So Bill Cosby is a rapist...(Trigger Warning)

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

So, if you've been keeping up with the news lately you've already heard: over the last few days a sizable number of women have come forward accusing Bill Cosby of having raped them. Most of them have a common MO: Cosby gets their confidence, invites them to his place, gives them some wine (that's drugged), and then sexually assaults them while they are unconscious or unable to fight back. In some cases he shows extremely aggressive behavior, like touching or kissing. In one case he forces a woman to give him a blowjob.

The thing is, almost all of the cases are decades old. Cosby can't be convicted for any of them because the statute of limitations has expired.

What this shows is that Bill Cosby, who is one of the most beloved entertainers in American history, has a history of extremely predatory sexual behavior, and that he kept this up for decades without anyone ever trying to stop him. One woman even seemed to imply that Cosby's wife was in on it.

This also points to Cosby's extreme hypocrisy. How many times has Cosby over the last few years made classist, condescending remarks and criticisms towards the black community? How many times has he blamed black America for causing their own misery, when we know damn well that it's a result of generations of systematic oppression by the American government?

Not only that, but what does this say about America in general? I think it shows pretty well that rape culture is alive and well in The Land of the 'Free'.

[Illegalitarian]

Yeah, Cosby has a,ways been, as the Panthers used to say, a "house negro" to the max, it's funny that he used to rant and scream all the time about black people saying "nigga" and wearing baggy pants while the whole time he was an actual rapist

and by funny i mean awful

[Sinister Intents]

Fuck Bill Cosby, sick pervert.

[~Spectre]

Yeah, Cosby has a,ways been, as the Panthers used to say, a "house negro" to the max

I don't like this formulation because it implies that he is some kind of traitor. Race is a construction. He represented his class interest exactly as you'd expect.

[Redistribute the Rep]

I don't like this formulation because it implies that he is some kind of traitor. Race is a construction. He represented his class interest exactly as you'd expect.

Just because we would expect it does not mean it shouldn't be criticized.

[Illegalitarian]

I don't like this formulation because it implies that he is some kind of traitor. Race is a construction. He represented his class interest exactly as you'd expect.

Class is a construct too, what's your point? Internalized racism is a very real thing and it's entirely race based. That doesn't mean he's a "race traitor" it just means that, like many other people, he isn't able to see through the dominate, white narrative of "self responsibility", that it's not a "race issue" and minorities are in their current situation of disparity because of some perceived cultural degradation.

I don't like this weird idea that class is all there is, that literally everything, all of our priors, the way we view the world etc all stems from class and class alone. That's just lazy, uncritical thinking.

[BIXX]

I don't like this weird idea that class is all there is, that literally everything, all of our priors, the way we view the world etc all stems from class and class alone. That's just lazy, uncritical thinking.

Good luck convincing the majority of folks here of that.

[The Disillusionist]

I don't like this weird idea that class is all there is, that literally everything, all of our priors, the way we view the world etc all stems from class and class alone. That's just lazy, uncritical thinking.

That's narrow-minded over-reliance on overgeneralized materialism for you.

[Illegalitarian]

I think it comes more from a misunderstanding of materialism as some deterministic force and a great misrepresentation of class politics.

[John Nada]

That's narrow-minded over-reliance on overgeneralized materialism for you.

Yeah, all this chatter about race and ethnicity, I don't think Marxists have ever addressed this. Or have they?

I also fear that Comrade Dzerzhinsky(Polish, Me), who went to the Caucasus to investigate the "crime" of those "nationalist-socialists", distinguished himself there by his truly Russian frame of mind (it is common knowledge that people of other nationalities who have become Russified over-do this Russian frame of mind) and that the impartiality of his whole commission was typified well enough by Orgonikidze's "manhandling". I think that no provocation or even insult can justify such Russian manhandling and that Comrade Dzerzhinsky was inexcusably guilty in adopting a light-hearted attitude towards it.

Source: http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...t/autonomy.htm Bold and italic mine.

I declare war to the death on dominant nation chauvinism. I shall eat it with all my healthy teeth as soon as I get rid of this accursed bad tooth.

It must be absolutely insisted that the Union Central Executive Committee should be presided overin turn by a:
Russian,
Ukrainian,
Georgian, etc.
Absolutely!

Yours,

Lenin

Source: http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...922/oct/06.htm

On the bourgeois collaborators of oppressed people:

The landlord class and the comprador class.[1] In economically backward and semi-colonial China the landlord class and the comprador class are wholly appendages of the international bourgeoisie, depending upon imperialism for their survival ant growth. These classes represent the most backward and most reactionary relations of production in China and hinder the development of her productive forces. Their existence is utterly incompatible with the aims of the Chinese revolution. The big landlord and big comprador classes in particular always side with imperialism and constitute an extreme counterrevolutionary group. Their political representatives are the Étatistes [2] and the right-wing of the Kuomintang.

NOTES

1 A comprador, in the original sense of the word, was the Chinese manages or the senior Chinese employee in a foreign commercial establishment. The compradors served foreign economic interests and bad close connection with imperialism and foreign capital.

2 The Étatistes were a handful of shameless fascist politicians who at that time formed the Chinese Étatiste Youth League, later renamed the Chinese Youth Party. They made counter-revolutionary careers for themselves by opposing the Communist Party and the Soviet Union and received subsidies from the various groups of reactionaries in power and from the imperialists.

Source: http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...-1/mswv1_1.htm Bold mine.

It's totally possible for people from discriminated minorities to internalize racism of society at large, and to have their own bigotry.

God Bill Cosby fucking creepy as fuck. What is it, at least 7 women he may have drugged an raped. And he did that whole, "Blacks need to stop complaining about racism. Pull your sagging pants up and look presentable for White people." Misogynist comprador.

It's pretty sad how when many of the women went to the cops, they laughed and didn't take them seriously. I've heard of this dismissive attitude from pigs a lot, not just in cases involving bourgeois rapists. In their eyes, a rape victim is guilty till proven innocent.

[Creative Destruction]

Class is a construct too, what's your point? Internalized racism is a very real thing and it's entirely race based. That doesn't mean he's a "race traitor" it just means that, like many other people, he isn't able to see through the dominate, white narrative of "self responsibility", that it's not a "race issue" and minorities are in their current situation of disparity because of some perceived cultural degradation.

I don't like this weird idea that class is all there is, that literally everything, all of our priors, the way we view the world etc all stems from class and class alone. That's just lazy, uncritical thinking.

Spectre is more right than you realize. Cosby, in the past, has spoken out about white supremacy and its effects on black people. But respectability politics is something that goes way way back, to Booker T. Washington and it does have to do more with class than it does race. In fact, I think it's a little racist to assume that black conservatives formulate all of their ideas based on what white people think. There have been black conservatives who were beholden to respectability politics, but were also separatists, like some of the old guard in the Nation of Islam.

Dr. Michael Eric Dyson wrote a really good book about this, which he centered around Cosby, called "Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has The Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?)" I'd suggest you give it a read.

[Palmares]

I think this whole affair is an example of the power of social media these days. For better or for worse, it gives scores of people a scope to aim for.

And in this case, it's certainly for the good, because it's forcing Bill Cosby to face accusations that have been largely swept under the carpet after many years.

These accusations aren't new, but for various reasons, didn't really stick, however, due to Bill Cosby's recent attempt at a showbiz/prime time comeback, it's become a great opportunity to confront him again.

It seems to a large extent, this re-surfaced due to a Bill Cosby meme competition.

In the twilight of a long and celebrated career, Bill Cosby was experiencing the kind of comeback few longtime performers enjoy.
A new biography described his life and accomplishments. A stand-up comedy special on Netflix, commemorating his 77th birthday, was set for next week. His collection of African-American art became part of an exhibition at the Smithsonian this month. And NBC was exploring a project that would bring him back to prime time, where in the 1980s he became America’s pre-eminent TV star with “The Cosby Show.”

But in recent weeks, his triumphant return to the national stage has fallen apart in the face of a wave of accusations by women who say Mr. Cosby drugged and raped them decades ago. On Wednesday, NBC said it was canceling the pilot project, and the cable network TV Land quietly stopped showing repeats of “The Cosby Show.” Less than 24 hours earlier, Netflix said it was postponing the debut of the comedy special. Other scheduled appearances by Mr. Cosby — on David Letterman’s late-night show and Queen Latifah’s daytime talk show — have also been canceled.

...

The accusations against Mr. Cosby have been all the more striking because his hit TV show, his commercials for Jell-O and his best-selling books about fatherhood helped him present an image of the ideal family man.
A series of suddenly converging factors contributed to tearing that down. They included a viral video of an emerging comedian, Hannibal Buress, who bluntly called Mr. Cosby a rapist in his act, and an ill-conceived effort to solicit positive comments about Mr. Cosby on an Internet meme, which inspired a chorus of contributors to call him a rapist.

In the meantime, four women have come forward publicly in recent days to repeat the decades-old accusations of being drugged, raped or molested.
The reach of the web and the impact of social media have provided a distribution platform for these accusations, which had surfaced before but never gained widespread traction.
Martin Kaplan, the Norman Lear chair in entertainment, media and society at the University of Southern California’s journalism school, said a combination of social media and Mr. Cosby’s return to the spotlight had propelled the story to much greater prominence than when the accusations surfaced in the past.
“The fact that he was already in the public spotlight — the book, the potential deal with NBC and so on — and the fact that these charges have a much more powerful amplifier and echo chamber, it gives people the sense that this is a big story,” he said.
The current furor surrounding Mr. Cosby had its root in accusations brought in 2005 by Andrea Constand, a female staff member with the basketball team at Temple University, Mr. Cosby’s alma mater. She said she had been drugged and molested by Mr. Cosby.
The district attorney at the time in Montgomery County, outside Philadelphia, Bruce L. Castor Jr., said in an interview on Wednesday that he did not feel that he had enough evidence to pursue a criminal case at the time, “despite the fact that I thought Cosby was guilty of some improper behavior — my gut told me that.”
A subsequent lawsuit brought by Ms. Constand promised to present testimony from 13 “Jane Does” with similar accounts of sexual assault. Mr. Cosby’s lawyer called the claims false and even preposterous; the suit was settled for an undisclosed sum in 2006.
One of the unnamed women in the suit, Barbara Bowman, a former actress, came forward publicly in The Washington Post last week to describe her experiences in detail, saying she was drugged and raped by Mr. Cosby in the 1980s.
But women had been describing similar episodes with Mr. Cosby in the eight years since the suit was settled. Ms. Bowman spoke about her charges to Philadelphia magazine and People magazine in 2006. Newsweek magazine had interviews with both Ms. Bowman and another accuser, Tamara Green, this February without setting off the whirlwind of attention that has surrounded Mr. Cosby in the last two weeks.
But Mr. Cosby’s career was not ascendant at the time.

Whole story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/bu...ions.html?_r=0

I thought best not to post the memes in this thread, however, if you wish to see some of the memes that helped elevate this situation, take a look at this link:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/kateaurthur/...ed-immediately

[Atsumari]

Now what will it take to bring down the careers of R.Kelly, Mike Tyson, and Woody Allen?

[Raquin]

Is there any relationship between Cosby's criticism of the use of the word "nigger" and so on, and his alleged(I haven't read much about it, but the allegations seem very credible) status as a violent rapist? If not, why is that being mentioned?

[Creative Destruction]

Is there any relationship between Cosby's criticism on the use of the word "nigger" and so on, and his alleged(I haven't read much about it, but the allegations seem very credible) status as a violent rapist? If not, why is that being mentioned?

It's not the relationship between his criticism of that specifically, but the relationship between his promotion of respectability politics generally, and along with that his image as a perfect family man, and his status as a violent rapist. It's pointing out the disconnect and hypocrisy. Imagine the Republicans who cry loudly about gay marriage destroying American values and then get caught soliciting from other men.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Is there any relationship between Cosby's criticism of the use of the word "nigger" and so on, and his alleged(I haven't read much about it, but the allegations seem very credible) status as a violent rapist? If not, why is that being mentioned?

How are you using the term "violent rapist"? Are you differentiating between using physical coercion as the common meaning of violence, and drugs? Because it's clear he used drugs on actresses he was grooming. Or, if using drugs counts as violent rape since it is still an act of violence, isn't all rape an act of violence and therefore the term "violent rape" is redundant?

I think the bigger issue is that the multiple allegations indicate that he is a serial rapist, in other words his position and respect from most Americans as a virtuous patriarch let him get away with repeatedly sexually abusing women. "I'm not a sweet old dad, I just play one on TV"

[Illegalitarian]

Spectre is more right than you realize. Cosby, in the past, has spoken out about white supremacy and its effects on black people. But respectability politics is something that goes way way back, to Booker T. Washington and it does have to do more with class than it does race. In fact, I think it's a little racist to assume that black conservatives formulate all of their ideas based on what white people think. There have been black conservatives who were beholden to respectability politics, but were also separatists, like some of the old guard in the Nation of Islam.

Dr. Michael Eric Dyson wrote a really good book about this, which he centered around Cosby, called "Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has The Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?)" I'd suggest you give it a read.

It's not that it's "what white people think", it's just that white people make up the majority of American society, and thus the narrative on these issues have largely been formed on the basis of white privilege, which makes it absolutely race based and of course means that minorities can easily internalize these narratives just as easily as anyone else.

It doesn't seem to have much to do with class at all and none of this makes the case for why it does.

[consuming negativity]

It's not that it's "what white people think", it's just that white people make up the majority of American society, and thus the narrative on these issues have largely been formed on the basis of white privilege, which makes it absolutely race based and of course means that minorities can easily internalize these narratives just as easily as anyone else.

It doesn't seem to have much to do with class at all and none of this makes the case for why it does.

you're right, but the tie-in to class is the same way as to how anybody who is poor and then "makes it" into the middle class will then turn around and go "well i did it so why can't you?" and be a shithead conservative who blames everybody for their problems

[~Spectre]

Just because we would expect it does not mean it shouldn't be criticized.

The basis of your criticism fundamentally accepts the logic of "race". That somehow Cosby owes allegiance or has common interest with, the the bulk of black people. That's false, and is certainly not a socialist outlook.

You might as well bemoan why a rich American doesn't care for a poor American. It's basically the same criticism. Only phrased this way, you realize how detached from reality it sounds.

[~Spectre]

Class is a construct too, what's your point?

Not in the same way. A person placed in a time machine and sent back X amount of decades can switch from "white" to "non-white". A person sent back to the same wage job would still be a worker regardless. Their relationship to the means of production remains unchanged, and it is from that which stems the ideological constructions.

Internalized racism is a very real thing and it's entirely race based.

Racism is a very real thing. Race is not. Thus racism is not based on race, because race is not real. It's like saying that women were burned at the stake based their having committed witchcraft. You fundamentally accept the myths of the executioner when you fail to see this distinction.

This is not a small quibble, as this distinction slipping your thinking leads to very liberal and racialist conclusions, like this idea that Cosby somehow acted against his own interests here, or that he is just "unable to get it".