Bill Cosby has been found guilty on three counts of sexual assault and faces up to ten years in prison on each. He’s 80 years old, and therefore faces the end of his life in total disgrace. It’s quite the downfall for the guy whose comedy records made me laugh, who was a revered icon at Temple University when I taught there, who became immensely popular as the star of a comedy series. Now this is what he’s come to…a convicted sex offender known to all as a creep.
At least it’s good that it caught up with him at last. Too late for the women he abused, but he gets a small taste of the punishment he deserves.
I loved the Cosby show and have always believed it contributed greatly to the emancipation of black people. But Cosby’s carefully built image is misaligned with who he really is. As for justice: too little, too late, but better late than never I guess… Let’s hope that the conviction brings some consolation to the women who were abused.
One down. How many thousands to go?
(Though, TBH, I’m rather irked that I may never be able to enjoy Himself again without feeling creepy)
Good.
I don’t necessarily think that you should lock up octogenarians, but that conviction is good and important.
Do they serve Jello Pudding in prison?
I can’t say I was ever a big fan of Bill Cosby but I can pinpoint when I first lost respect for him: when I learned that much of his book “Fatherhood” (which I enjoyed) had been written (without credit) by Ralph Schoenstein.
Cosby calls the prosecutor an asshole in open court. That should help get him a lighter sentence, no?
BTW, listen carefully to the journalist in the video linked to by cervantes.
“Accusers”, “Ladies who believe they are victims”,…
Seems like even after a guilty verdict we’re not allowed to call a spade a spade.
The biggest outcome of all this that I hope for is that it will be easier for victims to seek justice against then next star celebrity serial rapist.
Why not? He’s gotten away with it (and allegedly many other similar crimes) and lived free for decades. The Golden State Killer is 72. Should he be allowed to remain free? I truly believe that rehabilitation should be the focus of our incarceration system, but there needs to be a punitive element as well. You can’t date rape X amount of women and just go to some classes on the weekend. Yes, this could essentially end up with Cosby receiving a life sentence in prison, and maybe the elderly should receive some leniency in family visitations or such, especially as health inevitably deteriorates. But he needs to serve time, IMHO. Maybe release him in his last days to be with family, or something, but he can’t just walk out of the courtroom with a slap on the wrist and an ankle monitor.
#3
I do, especially when they have otherwise lived a life of luxury.
Ragutis
First of all because I don’t believe in retributive justice. While I think that some people should not be allowed to be free for the safety of others, these are few cases. Prison, especially the US prison system is inhumane. I don’t believe in hurting people because it makes us feel better about something.
If we talk about age then 72 is a hell lot of difference to 80.
1. Why needs there be a punitive element?
You are aware that there are other ways, right? Like for example having to pay compensation and to charities. He could just as well remain grounded. If you want punishment, that is punishment as well.
Oh, and fuck you for making me defend a rapist just because I don’t want to be a terrible human being who delights in making others suffer. I’m not going to discuss this any further.
This should be about his victims finally getting some justice and recognition.
I agree with Giliell. The focus on the system should be on the safety and wellbeing of the victims and society at large, not punishing the perpetrator. Lengthy incarceration may sometimes be the best way to achieve the former if there’s literally no other way to ensure the safety of the victims and society at large, but it isn’t the only way, and I’m very skeptical about any kind of life sentencing. If there’s a better way than lengthy incarceration, I think it’s at bare minimum immoral to still choose to go for it.
Aye.
Giliell
“spade” is yet another American derogatory word for a Black person.
chigau
I’m sorry, I didn’t known that. I was thinking about garden tools.
Giliell
I thought you might not have heard of spade used like that.
It’s no longer a common idiom.
It would be more useful to have him use his voice to educate about consent, than to have him rot in prison. This is an outcome he has been fearing for 40 years; he knew the truth but struggled to keep the wheels on his gravy train. He’s ruined. “Was it worth it?”
So, PZ: Were you consciously thinking of the Nixon Doonesbury strip and its sequel?
I think a term in prison is appropriate, mostly because it would do great damage to his reputation and his bloated ego. You cannot fix sexual predators, but you can use his money to pay damages to the victims. Nothing can ever make up for the rapes, but the public vindication of a guilty as charged sentence is a step in the right direction.
chigau
The idiom itself refers to garden tools, and predates the racist slur by a few thousand years. It’s not a slur when used in the idiom, but probably best avoided due to its history as a slur. I wonder if the association between spades and black is due to playing cards?
Prison at age 80? Well, he drugged and raped dozens of women. I would be comfortable with gathering them in a hotel conference room, letting them give him rohypnol, and letting them discuss what to do with him once he’s out. Let the victims decide. It’s not retributive justice, just a focus group.
It’s good that Cosby will finally see consequences for some of the horrible things he’s done. Or, rather, it’s better than nothing which is what I feared would happen.
@ anbheal, #20
Not cool.
Ragutis, #9:
But if he even lives for much longer, which isn’t especially likely, he won’t be nearly as threatening as he was when he was younger. Without such a threat, I do not see a justification for restricting a person’s freedoms. If you’re not protecting people/society from harm, then that kind of justification goes away.
Why? It’s not obvious at all that there “needs” to be any such thing. So explain why.
But it seems that no matter what our situation is actually like (e.g., a person who’s now literally incapable of harming anybody else), you’d be able to claim there is nonetheless a “punitive element” which is supposed to justify restricting their freedoms anyway. Otherwise, you’d just cite protecting people from harm and so forth, with no reference (necessary or otherwise) to additional “punitive elements.”
This total disconnect between the reality of our situation and what we’re going to do about it (hence no reason why we should act that way) is a big part of what makes the view so problematic. If it were an element that needs be involved, we’re not given a way to decide what specifically to do or how to do it, nor any guidance about cases when it isn’t needed or why that may or may not be so. It’s only a completely unhelpful claim that, somehow or another, for no apparent reason, it must be so. What must be so? No clue, except that it doesn’t pertain to protecting people from harm or anything like that. Because you say so, and that’s nearly all that is said. Yeah, well, thanks a bunch for the offer, but I don’t see how/when/why I would ever need that (whatever it is), so I’m not buying it.
It’s creationist-style reasoning at best. But at least they have the vague excuse that there are things we don’t yet understand satisfactorily about the world, which may conceivably be explained by the existence of a supernatural entity of some kind. I can at least wrap my head around it and understand the motivations for somebody making a cosmological argument or whatever.
But just saying “oh, look, this needs to be so,” without saying what is needed and what isn’t, how that ought to work and how it shouldn’t, why anybody ought to believe all this is anything in the neighborhood of “true” … that just doesn’t do it for me. It’s very difficult to see how any rational process (even a very sloppy one) could get you there. It’s difficult to see where exactly you think you ended up, much less the route you might have taken.
I suspect the biggest reason this shit sticks around among some people is that there is so little to get a grip on. If you don’t mean anything in particular by it in the first place, then probably not much will be able to change your mind. That is, not much except, hopefully, somebody helping you recognize how silly and unhelpful it is that you don’t mean anything in particular by it in the first place. People’s lives and rights and so forth are at stake, so we should probably have some relatively high standards such that this kind of shit is not going to be a major part of the way most people think about our justice system. But notice (sadly) just how far away we are from goals like that.
Seriously? Well fuck you too, in the nicest way possible. It’s not about him, it’s about our penal system. Don’t feel that you have to defend that cretin when the argument is about what do we do with him.
I completely agree that our system is fucked up, counterproductive, and way, way, waaay too often inhumane. I don’t know that Bill fuckin Cosby would suffer anything like the the typical inmate, but FFS he put how many women through hell? Now, I agree that there should be punitive damages and such, but the man’s got 10’s of millions of dollars. Unless you’re willing to bankrupt him, he’d sign some checks and just go back to a comfortable, if not luxurious lifestyle (depending on how much you took). Maybe, at 80, even with Viagra there’s not much to fear from him, but I just can’t stomach the though of him sitting in his mansion while his victims are sitting in a therapists’ office. Suffer? No, i don’t want him to suffer, but he certainly deserves a “time-out”.
Now, how our system houses and treats inmates and whether it uses that time for rehabilitation or revenge is an entirely different issue, and one that has been ignored for, well, pretty much the entirety of our (U.S.A.) history as far as I can tell, and as recidivism rates imply.
I completely agree, even if our definitions of “justice” may differ. Incarceration in our country needs a paradigm shift, but crimes like these deserve more than a few “donations” and a mea culpa speaking tour. I don’t find it too dissimilar from banks and Wall Street firms paying a pittance in fines after raking in millions upon millions through malfeasance. There needs to be a disincentive to repeat the crime, especially since we’re not doing anything to reform people.er our system uses that time for rehabilitation or revenge is an entirely different issue, and one that has been ignored for, well, pretty much the entirety of our history as far as I can tell, and as recidivism rates imply.
I completely agree, even if our definitions of “justice” may differ. Incarceration in our country needs a paradigm shift, but crimes like these call for more than a few “donations” and a mea culpa speaking tour. In effect, if you’re rich enough, you can get away with it. I don’t find it very dissimilar from banks and Wall Street firms paying a pittance in fines after raking in millions upon millions through malfeasance. There needs to be a disincentive to repeat the crime, especially since we’re not doing anything to reform people.
JUDGE: Mr. Cosby, you are here to be sentenced for the heinous crimes of which you have been convicted. Now, at 80 years old and with your high public profile, the chances of your reoffending in the same manner are quite low. You are also an extremely rich man who can live in comfort for the rest of your days without having to work. So I have come to a sentence that does not include jail time but which still provides retributive justice to your many victims. .
COSBY: Oh thank God!
JUDGE: Now, I did ask for a full accounting of your net worth, and it was reported to me that the figure is “around $800 million”. I therefore sentence you to disburse $798 million of your money to various charities serving women, children, and minorities, to be chosen by a panel of your victims. This money is to be distributed within one year of this date. You will be on probation for fifteen years. The $2 million you have left after the disbursement will allow you to live comfortably for the rest of your natural life. And if you choose to use your comedic talents again, and you can find people willing to pay to listen to you — I wish you good luck. Court is adjourned. (BANG!)
???
Sorry about that. Don’t really know what happened there. Looked fine in preview.
I’m personally fine with “bankrupt the fucker and use whatever assets are left after giving the victims significant shares to various charitable uses.”
I’m just fine with locking up predators like Cosby for the rest of their natural lives.
They can’t be rehabilitated, so we need to keep them away from society.
@ 19
“I wonder if the association between spades and black is due to playing cards?”
Probably. It seems to have come into use early in the 20th century, about the same time as the expression, “black as the ace of spades.”
You know, if Cosby somehow escapes prison time out of this it’s going to look like his celebrity status has protected him from his crimes again. Might not be the intention, but it’ll certainly be the message that gets sent.
Good riddance tae bad cess.
I guess that’s the price we have to pay to ensure that only good people suffer and bad people get rewarded.
I sympathize very much with Giliell’s position, but I can’t support exempting Cosby to the standard sentence as a one-off act of mercy. If the state wants to enact reform to reduce the sentences of ALL people who are unlikely to re-offend, due to age, sincere rehabilitation, or any other reasonable reason, I’m all for it. However, doing it just for Cosby is almost certain to send a terrible message. Either that justice doesn’t apply to the rich and famous, or that drug-assisted date rape isn’t really rape-rape. Or both. Our criminal justice and prison system is completely fucked, but that isn’t the way to fix it.
I wonder what recourse to the civil court do the victims have at least the ones named in this trial?
did wonders for OJ.
uncle frogy
I have two disagreements with Giliell’s position:
1. Most human justice systems incorporate some sort of punishment for bad acts. We can argue over whether this is regrettable primate psychology or a crucial part of the perpetrator experiencing negative consequences for the suffering they have caused others. I lean to the idea that some form of punishment is a necessary part of the process and while it’s possible for rehabilitation without punishment for someone who has already come to realise that what they did was wrong, we’re talking here about a man who committed dozens of rapes over 50 years, who denied wrongdoing, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, and who sicced his lawyer onto the women he’d abused to make their lives even more miserable when they testified. I can’t really see how it would be fair after all that for Cosby’s sentence to cause him no significant emotional discomfort. In fact, I suspect that Cosby and many other powerful men (some of whose trials are forthcoming, like Weinstein’s) will breathe a deep sigh of relief if Cosby receives a trivial sentence.
It should go without saying that even though I think Cosby’s sentence should be custodial, I don’t believe it should be abusive or torturous.
2. I think you underestimate his continued risk to others. I know someone who was abused by her septuagenarian grandfather. The most recent Cosby allegation that we know of is from 2008. Cosby was 71.
Hairhead #24
Sounds good to me.
chigau@35 and hairhead@24–
Yeah that sounds good until you realise they legally hid 90% of their wealth from the court.
@23
I think you should try to write without expletives. Meaningful “F” words? Try flaw, fraud, fake, foul, fable, etc . . . etc. Use, especially excessive, of slang distracts, even detracts, from intelligibility.
jack16
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde:
I think Wilde was aware of the racist meaning of the word “spade”
Sorry for the distraction, back to telling one another to fuck off.
call me mark@38–
Wilde wasn’t making a joke about race. The joke is that Gwendolen is so posh she has never set eyes on a working tool.
Also, The Importance of Being Ernest was first performed in London in 1895. Spade as a slang term for black person was first recorded in the US in the 1920s.
jack16 @ 34:
I think you should grab your fake, flawed tone policing and fable it up your fraud.
Yes, mom.
chrislawson: thanks for the correction
cvoinescu, #41
Thanks for starting my Friday morning with an LOL.
Microraptor #29:
That’s why discussion about policy should be divorced from discussion about individual cases.
I agree with those who say that retributive justice isn’t. It serves no purpose other than to satisfy the baser instincts of society. It doesn’t undo the crime that was committed, it does not prevent future crimes to be committed – because a lot of criminals don’t believe they will get caught or don’t really think well enough ahead anyway.
As long as the current flawed regime is in force I won’t shed a tear for Cosby going to prison though. Indeed he shouldn’t have it better than others who are convicted for comparable crimes.
Under a different philiosophy of justice I do like the idea of stripping serious criminals off their wealth if they have it. And I would not let them keep their last 2 millions either. A person like this I believe has lost his right to be so privileged over others and should pay compensation to his victims and to society for what he has done.
Just sentence him to watch “Leonard Part 6” five times a day, every day, until he passes.
jack16 #37
No, it doesn’t.
.
cvoinescu #41
Fucking fabulous.
Chrislawson, once you have finished disagreeing with straw Giliellb welcome to the real world.
I neither claimed that there should be zero consequences for Cosby nor that there was no risk of him hurting others.
I don’t remember the album, but the first time I ever felt uncomfortable listening to Cosby was a routine in which he talked about how many children he wanted and then ‘joked’ that, since his wife is Catholic, she can’t say no. Looks like Cosby thought that no woman should be able to say no.
I was actually happy when I heard that the jury had asked the judge for a definition of consent. At that point, I felt a little more confident in the possibility of a conviction.
Giliell@48–
Apologies for misreading you.
Tethys@19 asks, “I wonder if the association between spades and black is due to playing cards?”
The Oxford English Dictionary seems to believe it is. As chrislawson points out, “Spade as a slang term for black person was first recorded in the US in the 1920s”, and one such “first record” is given by the OED (which tries very hard always to find the earliest printed record, and which has in this millennium been very interested in continually updating its on-line version as new ‘pre-citations’ are discovered.
But note that the date when some bit of language was “first recorded”, in print or otherwise, is not necessarily very soon after it was first used, and the time between the two can be expected to be longer—perhaps much longer—than average in the case of ‘slang’ and/or taboo language. For instance, “asshole” (up to details of spelling) appears in the medical context, as a translation of Latin anus, in or around 1400 CE, but its taboo derogatory use is not attested in print until 1935! I for one (and the Family Linguist for another) find it very hard to believe that it took 500-odd years for it to occur to some English speaker to call someone an asshole in so many words.
A punishment like jail time isn’t going to be a deterrent to future celebrity abusers because they tend to take advantage of power and wealth imbalances to keep things out of court. So maybe the best thing would be to take all Cosby’s money and undo as much of the imbalance as possible: make a fund to cover the court costs of the victims of future abusers. The accused would still get a trial, but the victims wouldn’t have to give up pursuing justice for fear of bankrupting themselves.
jack16 (#37)
Well, that’s utter bullshit. Your disaster of a sentence does make a good case for the negative effects of priggishness on intelligibility, though.
Don’t know if any of you Americans heard of a certain jimmy saville ? all round charity worker /child abuser .
He worked for the BBC for years did a lot of charity ,got Knighted at the bidding of the Grantham witch .
All the time he was busy abusing children ,he thought his fame would protect him ,even though it was a open secret at the bbc .
It all came out years after he died ,the bbc would not sack him in case it made them look bad .
There is even a clip of him groping a teenage girl when he was hosting Top Of The Pops .
The bbc even stopped Newsnight one of their own programmes from running a story about him .
Anyway the police have set up Operation Yewtree to investigate other high profile people .
One good thing to come out of it ,no one is doing jimmy saville impressions any more
….at least billyjoe has stayed out of this thread >.>
I gotta say that while I am glad he was found guilty in terms of justice I’m less convinced on the this being the legally correct outcome.
There’s no doubt Cosby was a serial rapist. I’m unsure if the DA showed that he committed these particular crimes at these particular times beyond a reasonable doubt.
I’m frankly surprised there wasn’t another mistrial.