He’s gone from America’s dad — to national disgrace.
The public implosion of Bill Cosby has been nothing short of stunning — a decade-long, slow-motion fusillade of mistresses and no fewer than 16 sex-assault accusers, culminating in recent weeks with a series of spectacular, career-threatening p.r. grenade blasts.
Blast 1: Three weeks ago, comedian Hannibal Buress goes viral with a stand-up bit lambasting “The Cosby Show” icon and Jell-O Pudding Pop pusher as a smug hypocrite who preaches family values in public — and rapes women in private.
“Pull your pants up, black people,” Buress, who has written for “30 Rock” and “Saturday Night Live,” says in the bit, doing a mocking imitation of Cosby.
“Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby,” Buress zings.
“So, [that] brings you down a couple notches. ‘I don’t curse on stage.’ But, yeah, you’re a rapist.’”
Blast 2: On Monday, Nov. 10, Cosby invites the public to “Go ahead. Meme me!” over Twitter, leading to the #CosbyMeme hashtag getting inundated with Buress-inspired rape slurs.
“MY TWO FAVORITE THINGS,” read one submission, lettered atop a picture of Cosby looking adorably pleased in a very Huxtable-looking sweater. “JELLO PUDDING & RAPE.”
Blast 3: In response to both the meme backfire and the biting Buress bit going viral, Arizona artist Barbara Bowman on Thursday recounts for The Washington Post an ordeal she had previously described as one of 13 sex-assault accusers in a 2004 lawsuit against Cosby.
“The women victimized by Bill Cosby have been talking about his crimes for more than a decade,” wrote Bowman, who says the legendary comedian repeatedly raped and drugged her in 1985, including in his New York town house, when she was an 18-year-old aspiring actress.
The women victimized by Bill Cosby have been talking about his crimes for more than a decade … why didn’t our stories go viral?
- Barbara Bowman
“Why didn’t our stories go viral?”
Blast 4: On Friday, Cosby spokesman David Brokaw confirms that Cosby will not appear on CBS’ “Late Show with David Letterman” next Wednesday, as previously scheduled.
Either Cosby was refusing to face questions on the sex-assault allegations or he had turned so toxic so quickly that Letterman wouldn’t go near him.
Blast 5: In an interview broadcast Saturday, Cosby responds with excruciating, literal radio silence after NPR reporter Scott Simon brings up the touchy subject.
SCOTT SIMON: “This question gives me no pleasure, Mr. Cosby, but there have been serious allegations raised about you in recent days.”
BILL COSBY: [Silence]
SIMON: “You’re shaking your head no. I’m in the news business. I have to ask the question. Do you have any response to those charges?”
COSBY: [Silence]
SIMON: “Shaking your head no. There are people who love you who might like to hear from you about this. I want to give you the chance.”
COSBY: [Silence]
The barrage of explosively bad publicity couldn’t have come at a worse time for Cosby, who rose to national fame 30 years ago, when “The Cosby Show” debuted on NBC.
Now at age 77, Cosby was clearly angling for a personal renaissance.
In September, Cosby released an authorized biography, “Cosby: His Life and Times.”
The book — written by ex-Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker — details in worshipful terms the comic’s rise from humble beginnings in Philadelphia as one of four sons of a maid and a Navy sailor.
The book recounts his coast-to-coast success as a young stand-up, which he parlayed into a starring role on the ’60s action show “I Spy.”
From there came his own sitcom, “The Bill Cosby Show,” followed by contributions to award-winning children’s projects, including “The Electric Company,” on which he was a recurring guest, and “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids,” which he created as an educational cartoon series.
But his biggest claim to fame remains “The Cosby Show,” which ruled the sitcom universe for eight seasons, from 1984 to 1992.
Yet the book glaringly makes no mention of sex-abuse allegations.
“I didn’t want to print allegations that I couldn’t confirm independently,” Whitaker explained to BuzzFeed.
Not confirmed? Bowman and Cosby’s other alleged victims would quarrel with that characterization.
Allegations stretch back into the Huxtable heyday of the mid-’80s.
The alleged victims tended to be young women in their late teens and early 20s and had been in a mentoring relationship with the star when they say he drugged and attacked them.
The first official allegation surfaced in early 2005, when Andrea Constand — a Temple University basketball star who is now a Toronto-area massage therapist — alleged that Cosby had drugged and molested her.
Cosby, a Temple alum who had remained involved with campus events, insisted that the sex was consensual, according to reports quoting sources close to the soon-aborted criminal investigation.
A whopping 13 additional women would join Constand’s civil lawsuit as witnesses, insisting in court papers that they, too, had been first “mentored,” then drugged and/or abused by the curmudgeonly comic years, even decades prior.
One of those “Jane Does” would reveal herself to be Bowman, and two other accusers would step forward by name.
Tamara Green, now a California lawyer, told the “Today” show’s Matt Lauer in 2005 that Cosby gave her pills to fight a fever and then groped, kissed and disrobed her as she fell into a stupor.
And Beth Ferrier alleged that 20 years prior as a young model, she had been slipped a drugged coffee by Cosby, who then attacked her.
Neither Bowman, Green nor Ferrier — or any of the other statute-of-limitations-barred Jane Does in the lawsuit — had anything to gain financially by supporting Constand’s lawsuit, which Cosby settled privately within a year.
NBC, his “Cosby Show” home throughout the 1980s, announced in January that the comedian, actor, author, producer and activist would be starring in a new sitcom in 2015.
Cosby would play the patriarch of a multigenerational family, the network boasted.
“I’ve got it all put together, man!” Cosby joked of the project as recently as June.
The network has apparently been less enthused, blandly describing the show as on the “off-season development track.”
It was unclear what, if any, impact the latest publicity plague will have on the project.
Additional reporting by Amber Jamieson