(Not So) Kodak Moment
Well, Bill Cosby, you had a good run, however, your career is officially over. Amid countless accusations of sexual assault, the most recent from former model, Janice Dickinson, who accused the actor/comedian of rape, both NBC and Netflix have backed away from Cosby. The general consensus on all the accusations against Cosby is that there isn’t enough evidence for any of it to stick, and, more than likely, Cosby will walk away from the allegations scot-free, sort of.
Cosby, now 77-years-old, is nothing short of a comedy legend. His pedigree as a stand-up comic and television personality is as influential as any other in the history of show business. And Cosby was on the brink of extending his legend into his golden years,touring the nation doing stand-up, starring in a new stand-up special on Netflix, and topping it all off with a triumpant return to television; the irony that his last stand-up special for Comedy Central was called “Far From Finished” is almost biblical. To say Cosby’s reputation and career, is tarnished would be a gross understatement.
Enter Don Lemon, a CNN correspondent, who interviewed Joan Tarshis, one of Cosby’s accusers, about her incident with Cosby when she was just 19-years-old. Lemon mentioned that Tarshis told Cosby that she was “infected and that if the two had intercourse, he would catch it and pass it to his wife.” Lemon follows that up with “and you said he (Cosby) made you perform oral sex.” After Tarshis agrees, Lemon follows up, saying “You know there are ways not to perform oral sex if you didn’t want to.” This response seems to be more conversational than anything, however, the comment assumes so much about our societal views on rape, and reveals a very real rape culture within American society. I’m not saying that Don Lemon condones any sort of rape culture or that he is blaming Tarshis of not doing enough to prevent her assault, but the very notion that he would say such a thing to a victim after the fact is the very problem with rape culture, it assumes the victim had a choice, which is so not the case ever.
How do we change this? How do we change the point of view? How do we change our perspective? A good start would be to punish people like Bill Cosby for their actions, but that looks unlikely at the moment. A more feasable idea is to stop blaming the victims of sexual assault. They didn’t choose to be raped. They didn’t asked to be raped because they were wearing revealing clothing or had too much to drink. They are the victim of a crime, and the perpetrator of that crime needs to be punished; it sounds simply but it rarly ever is.
This applies to all victims of sexual assault, both women and men alike. And criminals need to see that they are not immune to punishment. They need to see that people empathize with victims of sexual assault. It’s the one thing that’s going to change the rape culture in our society. If rapists see that victims are treated with blame, they are going to think that they can always get away with it because we as a society continually blame the victim rather than the perpetrator; it’s a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.
When one’s career has lasted as long as Bill Cosby’s, one tends to mean different things to different people. Bill Cosby has been a beloved figure for over five decades. He’s the Jell-O pudding guy. He’s the Kodak film guy. Or, at least he was. I don’t really know what he is now, other than a serial sex-offender.
