The smiles turn off for Cosby
Spectacular Fall | Bill Cosby lectured black America on family and morality. Now accused of sexual assault, he apparently has nothing to say, writes Hadley Freeman. He is not the only star whose fame has protected him
BILL Cosby was the first black comedian to break into the US mainstream and, doubtless to his bewilderment, he has had a rocky relationship with many of the black comedians who followed in his footsteps.
Richard Pryor initially copied him, then reacted against Cosby’s cosy persona, rejecting it as phoney. Eddie Murphy famously ridiculed Cosby in his legendary 1989 live show Raw.
More recently, Chris Rock took issue with Cosby after he suggested Trayvon Martin’s death was more to do with guns than race, a claim that’s all the more puzzling considering that Cosby’s son, Ennis, was shot dead by a racist in 1997.
And now Cosby has been brought down by another black comedian. Hannibal Buress did a skit in his act last month that has brought both him and Cosby an enormous amount of attention: “It’s even worse because Bill Cosby has the f***ing smuggest old black man public persona that I hate,” Buress said. “He gets on TV: ‘Pull your pants up, black people, I was on TV in the ’80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom.’ Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches.”
Some have claimed that people started paying attention to allegations of Cosby assaulting women only when men spoke up about it, Buress included.
But even back in 2005 these stories were being covered by the national press in the US. Tamara Green, interviewed on NBC’s The Today Show, said that in the ’70s Cosby plied her with pills and molested her.
His early stand-up routines focused on cosy, race-free anecdotes to break into the white mainstream
Later that year, the Philadelphia Daily News covered Beth Ferrier’s story in which she alleged that Cosby drugged and assaulted her in the ’80s. The year after that, People magazine interviewed Barbara Bowman, who alleged that Cosby assaulted her in the ’80s.
During all this, Cosby settled a lawsuit brought by another accuser, Andrea Constand, who alleged that he drugged and molested her in 2004.
Earlier this year, Newsweek interviewed Bowman and Green about their allegations.
These stories have been around for a while, and if it’s taken a decade for them to affect Cosby’s career, that is a reflection of a growing intolerance among the public for bad behaviour (for want of a better term) from men in the public eye, coupled with the brave tenacity of the women making allegations in the face of plenty of initial doubt.
At the moment 17 women have made allegations against Cosby, including actress Janice Dickinson.
An equally important factor is the position Cosby has held in America, and especially black America, for 50 years — and this, in many respects, is the most revealing factor as we face what looks increasingly like the end of his career.
The reason that so many black comedians have reacted against the man who arguably paved the way for them is that Cosby has always been the archetypal conservative, with a small c.
His early stand-up routines focused on cosy, race-free anecdotes about childhood because he felt — not entirely incorrectly — that this was the way to break into the white mainstream. As Cosby became more successful in the ’70s, he grew increasingly sensitive about the portrayals of black Americans in the media, and how much he believed that black Americans encouraged these negative portrayals. This is why he criticised Murphy for swearing and it’s why he created The Cosby Show. For five of its eight years, it was the most watched show in the US.
Here Cosby presented a view of black American family life that was
He set himself up as the image of conservative paternalistic morality in black America
unfamiliar to American television. It was based on stability, wealth and happiness, and not defined by race — indeed, race was absent from the show to an extent that at times defied credulity.
Nevertheless, the show reflected Cosby’s vision of life for black Americans, and it was one that “gestured at the ideal of black self-sufficiency — the notion that, with enough time and effort, African-Americans . . . could fix their own problems”, as The New Yorker writer Kelefa Sanneh put it.
This attitude lay behind Cosby’s speech in 2004 when he expressed, at some length, his exasperation with black Americans blaming white people for their problems.
He set himself up as the image of conservative paternalistic morality in black America, whether black people liked it or not— and plenty didn’t — but he was still the one who broke through first.
His success as a pioneer and, more crucially, his self-fashioned image for a long time protected him from the allegations. Now they make the crimes he is accused of committing feel even more cruel and repulsive than they already are.
One of the most interesting aspects of Cosby’s career has been his tenaciously loud voice arguing for young black men to take responsibility for themselves and improve their selfimage. And yet, when Cosby himself was asked on radio last weekend about the allegations of rape against him, all the old man could offer was silence. — © The Guardian
MORE alleged victims of Bill Cosby have come forward, but the comedian made no mention of the allegations against him as he performed a show for a women’s charity in the Bahamas.
The latest claims included one from Louisa Moritz, 68, an actress who played Rose in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
It brought to six the number of women who have gone public in recent weeks with allegations that they were sexually assaulted by Cosby, sometimes after being drugged.
Despite the furore, Cosby, 77, continued with a sold-out charity comedy performance in the Bahamas for a women’s group called The Links, Incorporated, which runs a safe house for women in crisis. He took the stage to a standing ovation and gave the audience a thumbs up.
Camille Cosby, his wife of 50 years, was there with him.
Moritz told the celebrity news website TMZ that Cosby walked into her dressing room and sexually assaulted her before an appearance on The Tonight Show in 1971.
She claimed that, after the assault, Cosby told her: “You don’t want to upset me and the plans for your future, do you?”
The claim was strenuously denied by Cosby’s lawyer, Marty Singer, who said: “We have reached a point of absurdity. The stories are getting more ridiculous. I think people are trying to come up with these wild stories in order to justify why they have waited 40 to 50 years to disclose these ridiculous accusations.”
Another woman, Therese Serignese, 57, a nurse in Boca Raton, Florida, claimed Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in 1976 when she was 19.
She said she was backstage with Cosby after a Las Vegas show when he gave her two pills and a glass of water.
She said: “My next memory is clearly feeling drugged, being without my clothes, standing up. Bill Cosby was behind me, having sex with me.”
A seventh woman, Carla Ferrigno, described an alleged encounter with Cosby in 1967 when she was playing pool with him at his house and his wife was upstairs.
Ferrigno told a California radio station that Cosby grabbed her and kissed her “really, really roughly”, but she pushed him away and ran off. She claimed he “loved young, blonde pretty girls”.
Addressing her claim, Singer said: “This continuation of a pattern of attacks on Mr Cosby has entered the realm of the ridiculous with a purported ‘forceful kiss’ at a party in 1967, nearly 50 years ago, being treated as a current news story and grossly mischaracterised as sexual assault. This is utter nonsense.
“People coming out of nowhere with this sort of inane yarn is what happens in a mediadriven feeding frenzy.”
Glenda Newell-Harris, president of The Links, Incorporated, said Cosby had been booked to perform before the allegations came to light.
“Recent accusations against Bill Cosby are alarming and unsettling. We trust that the appropriate authorities will conduct a thorough investigation.
“The Links, Incorporated believes in the judicial system of the US as well as every citizen’s right to due process.” — © The