By David Futrelle
UPDATE: 6/17 Mistrial
As I write this, I am awaiting what I hope will be a guilty verdict in Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial.
Meanwhile, on Philly.com, columnist Christine M. Flowers is wishing “we’d never come to verdict on this case.” Because, in her mind,
Bill Cosby is an easy target, able to stand in for all the men who might have mistreated us in a distant past … it’s as if the tidal wave of feminist history is set to engulf that one man as some kind of vindication for all the women who’ve been wronged.
Let’s see if you can follow her, er, logic here, as I sure can’t. Even before the verdict, Flowers writes,
The greatest damage has already been done, and that is the shattering of beloved myths and comforting relationships by the proxy of television and nostalgia. Bill Cosby is Cliff Huxtable, regardless of what the critics say. … It is ridiculous to argue that a man who was capable of creating the character that fathered a generation did not, at some deep level, possess those nurturing characteristics.
Er, what!? It’s not ridiculous. The world is full of charming abusers, able to hide their true nature from the public. And it’s full of men who treat some women well and others horrifically.
Oh sure, Flowers knows that Mr. Huxtable Cosby is far from perfect.
And yes, he is an adulterer who admitted to giving women drugs for sex. He has confessed in a secular confessional to betraying the trust of his wife, and perhaps of the women who considered him a mentor before he moved them to another spot on the sliding scale of human interaction.
Seriously? Before he moved them to another spot on the sliding scale of human interaction!?
That’s one way of putting it, I guess.
But I am allowed to refuse to believe that it includes rape.
That you are. And the rest of us are allowed to believe that you’re full of shit.
As Flowers sees it, there are
Too many people willing to pull down a man who, because he happened to say the taboo things that shamed young black men for living down to expectations, is considered a traitor to the race. Too many women who see in this an opportunity to exorcise the ghosts of all the meanness in the world, the assault on their presumed dignity, the Trump effect.
I’m pretty sure that no women think that putting Cosby behind bars will “exorcise” all the evil in the world.
This, I think, is the real reason so many people want to see a conviction: It will confirm that the world is a dangerous place for my gender, and get a condemnation, by proxy, of the patriarchy.
No. But it will bring some small measure of justice to a woman that a lot of us strongly believe is telling the truth about what he did to her.
And that’s my problem with this prosecution. Bill Cosby is an easy target, able to stand in for all the men who might have mistreated us in a distant past, and a cautionary tale to those college frat boys who might take advantage when we lie supine and drunk on the floor in the future.
And why shouldn’t a guilty verdict against Cosby provide a cautionary tale to frat boys “who might take advantage” — that is, rape — women too incapacitated to consent? That is one of the biggest fucking reasons we put people in jail in the first place, to provide “cautionary tales” to other potential criminals. Obviously Flowers, as an adult human being, is aware of this; it;s not clear why she’s decided it’s somehow inappropriate in rape cases.
After a year of leaked commentaries and conversation, evidence and prognostication, we are left with the words of one woman and one man, and yet it’s as if the tidal wave of feminist history is set to engulf that one man as some kind of vindication for all the women who’ve been wronged.
The jury isn’t deliberating feminist history; they’re looking at evidence.
The 50 other accusers, like a finger-wagging Greek chorus in the back of the courtroom, stand in for the wronged women of the past. Gloria Allred leads them in righteous chant, and we look on.
Yes, by all means, reduce the other women who have also accused Cosby of rape to a bunch of “finger-wagging” onlookers.
I do hate these trials that pit an evolving societal ethic against a flawed human being, one person, albeit a person greatly privileged, to make a point that “we’re better, because now we get it.”
This type of proceeding, with breads and circuses and wailing choruses, shows we really haven’t, after all.
Cosby isn’t being tried for violating “an evolving societal ethic.” He’s on trial for rape. Rape was as wrong, and as illegal, in 2004 as it is today. The only “wailing chorus” here is in Flowers’ head.
H/T — @EyesOnTheRight
Bill Cosby is an easy target?
Bill Cosby is an easy target?
Really? Really? A man who made his money on the Cosby Show, and Jello commercials, and beloved by a large population of the country (including me, until recent history). A person who has power, and money, and celebrity? Is an easy target?
I just can’t today. Not today Satan
(I see a local public paper also has published a piece by her titled “Swallowing my pride, standing up for life and voting for Trump” Just one big fat Nope today.)
Suuuure, that’s why it took so long for the law to get even this far. /s
Fuck you. The greatest damage was done to his victims. I grew up on the Cosby Show. I loved it. I called it “The Duck Bill Show” for some reason. I would clap my hands when it came on. Learning Cosby is a terrible person is definitely not more traumatizing than rape.
Notice how rape is, apparently, a thing of the long-ago and the vague future, but not the present.
Anyway, why is she so upset? Cosby will just, hopefully, move to a different point on the sliding scale of freedom; after a while, he will move to a different point on the sliding scale of vitality. No big deal.
If he did, as was claimed, drug his victims surreptitiously (or without revealing the true nature of them) first… Throw the book at him, including whatever the right charge is for forcing drugs on people.
If he didn’t, but still raped them… same thing minus the drug charge. He’ll probably get out early anyway for compassionate leave, or a commuted sentence.
If he was white, SAME DAMN THING PLEASE. If you can’t stop rape from happening, at least punish it severely.
Wonder if Flowers waxed poetic about JoePa and Sandusky?
She revolts me. She is handwaving real crimes against women because he is fucking famous.
Ugh, this reads like something a college freshman trying to be edgy would write.
I…I… I can’t even being to express in words the absolute outrage I felt reading this this oh i don’t have curse word strong enough to say what i feel right now.
“I do hate these trials that pit an evolving societal ethic against a flawed human being, one person,”
Really? Rape’s been illegal for centuries. Sorry about that.
What a utter waste of protein this person is.
Ditto to what others have said. BC was *not* an easy target – ffs it took fifty women to get this taken seriously.
Also, I’m not seeing all this symbolic crap about exorcising ghosts or some shit. This is a trial with evidence and testimony.
I loved BC. I enjoyed his shows and his stand up routine. It is disappointing and heart-breaking to see a beloved comedian turn out to be a horrible human. This isn’t like finding out he isn’t perfect, like he has a couple of flaws. It’s ridiculous to claim so.
This article just points out the lack of empathy for the women involved and a desire to return to the time when we could just stand in admiration of BC and we were ignorant about the accusations.
Christine Flowers–one of the truly awful pundits, and one who I am generally amazed does not get more attention –is a conservative Catholic, so defending sex offenders who are powerful men is second nature to her.
And no, I’m not joking. She puts shit like this out with startling regularity. My hope is this sees a lot of papers deciding not to run her column but then I am a naive optimist in that way.
It’s not symbolic. Bill Cosby has actually wronged women. He should be punished for it, to turn the tide against the whole “and when you’re a star they let you do it” culture.
So, who else gets a pass for doing something that was WRONG, is wrong now AND WAS WRONG WHEN THEY DID IT… because this writer thinks we only “get it” now??
We “got it” when Cosby was drugging and, yes, RAPING these women… Flowers’ objection is unfounded. We “got it” then, we JUST DIDN’T FUCKING CARE!! And, apparently, she still doesn’t… or maybe she just doesn’t “get it”?
damn, the more I think about this, the weirder it gets, she sounds like a cross between a trumpkin saying “it’s just locker room talk” and a 3-year-old who’s just found out Santa Claus isn’t real…
*Projectile vomits inside mouth*
Urgh… So, let’s unpack that one a bit, shall we?
Apparently, being in favor of seeing serial rapists brought to justice, is less of a motivation than an excuse.
In “reality” (or what passes for it in Mrs Flowers imagination), this is some kind of witch-hunt, targeted at a man who’s charged with committing a thought-crime, by blaming the under-privileged for their unfortunate conditions. Which, of course, a comedic actor who luckily stumbled into small-screen success, is perfectly justified in doing…
If he’d only gone along with the “21st century plantation”-party line (or whatever the hell cons call it when you refuse to make excuses for racists by victim-blaming the people they deride), he’d be fine in the eyes of the public!
Never mind the fact that a disproportionate number of people has rushed to his defense for this very reason, illustrating the very problem that hero worship perpetuates in high-profile rape cases.
Just… *vomits*
@Professor Fate:
Yup. The only part of this situation that’s an “evolving societal ethic” is society’s increasing resistance to letting rapists get away with rape.
It’s true that in the past, more people were apt to downplay a man’s drugging and having nonconsensual sex with a woman who voluntarily chose to be alone with him as just a naughty romp “Madeira M’Dear”-style,* rather than calling it rape. But even back then, factually and legally, it still was rape.
*(And while I love Flanders & Swann songs in general, there’s no disputing that “Madeira M’Dear” is a patter song about rape. The fact that in the mid-20th century it was considered only mildly and comically off-color is an indication of how much cultural “evolution” has taken place on this subject, though we still have a long way to go.)
@ Dan Hoan: Your last paragraph explains a lot. It’s not her pride she’s swallowing, it’s her self-respect.
@ PeeVee: There are still plenty of people (of both sexes) making the same claim about Roman Polanski. And his victim was THIRTEEN YEARS OLD at the time of the rape.
@ Kimstu: Absolutely. “Madeira” used to be very popular in the filk community back in the 80s and earlier; I haven’t heard it in 20 years. We grew up, as a community.
“flawed human being” is an interestingly understated alternative to the word “rapist”
Perhaps the Yorkshire ripper was also just a “flawed human being”
@Space Oddity –
I was googling around trying to figure out her background and all of her articles are literal garbage.
Why is she a pundit? Can anyone just be hired to write opinions these days?
Uuugh, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. What a self serving opportunistic stain on humanity this woman is.
I’m trying not to have this double standard where I believe that women know better. I expect to hear or read stupid shit that some men think about women, but when it’s a woman saying this, it stings even worse. This woman on woman crime shit has to stop. If all women stood up for one another instead of hating/disrespecting/slut shaming/rape denying other women then we might have a fucking chance. I know one of the reasons these women stab other women in the back, it’s because they think it will raise them up in men’s eyes. “See I hate women, women are sluts and bitches, see see I hate them too, now will you notice me. I’m not like all those other bitches, look at me, I’m a fucking snowflake, I’m a unicorn” The joke is on them though. The kind of men they attract with that strategy are equally shitheaded. Those men will at best treat them like a good little obedient pet. At worst, should they ever disagree with their master, they will get the wind knocked out of them. On the up side Ms Flowers does prove that men and women can be equals, equally repugnant/misogynistic in their views on women. Yay! face palm
The 50+ assault victims are not testifying at this trial. The prosecutor did not consider Constand’s case strong enough to prosecute ten years ago. The trial buttresses Constand’s claim with testimony from Kelly Johnson describing a similar assault in 1996. But that might not be enough to surmount the hurdle of reasonable doubt in this case, even if Cosby is probably guilty in 50 other cases. Don’t be surprised if Cosby is found Not Guilty here.
Yeah, I know, and those people are fucking gross, too.
In which the greatest damage done by a rapist is to his disappointed fans
Women have no dignity and are thus perfectly acceptable targets of assault, sexual or otherwise. Gotcha
Oh, fuck off. I wasn’t shamed, I was angry. Still am, tho there are bigger fish now…
I started watching an old Cosby stand up special the day before the news broke. I will never finish that set…
If I had seen her article by itself, I would have struggled to decide if it was a Poe or not. I wish so much to believe that such a complete lack of awareness (from someone who clearly can read and access the internet) could only be intentional.
I need an extra dose of sarcasm and contempt for this response:
Oh, heaven FORBID a man be held accountable for his crimes.
Why were the allies so obsessed with tearing down poor Hitler? Adolf was an easy target, a stand in for any dictator’s that might have been mean to them in the past. It ridiculous to say that a man who capable of creating the character that united his nation and promised a glorious future for them did not, at some deep level, possess those nurturing characteristics. Sure maybe he was a little rude to some Jews that one time but I’m allowed to refuse to believe it was genocide. But no, they just want to use him as a cautionary tale for any future mass murders. Really the worst damage now is all those poor Germans who’ve had their nostalgic memories of his speeches and rallies shattered by the knowledge he might have been a flawed human being. Just shows they’re no better after all.
Sorry for the godwin but god damn that was stupid.