TJ Walker analyzes Bill Cosby's legal options after new allegations surface, arguing that confession invites lawsuits while denial fuels more accusations. Walker concludes Cosby's best move is complete withdrawal from public life, and dismisses claims the accusations are politically or racially motivated.
Chapters
Bill Cosby's troubles are only getting worse. Yesterday, another woman came forward saying that Bill Cosby raped her in the early 1970s when she was 15 years of age. And she's now suing. So things are only getting worse for Bill Cosby. Now, I've talked about this several times and I've reassessed my own strategy. I think I was wrong to suggest earlier that he simply come clean, confess all. Because here's the problem. And Howard Bragman, the well known PR guru, stated this very clearly in interviews last week. If Cosby comes forward and confesses and asks for apology and goes on an apology tour to Oprah, you're going to have dozens, if not hundreds of women coming forward suing for damages. Because if you publicly state you raped someone, you might not be convicted of rape and be convicted of felony charges, but there's a whole lot of other legal problems you could get yourself into. And you open yourself up to all kinds of lawsuits, as Cosby's finding out right now. So if he comes clean and confesses, begs for forgiveness, he's very likely to have to face every single day for the rest of his life in a courtroom or depositions, and he's going to have to spend every penny of his fortune on legal fees. So that kind of rules out the whole option of confessing. The next option, and the original option is just deny, deny, deny, attack. The problem with that is that just provokes more and more people to come forward. People who had convinced themselves the best thing was to forget about it and just leave it in the past when they were told they're liars or they're not significant. That's going to inflame people even more. And we already see what's happening there. When the controversy percolates up. Netflix cancels its gig with Cosby. NBC cancels its gig with Cosby. High Point University says, we don't want you on our advisory board. Now even Temple University has cut all ties with Bill Cosby. That's his alma mater. He's raised countless amounts of money for Temple, so the walls are caving in on the Cosby empire. So I've now come to conclude his only viable strategy is to quote Howard, shut up and go home. He needs to retreat from public life. No more stand up. He doesn't need the money. No more stand up comedy gigs. No more concert movies. No more sitcoms for NBC. He's approaching 80 and he has plenty of money. He's accomplished a lot. He'll have to live with his own conscience regarding what he did with these women. But as far as what he can do with his reputation, at this point, I do think the absolute best option is to just hold himself up in a mansion somewhere, make it a compound, don't let anyone in or out, make sure his cable television doesn't have any news, tell his servants that he doesn't want to hear about anything in the outside world, and he should just really put himself in a bubble. Now, celebrities are often criticized for insulating themselves, putting themselves in a bubble. But Cosby's really someone who should be in a bubble, because the second he steps out of a bubble, he is going to create more criticism. He's going to elicit lots and lots of lawsuits. He's going to endure more humiliations. You can certainly say he deserves this. What's happening? But I'm simply trying to give a crisis communication strategy, because that's what I do for individuals and organizations in trouble. So I've reluctantly concluded there's no way to spin his way out of this. Now, some have suggested this is all a conspiracy. I'm hearing this from my conservative friends, that this is all somehow a conspiracy. That the likes of Al Sharpton and other liberal black leaders are upset with Bill Cosby because he talked down to young black men and told them to pull their pants up. That's a bunch of nonsense, folks. Cosby is loved by liberals, or certainly was for his whole career since the 1960s. They loved him for breaking the barrier of a Black man on TV in the 60s. They loved him for providing positive role models. Here's a professional black doctor with middle class values in the 80s with his show. So the idea that somehow liberals, and black liberals especially, hate Cosby to the point where they would go around and I guess what, pay millions of dollars of bribes to women to get them to just make up stuff, I find that sheer, utter lunacy and utter fantasy. Anyone who thinks that that group or any other group is capable of orchestrating such a conspiracy and keeping it hidden gives them way, way too much credit. It simply cannot be done. And there's no rational reason why anyone would do that with Cosby, because he simply is not hated and not despised. And he's certainly not seen as a political threat or even a cultural threat to anyone. So I certainly discount that theory. So that's my assessment of Cosby. He needs to just hold himself up in a mansion, never read another newspaper, never show his face in public again, and live out his days in solitude and reflection.
