On Cosby: Alleged, schmalleged
Do we really need to keep referring to the comedians alleged attacks?
AT LAST, from Bill Cosby's own ugly mouth, we have his admission that he obtained sedatives to give to young women with whom he wanted to have sex.
"I meet [her] in Las Vegas," he says of one of his accusers, a 19-year-old, in the 2005 court transcript obtained this week by the Associated Press. "She meets me backstage. I give her Quaaludes. We then have sex . . . I think she may very well have been happy to be around the show-business surroundings."
Maybe that's how Cosby lived with himself after every encounter involving himself, a beautiful young woman and the Quaaludes that put her into a stupor while Cosby allegedly roamed over her like a cigar-smoking Land Rover.
He just told himself that the great Cos - America's favorite TV dad! Lovable pudding huckster! - was giving another star-struck hottie what she wanted.
Even if she was too blotto to know what she was getting.
The day probably will never come when we won't have to use the word "alleged" to describe the stealth attacks that Cosby is accused of committing, because the criminal statutes regarding all but one of the allegations lapsed a long time ago. But it frustrates the hell out of me to use "alleged" about a man who has been accused by more than 40 women of sexually assaulting them - or trying to - after he drugged them stupid.
So, for the record, I'm using "alleged" under protest.
What's so chilling about the alleged assaults is how brazenly they conflict with the image Cosby cultivated over a career that scored him Emmys and Grammys, humanitarian and lifetime-achievement awards, a Presidential Medal of Freedom and so many honorary doctorate degrees that he probably keeps a cap and gown in the Caddy during graduation season.
It all went to his head, peaking in his controversial 2004 speech, later dubbed "The Ghettosburg Address," in which he excoriated low-income blacks for abandoning responsible parenting and personal responsibility.
Reading parts of it now is chilling.
"Isn't it a sign of something" wrong with young girls "when she got her dress all the way up to the crack . . . and got all kinds of needles and things going through her body?" he asked.
What kind of sociopath says such a thing, when he's been using Quaaludes to get women to screw him?
"What is it with young girls getting after some girl who still wants to remain a virgin?" he continued, adamant about the right of females to protect their virtue.
Unless, what, they're too wacked out to do so?
"No longer is a person embarrassed because they're pregnant without a husband," he said, even though he'd paid thousands of dollars secretly to a former mistress and to the child who claimed she was his daughter.
Do as Cos says, people, not what he does.
And, speaking of embarrassment, Cosby lamented the stupidity of "people getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of [stolen] pound cake!" He said that what had kept him from stealing a piece of pound cake as a kid was the embarrassment it would cause his mother and family.
Yet he didn't fear their embarrassment when he fed Quaaludes to young women who thought the charming Dr. Huxtable had befriended them, only to fall victim to his evil Mr. Hyde.
Cosby's lawyers, in trying to block the release of the court records containing his Quaalude confession, stated that Cosby's embarrassment would be "particularly serious" because the records delve "into the most intimate subjects imaginable."
The court didn't buy it nor the argument that the release would violate Cosby's privacy, since he "has donned the mantle of public moralist and mounted the proverbial electronic or print soap box to volunteer views on, among other things, child-rearing, family life, education and crime."
In the 10 years since Cosby gave sworn testimony in that civil suit - a suit whose words he believed would never be made public - he has arrogantly characterized his accusers as gold-diggers out to exploit his fame for monetary gain.
All the while, he'd been exploiting his own fame at their expense, using them like blow-up dolls to be used, deflated, then replaced with the next model.
You know - allegedly.
The release of the court records gives us a glimpse into a shocking side of Cosby. For once, we don't have to rely on the words of his accusers to get a bigger picture of who he is.
Dr. Huxtable has let us know, all by himself.
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