T.J. Walker breaks down Bill Cosby's catastrophic media response to sexual assault allegations in 2014. Networks pulled his reruns, specials got cancelled, and Cosby tried controlling press coverage through an AP interview. Walker says Cosby's only move now is public confession and apology, or his legacy disappears entirely.
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Bill Cosby in the news. And things just keep getting worse and worse and worse. So TV Land has announced that it's no longer going to show reruns of the old Cosby Show. New comedy specials that were supposed to air on Netflix. Gone. A new series that was supposed to air on NBC cancelled. The walls are caving in on Bill Cosby. And now the Associated Press has released an interview from several weeks back where Bill Cosby is basically telling the reporter, I've seen it. It's just such an amazing act of hubris. He's lecturing the reporter that the reporter shouldn't be allowed to ask questions about these rapes and that if the reporter has any integrity, he won't allow the footage of the questioning to be shown in the interval. Now it's everywhere. And Bill Cosby has become a poster boy for bad media relations, bad crisis communications, bad attempt at media manipulation. Now, given the seriousness of the allegations, you could argue that's the least of his problems. But here's the situation for Bulkhead. He doesn't seem to realize he's so used to everybody kissing his, you know what, telling him how great he is. Because he's had amazingly fawning media coverage for 30 years. It is true. When he started out in the 60s and was the first black entertainer on broadcast TV on a weekly basis, he had death threats, he had hate mail. I mean, he was a real trailblazer back then. And he. He had a lot of viciousness thrown his way. I'm not excusing that for anything he's done recently. But when you look at the press coverage he's gotten in the last 30 years, it's just overwhelmingly positive and upbeat. And unfortunately, that can create a certain arrogance, as we've seen this idea that you, as the person being interviewed, can dictate to reporters what they're allowed to ask. Well, no, my friends, it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way at all. Now, here's something I forgot to mention yesterday in my analysis of the Cosby situation that makes this doubly damning for Bill Cosby. Now, he would say, and I've heard from some of the viewers of this video and this blog to say, look, T.J. you have to realize famous black people are often targeted by racists, by enemies, whether it's the criminal justice system. So anytime you see a famous, successful black person target, you have to really look at it with a grain of salt, because quite often it's just. It's manufactured charges. And I want to say, I actually do agree with that assessment many, many times, especially in the world of politics, because there are many cases where you have two politicians, one white, one black, both are taking graft. It's the black politician that is prosecuted, arrested, prosecuted, indicted and put in jail. And the white politician can get away with it. So I actually do think that high profile blacks in our society historically have been targeted for smear campaigns for various political agendas. But here's the thing about Bill Cosby, he's not one of them. Bill Cosby had an extraordinarily rare position in our society in that basically every liberal loved him. Because here was the guy who broke through the racist barriers on national TV in the 60s. Here's the guy who portrayed blacks in a very, very positive, middle class, upbeat way, breaking stereotypes through the 80s and the number one show. So liberals all loved him. But here's the thing, conservatives loved him too for two main reasons. They liked the fact that Bill Cosby was seen as a role model to blacks because here was a guy who played by the rules, here was a guy on the TV show who studied hard, became a doctor, rose through success the same way middle class whites rise to success by studying hard, working, playing by the rules. And he had an intact family. And it had very conservative themes running through the Cosby. So conservatives loved him for that, number one. Number two, conservatives loved Bill Cosby in recent years because he went out of his way to attack young black men for having their pants down to their ankles and having their hats on back and things that offend a lot of conservatives. And Bill Cosby was saying, basically, clean up your act, young black men of America, and clean up, show up on. So he was stressing conservatives. So conservatives loved Bill Cosby and liberals loved Bill Cosby. So that's why it's simply implausible to me that this is all some conspiracy to bring down Bill Cosby. And furthermore, I just don't think you, even if you had the money and the energy and the inclination to, to attack someone, I just don't think you find 15 women all across the country to allege that they socialized with Bill Cosby, that he drugged them and raped them, and they're not trying to make any money from it, I don't think that's possible. So I think the women's allegations are credible and that Bill Cosby just looks incredibly guilty. As I said yesterday, I believe his only way out of this is to come clean, apologize, say that he did it, he's guilty, he's done it however many a time, maybe hundreds of times, and to donate all of the money from his TV shows to causes that help women and help prevent rape. And if he doesn't do that, he risks being erased from the cultural map of the country and the world, because right now, his shows are still everywhere. But if he continues to look like a guilty rapist who got away with it all, you're not going to see his videos anywhere other than maybe YouTube. So his legacy is at stake. If he thinks he can just tough this out and stay firm, he is sadly mistaken.
