Bill Cosby: America's Favorite Dad...and Rapist?

It's a busy day for more True Confessions:

Therese Serignese, 57, a registered nurse from Boca Raton, Fla., lays out the details of a meeting, a drugging and a rape to The Huffington Post.

And Carla Ferrigno, wife of bodybuilder/actor Lou Ferrigno, tells The Daily Mail of a night long ago when Cosby forced a kiss on her.

In Ferrigno's story, Carla was working as a Playboy bunny in 1967 in Los Angeles, years before her 1980 marriage to Lou Ferrigno.

She was invited to Cosby's house by a man she had met at the Los Angeles airport. Ferrigno found herself late in the evening alone with Cosby, playing pool. Cosby's wife, Camille, had gone to bed and her date had gone to the bathroom.

Cosby, she says, "came at me and grabbed me in such a powerful way."

She adds, "He was much bigger than me. Much bigger and he pulled me so hard and so rough. I had never been treated so roughly and he pulled me hard to him so hard. And then kissed me so hard, right in the mouth. No one has ever been that physically violent with me. I was stunned. I was frozen. I took all my body strength and used both of my arms to stop him and push him away from me. He was so forceful."

She asked him, "What are you doing?' And, she says, "He just looked at me." She ran into the hallway, found her date and made him take her home.

She says what sets her apart from other accusers is: "I never wanted anything from him."

And she's coming forward now, she says, because, "I want to be one of those women. One more nail in the coffin."

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At least one actress says Bill Cosby never hit on her.

As more and more women have come forward to accuse comedian Bill Cosby of sexual assault, actress Raven-Symone’s name has been pulled into the discussion.

Raven-Symone, who was just three years old when she began appearing on The Cosby Show, took to Instagram on Wednesday to deny the claims swirling online. Along with a picture of herself as a child wagging a finger, she writes:

I was NOT taken advantage of by Mr Cosby when I was on The Cosby Show! I was practically a baby on that show and this is truly a disgusting rumor that I want no part of. Everyone on that show treated me with nothing but kindness. Now keep me out of this!
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Meanwhile, Cosby did address the landslide of allegations, but in a way that smacked of intimidating and browbeating the questioner.

jari_k said:

Yeah, that is rather striking. I've also been seeing the comments that:
1. The women are all out for his money.
2. They're all white, so they're all lying. (P.S. if it matters, they are not all white.)
3. They're old, and seeking attention. (Why being old would make one seek attention is not explained.)
4. The women came onto him, were rebuffed, and are now angry.
5. He's being attacked because he's a political conservative. (This definition of his politics is not precisely accurate, IMO, based on a number of statements I've heard him make, but people need to dig a little deeper than certain speeches he gave awhile back.) Even if he were, it's a darned silly idea that "the left is out to get him, so these stories are false." IMO.

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1. No. If all the women were out for Cosby's money his attorneys would be in court battling their attorneys.

2. Correct. They are not all White.

3. Many of the women are older, but at 77, Cosby is much older than all of the women and certainly was when he was accused of raping or sexually assaulting them.

The ages of Cosby's accusers are not relevant and neither is their race.

4. Ah, the sexually aggressive, status-seeking, career-promoting, hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-woman-scorned starfucker line of attack, eh? Yeah, well that's a possibility. There are certainly women and men in the entertainment industry willing to do whatever it takes with whomever it takes to advance their own rise in the business. Easy accessibility to women has always been one of the perks of being a power broker and one does not always have to pursue to catch. Sometimes the hunter is captured by the game.

Yet even if each and every one of these women whom are coming forward is the scheming scam artist a Cosby apologist would paint them as, there still is no excuse for rape.

Having a drink is not implying, "Because you gave me a drink it's okay to rape me." Going into a man's room is not consenting, "I came to your room so it's okay to rape me." Working with a man who can possibly make or break your career is not a green light that says, "You could be very good for my career or very bad for my career and I want you to be good for my career, so it's okay to rape me."

Number Four is basic Blaming the Victim 101 and suggests they are trying to turn their victimization into opportunity. This should be dismissed without a second thought.
5. This is a bit complicated. Bill Cosby is not a conservative in the political sense as a Ben Carson, Thomas Sowell or Clarence Thomas is. Cosby is a cultural conservative in how he has publicly put the Black community on blast for what he perceives as their wayward ways.

When Bill Cosby puts you on blast, he lets the bullets fly.

50 percent drop out rate, I'm telling you, and people in jail, and women having children by five, six different men. Under what excuse, I want somebody to love me, and as soon as you have it, you forget to parent. Grandmother, mother, and great grandmother in the same room, raising children, and the child knows nothing about love or respect of any one of the three of them. All this child knows is “gimme, gimme, gimme.” These people want to buy the friendship of a child....and the child couldn't care less. Those of us sitting out here who have gone on to some college or whatever we've done, we still fear our parents. And these people are not parenting. They're buying things for the kid. $500 sneakers, for what? They won't buy or spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics.


Are you not paying attention, people with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn't that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up. Isn't it a sign of something when she's got her dress all the way up to the crack...and got all kinds of needles and things going through her body. What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans, they don't know a damned thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap and all of them are in jail. When we give these kinds names to our children, we give them the strength and inspiration in the meaning of those names. What's the point of giving them strong names if there is not parenting and values backing it up.

Brown Versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. “Why you ain't where you is go, ra,” I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with “why you ain't...” You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this. Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.

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Cosby didn't go on Fox News or right-wing radio to wag his finger. He went to the NAACP convention and Black colleges preaching the gospel of "respectability politics" a popular way for members of a group to self-police other members of the group. Chris Rock and Barack Obama have also been singled out as practitioners of respectability politics.

This explains the schadenfreude felt by some Black intellectuals, thought-shapers and in the hip-hop community toward Cosby's current plight. "This old man is raggin' on me for my sagging pants, but at least I'm not drugging and raping women."

The ambivalence that the accusations against Bill Cosby stirs in White people is amplified and magnified for Black people. Cosby has been a success story, a man of respect, a huge supporter of HBCU's and a philanthropist who has given millions to education and charity.

You'll have to excuse me if I take no joy as an old man's secrets come back to haunt him. Maybe it's appropriate for Cosby to die a slow death of a thousand cuts, but it's not any fun.

Cosby is unlikely to ever see the inside of a courtroom to answer for his crimes. The statue of limitations has passed and so has the opportunity to gather physical evidence. If justice means a perp walk and a striped jumpsuit for the funny man, that's not happening.

The absolute worst punishment for a man who can buy anything he wants is to take something from him he can't buy back. His reputation.

No matter what Bill Cosby does in his remaining years his name will be associated with rape.

BenPanced said:

I'd been recently thinking about trying to find out if any of his albums (I mostly remember Revenge because that was the one we had when I was growing up) are available on CD. Now I'm really not too sure.

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CassandraW said:

This is making me think of Michael Jackson, and wondering if it will shake out in a similar way.

After the child molestation scandal, no one I knew would admit to liking Jackson's music or admiring his dancing talent. You could make molestation jokes, make fun of his plastic surgery and weird quirks, but liking his music ...no, not cool. I'm sure he still had plenty of fans, but I didn't know any.

After he died, suddenly everyone I knew was coming out ooohing and aahhing over his talent. Which is and was undeniable, I think -- but saying so openly would have drawn jeers or outright rebuke right up until he was dead.

Perhaps when Cosby is dead, we can laugh at his comedy again. I don't know. Comedy seems different, somehow. Then too, Jackson somehow feels more tragic. It's clear he was a messed-up, tortured soul, which somehow makes him feel more sympathetic. At least now that he's dead.

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I never stopped liking Michael Jackson's music. What I stopped was liking Michael Jackson.

You really have to try to differentiate between the art and the artist. Ted Nugent was one of my favorite rock n' rollers back in the day and now he's a racist, gun-crazy, caveman who babbles far-right drivel as if he's being paid by the word. But I haven't thrown my Ted Nugent albums out. I have found my own happy place where I can split the difference between the hot-shit guitar player and the bat-shit crazy right-winger.

I watched a few old Cosby routines on You Tube with my wife today. We laughed at the same jokes we had laughed at before. I wasn't the biggest fan of The Cosby Show. Too many precocious kids and ugly-ass sweaters for me, but in my parents home Thursday nights at 8:00 were set aside for the latest in life with The Huxtables and don't you dare call for the next 30 minutes.

I've lost a lot of respect for Bill Cosby over the past few days. But I'm not gonna act new like I never laughed at any of his jokes, enjoyed any of his films or thought highly of him. Doing that would make me a big of a liar as he is.

I will not try to purge myself and seek absolution for committing the sin of having enjoyed Bill Cosby.

Others may do as they please.