When exactly was he supposed to have "bettered" himself?
I'd agree some of the accusations were untrustworthy, but I also see no reason to extent cosby the total trust and unquestioning belief you seem to. cosby was a hollywood man - people we've already both acknowledged to be a category of people in which immoral and degenerate behavior is selected for. He was
at minimum a drug dealer and you've said you think he was "trading sex for drugs" and that this behavior is scummy. So he is definitely a scummy and untrustworthy person, given just the facts that we both acknowledge. Having actually found the deposition, I'm finding that your characterization as "trading sex for drugs" is flatly wrong, per his own testimony. In particular, in the Constand case, he says he gave her pills after she mentioned having issues with stress. He was not trading sex for drugs. He was
offering drugs - no explicit strings attached - and then having sex with the drugged person afterward. This is consistent both with what he himself says about how he used them, and situations in which he described using them, in his testimony, and my previous statement about what he was doing.
I think we also have pretty good reason to believe he was lying about some things in the testimony. For instance, he has testified that he gave her three pills, which he claims were Benadryl. In cases where the statue of limitations has expired, he's tesified that he used quaaludes.
In contrast, Andrea Constand in particular I think has many indications of being credible. This is not an allegation that went unreported for decades - Constand reported it in 2005. It is not an allegation where the victim attempted to keep things only in the domain of the media - Constand reported it to the police and filed a criminal complaint. It's not an allegation where the accused claims the encounter in question did not happen at all, or that they don't even know the accused and it's just someone trying to make a buck by accusing a famous person. Both cosby and Constand are describing the same event with many of the same details. It's a few key things that are in question, not the whole event, and so we can look at both stories and see if something sounds fake.
And the encounter doesn't make much sense at all if it was consensual. cosby's testimony is that they talked, Constand talked about stress, cosby got three pills which he claimed were Benadryl, and gave them to Constand for the stress, Constand examined the pills and then took them... and then that's the last thing Constand says or does herself, per cosby's own testimony. In cosby's story, immediately after Constand takes the pills, cosby makes a physical advance, and Constand doesn't say or do anything, she just sits there. And then cosby goes further, and Constand doesn't say or do anyting, she just sits there. And then cosby has sex with her, and Constant doesn't say or do anything. She just sits there.
This story (cosby's testimony) makes no fucking sense - cosby makes no advance prior to giving her the pills, he claims and tells her he gives her the pills for a totally unrelated reason, but immediately after the pills he believes she'll now be open to his advances and he moves immediately and physically without saying anything. And in this "consensual encounter" Constand doesn't ever
do anything or move, let alone
say anything. For several minutes. And then he left with her still not having moved or said anything.
And maybe I am wrong about you, but I am making an assumption based on what I know about human beings. And we all know why they went after him in the first place, because he was giving positive messaging to the African American community.
idk, maybe? I mean, I don't really think talking about how it's "a CULTURAL problem" and complaining about rap music actually does anything, and there's plenty of other people you can find to do that. But if that's the case, then the whole reason they let him in to start with is 'cause they had shit on him - or knew he was liable to behave in such a way that they'd
get dirt on him. Regardless, whatever messaging he was giving to blacks or whether that's dangerous to the "them" you're talking about (it isn't), it doesn't excuse criminal behavior, especially rape.
