Shaming an African American Icon
By
Sengbe Ben Yosef
I had to write this blog about the legendary comedian and actor Bill Cosby, after all, the smoke cleared not because I believed the actor was guilty of anything but because I wanted to have all the facts. The media went on a nearly a decade long campaign trying to pin something on Bill Cosby to taint his image and reputation and each time they came up with nothing, only assorted allegations, and misrepresented facts. The latest character assignation attacks started a little more than three years ago, their allegations of rape and sexual assault being thrown around with no fact checking or any type of vetting system to the distingue fact from fiction. After one ex-associate of Mr. Cosby came forward with one of the most unbelievable tells I have ever heard, women started coming out of the woods with little red riding hood tell of the big bad wolf Bill Cosby.
The stories were popping up all over the country, I mean it was like Bill Cosby had been a complete Jekyll and Hide; it was like we had never really known the man. At first I was shocked like everyone else, I didn’t want to believe it and I could allow myself too. After the shock I calmed my mind and started to listen to the stories of the women who were coming forward and I was left with a lot of question; there were things in the women’s tells that just didn’t add up but I didn’t want to be seen as someone who was attacking potential victims but their stories were not adding up. I started looking into some of the stories and started to see that most of the stories had nothing to them at all. They were all tells that had for me a common fact that I found puzzling; most of the women had ongoing relationships with Mr. Cosby and a lot of them were ex-Cosby flings or mistresses. A fact for me that says a lot, if you think about how some of your own past relationships ended badly when one person will do anything to get the last word.
I won’t go too much into the character of these so called victims, let’s just say no honest or professional law enforcement agency wanted to have anything to do with these women, a fact that the media would fail to report with the same vigor they had when they reported the unsubstantiated claims of Cosby’s accusers. Now that it has become clear that Cosby has done nothing the media just turns a walks away with not so much as an apology. They have basically used irresponsible journalism to destroy a national treasure. Over the last few years the media attack Bill Cosby and caused him to lose millions in revenue; to say nothing of the damage done to a career and reputation that span’s nearly 60 years. How could we allow them to do that? What gave them the right to take away what a man had worked his whole life for? They owe Mr. Cosby more than an apology but I’m willing to bet based on the history of this nation and the media relationship with people of color we won’t hear much more. It’s sad that they can do things like this to people and get away with it. I hope Mr. Cosby sues them for their negligent reporting and slanderous story telling.
To get everyone on board with the execution of Bill the media used Hannibal Buress a rising comic who had some off-hand words to say about Cosby. Even that shows how wicket and racist the media is that they would put the word of a black man front and center in their efforts to destroy another black man. Hannibal Buress should be forgiven because maybe he is not sophisticated enough to understand what was at stake when he made jokes of Mr. Cosby and maybe he couldn’t see what was really happening was character assignation. The media will continue destroying black people as long as we do nothing or go along with the plan. It’s time we said no and united to put an end to them having that kind of power. They have said to us we should disown Bill Cosby and they are right if he is a rapist, but what we need to do also is stand by our people when the media is unfairly attacking them as they did Mr. Cosby. They owe him and they us more respect and until they give it we should shut them out of black life. They don’t the right to label us with their feelings of our presumed guilt.
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