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Just Played One On TV: Bill Cosby And His Shattered Nice Guy Alter Ego

Wendy Kaminer: Bill Cosby enjoyed moral authority in real life because Cliff Huxtable exuded it, and that was entirely irrational. In this photo, members of Cosby's television family, the Huxtables, are pictured in New York, Thursday, May 2, 2002. (Richard Drew/AP)
Wendy Kaminer: Bill Cosby enjoyed moral authority in real life because Cliff Huxtable exuded it, and that was entirely irrational. In this photo, members of Cosby's television family, the Huxtables, are pictured in New York, Thursday, May 2, 2002. (Richard Drew/AP)

Thirty-five women allegedly raped by Bill Cosby tell their stories in New York Magazine this week. The stories have always been plausible, but now they appear to be true, having been corroborated by Cosby’s own admission of Quaalude use, as well as the preening sexism revealed in his recently released, 2005 deposition.

Corroboration? I can hear some feminists snorting in disgust at the suggestion that rape accusations might require, or at least be bolstered by, corroboration. Why isn’t the word of a woman, why weren’t the words of many women, enough? Accusations of rape are sometimes impossible to corroborate. Sometimes all we have is the word of an alleged victim and our subjective evaluations of his or her credibility. Historically, many rape allegations were presumed incredible, and New York Magazine is critical of the “skepticism” that long confronted Cosby’s self-identified victims.

His fans and detractors alike should have approached questions about his character with the same skepticism that confronted the accusations against him.

Given the historic biases against criminalizing — much less prosecuting — rape, feminist anger at the failure to simply take a woman’s word for it is understandable, but not persuasive. Skepticism isn’t disbelief. It’s the antidote to gullibility; it’s a demand that beliefs be tested. In the justice system, it’s a presumption of innocence. We should approach virtually all accusations of criminality with skepticism, and not just in the courtroom but also in old and new media, our anarchic courts of public opinion. Of course we form our own opinions about high profile accusations, but it’s best not to publicize them prematurely.

So I bristled a little at some public presumptions of Cosby’s guilt, but I also resisted presuming his innocence, because it was easier to reconcile with his image. Cosby enjoyed moral authority in real life because his TV character exuded it, and that was entirely irrational. His fans and detractors alike should have approached questions about his character with the same skepticism that confronted the accusations against him.

Instead, Cosby enjoyed a reputation as an affable good guy because he played one on TV. The cult of celebrity relies partly on gullibility, the tendency to mistake public persona for private character, to assume that the mask is a portrait of the face beneath. “Listen, he was America’s favorite dad. I went into this thinking he was going to be my dad,” one of his accusers, Barbara Bowman recalls. “To wake up half-dressed and raped by the man that said he was going to love me like a father? That’s pretty sick. It was hard for America to digest when this came out. And a lot of backlash and a lot denial and a lot of anger.”

Bowman was hardly alone in assuming that Cosby was the man he pretended to be. Fictional personas are powerful and lifelike because of the emotions they evoke and the desires we invest in them. We put real faith in fictions.

Fictional personas are powerful and lifelike because of the emotions they evoke and the desires we invest in them. We put real faith in fictions.

Consider the pained, sorrowful reactions to the re-imagining of another archetypal American dad — Atticus Finch. “Law Professors React to the Shocking ‘News’ about Atticus Finch,” a headline in the National Law Journal proclaimed. News? Since when is the story told in a novel “news”? The Atticus of "To Kill A Mockingbird" and the Atticus of "Go Set A Watchman" are two respective figments of imagination. Unlike real human beings, they’re immutable. The Atticus of "Mockingbird" remains a moral exemplar who rose above the racism of his culture, even as the Atticus of "Watchman" is a figure infected by it.

But if you can still feel inspired reading "Mockingbird," must you feel “weird” watching re-runs of "The Cosby Show," as comedian Hannibal Buress suggested when he labeled Cosby a rapist? Perhaps, given the equation of Cosby the man with Cosby the actor, which was probably unavoidable. He pretended to be playing himself. Atticus Finch was confused with a real human being. Bill Cosby, it seems, was confused with a fiction.

Related:

Headshot of Wendy Kaminer

Wendy Kaminer Cognoscenti contributor
Wendy Kaminer, a lawyer and social critic, writes about law, liberty, feminism, religion, and popular culture and is currently a correspondent at The Atlantic. Her latest book is "Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity and the ACLU."

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