Can I say I regret what’s going on with Bill Cosby without everyone interpreting it to mean I regret what’s happening to Bill Cosby?
What’s in it for the women coming forward with their accusations? At this late date they must know Bill Cosby isn’t going to be prosecuted. They must know there’s no chance of suing him successfully; any evidence is long gone and at this point it’s she said/he said. They must know there’s no possibility of financial recompense.
That, plus the sheer number of women coming forward and the consistency of detail in their allegations, is enough to convince me they’re telling the truth.
To conclude there’s nothing in it for Cosby’s accusers, though, is wrong. There’s justice in it. These women, who were not listened to before, are being listened to now. What Cosby almost certainly did to them can no longer be ignored or brushed over. Cosby’s punishment may be late, but it’s very real. His reputation, if not destroyed, is at least badly damaged. Not that he needs the money, but he’s going to have a hard time finding work in his last years. New comedy shows have been called off. Cable stations are dropping reruns, which will impact royalties. He’s probably down for the count.
What I regret is the extra-judicial manner in which justice is being done. Maybe a Twitter feeding frenzy was the only way to bring Bill Cosby to justice, but I’m torn. If you read my blog, you know what I think of Twitter witch hunts. There have been a lot of them, and they can be vicious. Just ask Michelle Shocked. Or those who have lost jobs or been hounded out of the public arena after the screaming banshees of Twitter turned against them.
Sure, there’s always been a court of public opinion. Once in a while, in the days before Twitter, the court would exact justice. O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder, but the court of public opinion held him guilty and he was under constant pressure and scrutiny as a result. Eventually it caught up to him and he’s in prison for an unrelated crime that might not have landed him there if it had not been for the court of public opinion and a near-universal sense that O.J. was part of this nation’s unfinished business.
Michael Jackson was tried by the court of public opinion, but his fan base stuck by him and he survived, unlike O.J. I wonder if Michael Jackson, were he still alive and sleeping with young boys, would survive a trial by Twitter.
Bill Cosby himself had a brush with the court of public opinion in the pre-Twitter days … the rape charges have been around a long time … but like Michael Jackson, he survived. Until Twitter, that is. Now he’s been charged, tried, and found guilty, and his remaining friends and backers are running scared.
Social media, and especially Twitter, has in my opinion supercharged the court of public opinion. There’s not much time for reflection or a sober consideration of the known facts these days; the administration of punishment is swift and merciless.
Who among us, I always ask. Who among us has lived a blameless life? Who among us could survive the kind of shit storm Bill Cosby is weathering now?
As I write, conservative operatives are no doubt beating the bushes, trying to flush out new Clinton accusers. Who still cares about Bill Clinton’s reputation? Well, people who want to stop Hillary sure care. If any women come forward, you can bet they’ll be extensively interviewed on Fox News, and social media campaigns might just shift the tide of public opinion against Clinton, who in spite of past accusations is still loved … but you could have said the same thing about Bill Cosby two weeks ago.
Who else, rightly or wrongly, will become the victim of a social media witch hunt?
Is this really the way we want to administer justice?
I have two questions about this, one is whether the women involved see this a chance for publicity and gain through that and about the consistency of their accounts, once one of the accounts was published was it possible for others coming forward to simply replicate what they’d read? I’m not saying that’s what happened and in fact cynic that I am I find the accusations perfectly feasible. Still like you, I don’t care for the court of public opinion finding it too fickle.
I wanted to say something about white people piling on Cosby about the pound cake speech. Cosby spoke as a black man to a black audience, inspiring a conservative movement in the black community that is significant today. It is fine for Jesse Jackson to deplore what Cosby said. It ain’t fine for me to do so.
I also want to make it clear I understand the difference between consensual sex and rape, unlike the legions on the right who are already mounting the very social media campaign against Clinton I warned of above.