BILL COSBY: WHY THE ENTERTAINMENT PRESS AND THE PUBLIC SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE!

Oh boy. I've been trying to only occasionally talk about Bill Cosby's,- for lack of a better term- oh, you know what, nevermind, fuck the better term, or any other politically correct bullshit here; there is nothing good about the state of Hollywood right now. This dark cloud, currently revolving around Cosby, is the worst, and the latest, in a long line lately of people in the industry, being exposed as sexual deviants, predators, pedophiles, whatever you want to call it. Bryan Singer's underage sex parties, Steven Collins confessing that he's a pedophile, to his ex-wife in a divorce proceeding, Kevin Clash, the voice of Elmo, accused of three different sexual abuse charges, and the one that's really hurting everybody, continues to grow and grow, Bill Cosby, drugging and raping women, apparently for decades, and it seems like all of them are coming forward now, and one of them's suing, and he's denying everything, in fact, he just filed a countersuit today against his latest alleged victim, and let's not forget, that Amy Berg's documentary "An Open Secret" about the underage Hollywood sex ring, that premiere a couple weeks ago at the DOC NYC Film Festival and is seeking distribution. (I bet most of you forgot or didn't even hear about that, did you?)

Look, here's the first thing, and let's get this out of the way, 'cause I have something else about this I want to talk about, but I can't get to that, without making this point, this is not just a Hollywood problem, this is a societal problem, and Hollywood, the entertainment world, whatever you want to call it, this is a microcosm of society. I assure you, there's just as many of these sexual predators everywhere else in the country, all that fame and fortune does, is make it a little bit easier for them to exploit and entice their victims, and let's face it, easier for them to get away with it, for many reasons, including but not limited to, nobody will believe them, and they can be bought off, and if they do say something, they can be pressured and threatened from their perpetrators, as well as the modern media, of all kinds, and btw, this isn't new; you can look up Chuck Berry, Gary Glitter, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, or whoever else's exploits and scandals you want to look up, criminal sexual offenders are everywhere, and have been for, basically forever; Hollywood's no different. That said, I don't think I have to go over the dozens of ways this one hurts more than others, but here's the thing, this one kinda came out of nowhere, and has just become more and more disturbing the more we think about it and the more we learn about. Except, it didn't.

This is what's bothering me, about this,- the first time I remember hearing about Bill Cosby's supposed exploits was about a decade ago when I heard some blurb on some news report, tucked in the back of the program about him being accused by a woman, and their may have been one or two notes about it over the years, but the point being was that, it wasn't important, noteworthy, anything frankly. It happened, it was forgotten immediately or more likely dismissed immediately by the media and the public, until a moderately well-known but talented comic named Hannibal Burress, was recorded on a cell phone camera doing this routine:



Suddenly, the flood gates opened up. The thing went viral, and, people did, exactly what he told them to do, people searched "Bill Cosby rape" on google , and when the news did that and investigated, suddenly more of his victims started coming out of the woodwork, and the most influential of all TV dads, a Mark Twain Prize Award Winner, an idol for the nation and let's face it, one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all-time, was suddenly scolded for all of these allegations, and people wondered such things about, whether this beloved and stern figure who is the shining example of fatherhood and family, and everything else he represented, was simply a lie. I think, it's actually possible that somebody can actually be both/all of those things, and while that's not being talk about either, let's back up for a second, and really think about the problems with these series of events, cause, something else is bothering me about this, and it's that, Hannibal Burress was right. Let's assume Cosby is guilty of all this, and he's the world's biggest hypocrite, blah, blah, blah, the problem is that this wasn't common knowledge before, when it should have been. That's the point he's making, that this shouldn't have been a surprise to anybody. It has been eight years since the original lawsuit, other stories have seeped through here and there before; here's the real question of society, why was this ignored until now?

Ignored by the public, ignored by the media; I know there was a war going on, and we're talking entertainment and celebrities, but, that's bullshit, there is an entertain press and they reported on all of Paris Hilton's movements for a couple years, and that doesn't even break the Top 100 stupidest and pointless things the entertainment media's done in the last decade. Who investigated this? Nobody. Who reported on it? Nobody. Who tried to find the thirteen Jane Doe accusers? Did anybody, and if they did, as it was easily available on the internet, all these pieces of information, then why don't they talk more about it, and if they did, why didn't the public react? Two days after that initial lawsuit against Cosby was settled, he gave a speech at Temple University? Now, the school, which has been associated with Cosby for decades, wants nothing to do with him. Somebody records a comedian telling a joke, and now, there's how many people talking about this, and giving interviews, and Janice Dickinson, and whatever else...- There's two things going on here, with the Cosby case, first it was under-reported and disregarded, by the media, and the public, and that's if they even payed attention and knew about it, but nobody did, even though, the information was clearly at our and the entertainment media's disposal. That's the first thing that's happened, and now the opposite's happened, it's being reported to death, and it's not all their fault, but the severity of the differences between eight years ago and now,- and it's not just them, the public's fascinated now, both the public and the media; they're out for blood; they want Cosby's head-on-a-stick, and you know what, that's not right either. They didn't want it then, why do they want it now?

What happened, why this pavlovian desire to just destroy everybody nowadays? Any starlet that has a camera in her phone, people try to hack into them, and no, I don't understand why they all have nude photos of themselves on all of them it seems, but you know, there's dozens of tabloids, all waiting to publish the picture, and we're waiting for see them and then judge them for fucking up, so we can feel better about ourselves, and I'm sick and tired of it.That's what's all wrong about this, we're out to get him and humiliate him, when, fuck, he's humiliating himself enough on his own, and he's destroyed enough peoples' lives with his actions, what's the point of berating this more than it's worth?

Actually, forget the point, there's obviously no justifiable point anybody can make here, but what's wrong with us that's made this all happen now? 14 women screamed rape eight years ago, one comic tells a joke, and suddenly, "Hey, wait a minute, those women who were screaming rape, maybe they were telling the truth." That's what has happened here, and let that seep into your mind a second, 'cause while Cosby, is getting all the public and legal scorn he should've been getting before, nobody's really taking a hard look in the mirror, and just how shitty we have reacted to this, then and now! I don't think either way we've reacted is correct by the way, but the media and the public are producing these extremes and that's not good. The media publicizing them as extremes; this we care about, this we don't, and worst yet, us, the public, accepts it as extremes. It would be one thing, if this really was a surprise and we really were caught offguard, and in shock and disbelief, and it was so far out of leftfield, that there's no other possible way to approach this, but, that's not the case here.

Look, I don't know why we're so intent on paying attention now, instead of then, we all can list the differences and reasons and sociologically, psychologically, anthropologically probably and whatever reasons, let's not get into that game. We're not gonna speculate on the why, let's just not let this happen again, and try to better ourselves, the media and public. As to anybody who wants to work in the film industry, or probably anywhere, I'll tell you the same advice that I've told before here, and that was burned into me as a film student by some very wise and knowing professors, don't say that "You'll do anything". Most people aren't gonna make you live up to that, but still, personal decisions aside, just don't ever say that. You never know, who's willing to take you up on that, and frankly, the worst of the worst if all is to be believe, you don't even really have to be willing, so be careful out there. The people whose constitutions, morals, behaviors and ulterior motives who are at a minimum, questionable in Hollywood, sometimes their actions become publicly known, sometimes they don't, sometimes they're known within the industry and for whatever reasons it's not revealed to the public-at-large or the media (although sometimes the press knows and doesn't say anything too) and sometimes even the industry people don't know and are shocked to find out about them. It's not that different from anywhere else, except we're under the scrutiny of the media and the public, and both of them screwed up royally here. First it was under-reported, now it's over-reported on the media's side, and the public didn't want to know at first, not they're out for blood, literally because of a fucking joke! Shame on the press, and shame on us.