Ranting On...Bill Cosby

I was a bit young for The Cosby Show, if we're being honest.  I was a child of the 90's, not the 80's, and as a result my quintessential television dads were Al Bundy, Homer Simpson, Tim Taylor, and Ray Barone, not Cliff Huxtable.  Therefore when I see Bill Cosby I see a legendary comedian and the guy who made me beg for Jell-O every time my mom took me to the grocery store.  But I understand how important he was to a generation of young people, and particularly African-Americans.  The Cosby Show was the Number One show in America for five straight years, a feat only equalled by one other scripted television show (All in the Family), and showed a different aspect of the African-American experience that hadn't been seen on television before the Huxtables entered our sets.

So I do understand why the allegations against Mr. Cosby have to be particularly upsetting for so many people.  In many ways, for many people, it feels like a surrogate father has had a decided fall from grace.  Cosby opened doors for infinite young black comedians, and has been a hero to a generation of Americans who saw his push for strong values in entertainment and his continued stress on the importance of education as a goal worth fighting for, a goal worth striving toward.  However, I think it's time to start realizing that this situation is not going to get better, and that Bill Cosby, as it turned out, was not the perfect and lovable human being that Cliff Huxtable was, but instead just a very good actor who had a terrible dark side.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this entire scandal, and lord knows there are a lot of disturbing aspects, is how quickly the media and random people on Twitter are willing to dismiss the claims made by (as of this writing) around twenty women who stated that Cosby drugged, assaulted, and/or raped them.  I can understand the hurt of someone like say Whoopi Goldberg or Jill Scott, who personally know Cosby and have trouble coinciding the man that they have known for years with the man these women are describing.  But the media and in particular social media have been visceral.  Women like Janice Dickinson got viciously attacked and dismissed by the media, despite their stories seeming very similar in tone and action to that of other women that were attacked. Beverly Johnson, another iconic supermodel of the 1970's, came out on Thursday with an article in Vanity Fair about being drugged by Mr. Cosby, and her personal struggles with coming forward considering Mr. Cosby's stature within the African-American community (if you haven't read the article yet, I suggest that you do).

Yet we so often find that the media is reluctant to side with these women.  You see it in the way that they cover the cases of a very famous person, particularly a man, when they are in the throes of a major scandal, and it's quite sickening.  You see it when they jump all over something like the University of Virginia/Rolling Stone article regarding "Jackie" despite the vast majority of rape allegations being true.  We live in a culture of innocent-until-proven-guilty, absolutely, but the media and social media has been extremely defensive in this particular case, and frequently seems to put the onus on the victim to prove the horrible things that have happened to them, and giving monumental benefit-of-the-doubt to the accused.

And the way that rape cases are treated in this country is appalling.  We already are in a situation where nearly 60% of all rapes are never reported, and thanks to the statute of limitations, many of those reported cannot stand trial because of the shame and PTSD that occur as a result of not being able to immediately admit something so traumatic has happened.  Even when a victim does come forward immediately, there is no guarantee that his or her case will stand trial, or even that the rape kit will be tested.  An article by the Daily Beast earlier this year indicated that across the country 400,000 rape kits are left untested, despite the DNA evidence potentially being a way for rapists to be convicted (this is particularly appalling when you consider that cities that have cleaned out their backlog like Cleveland and Detroit have identified hundreds of rapists in the process, that currently only 3% of rapists will actually serve jail time thanks to the statue of limitations, the law's ambivalence toward processing rape kits, and the way that the legal and media system have created a shame-based culture around rape victims).  Processing these rape kits is vitally important, particularly because, according to the University of Massachusetts, the typical rapist will assault an average of six victims.  Processing these claims and creating a culture that doesn't continue to push shame and doubt toward victims will surely create a culture that also experiences less sexual assault by having less repeat offenders.

This is why I find the treatment of the women accusing Bill Cosby to be so appalling.  As far as I can tell, none of these women will actually be taking Mr. Cosby to jail due to the statute of limitations being out, and some of these women have been saying these things for decades with little heed paid to their allegations.  These women deserved their day in court, but the powers-that-be didn't allow that.  However, to say that there is a conspiracy between a group of random women to bring down a comedian-this seems absurd, and I think that the group think to give Cosby the benefit of the doubt after so many people have come forward with similar stories is shameful, and something we should all look a bit harder in ourselves if that is our reaction.  It may not be easy to reconcile the man who served as a celluloid father for a nation with the man who allegedly drugged and raped women, but the evidence surrounding this, in my eyes, is impossible to ignore, and it's time to start treating these allegations, and the allegations of all victims, with the seriousness and respect that they deserve.