Carvell Wallace - Bill Cosby's Respectability Politics Align Perfectly with Rape Culture lyrics

A career based on an idea of individual achievement should rightfully be destroyed by an individual failing. Cosby has been preaching the gospel of the individual overcoming systemic oppression (and blaming people who fail to do it) for his entire career. So is it hard to believe he would blame a woman for being young and pretty and alone in a room with him? Is it hard to believe he could justify his alleged behavior by reasoning, very simply, that she failed to keep herself from "getting scored on?" Is it hard to believe he would do what he is accused of by 41 women, while simultaneously lecturing 40 million people on the improvement of their morals? To call Bill Cosby a hypocrite is to miss the point entirely. For this to be hypocrisy, you would have to believe that he presented himself as one thing, while pretending to be another. You would have to believe that he knew and accepted that what he is accused of doing to those 41 women was wrong. But we have no evidence to support that. Cosby's moralizing by day and alleged raping by night was not hypocrisy. It was something much worse. The only way he could have been so strident in his presentation of himself as a good person is if he believed he was one. There's a 'Cosby Show' Episode Where He Makes Women Horny and Docile with Magical Barbecue Sauce In his mind, drugging women so that they couldn't prevent him from having s** with him didn't make him bad. This is a sick belief, and one from which we recoil in horror. But it's not the belief of a sick man. Rather, it is the belief of a man very much in touch with reality. The uncomfortable truth is that there is no difference between being a loving, devoted, family man, a pillar of the community—and a rapist. Our culture will gladly allow you to be both. They will even invite you to speak and give you awards. Whether or not he is ever convicted of rape, Bill Cosby will die a broken and deeply hated man. And this seems fitting. A career based on an idea of individual achievement should rightfully be destroyed by an individual failing. Unfortunately, the culture that cheered for him and paid for him to be our hero even when he behaved like a monster is still very much alive. Whom do we blame for that?