THE NEW REPUBLIC: the possibility that this extremely rich man lambasting poor people for everything from stealing pound cake to wearing low-slung pants to how they named their children—might have drugged and raped more than a dozen women would have made our heads pop off. It would have made us question every single good, reassuring, optimistic thing that Bill Cosby ever made us think about ourselves and our country. It might have made us rethink the way he had held up wealthy people as model feminists, and about exactly how screwed up it was that that his progressive cheerful vision of post-racial America had never addressed the structural realities faced by non-wealthy people.
What’s more, America’s terrible history of discrediting black men via charges of sexual misconduct was precisely the kind of thing that might lead white liberals to not want to engage such loaded allegations about a black man who had assuaged their guilt over precisely this kind of history. To wrestle with the merits of those charges—the kinds that have too often been deployed falsely to justify everything from lynching to stand your ground laws—would force America to acknowledge that deeply set, incredibly complicated patterns of injustice 
around race and sex and power are far from erased. It would also force us to concede that, in this case, they might not be false.
So we didn’t truly allow ourselves to think about any of it. Until now. MORE
PLAYBOY: Cosby wouldn’t be able to get away with these crimes simply because he was valuable. He could only do so because America sees women as being the exact opposite. Anonymous people, for a range of reasons, get away with rape every day. They, like Cosby is alleged to have done, treat woman as if they were disposable before and after sex, and like they were merely props for the act itself. Apparently, they can see why Cosby was enamored by “Spanish fly” for decades.Why else would anyone defend a man who, as appearances are being cancelled and his comedy special is being pulled by Netflix, won’t defend himself? How else could Don Lemon, ostensibly a journalist, find it appropriate to ask one of Cosby’s alleged victims why she didn’t bite his dick off, as if that would end an encounter during which she was drugged? That extreme benefit of the doubt isn’t simply reserved for television stars or athletes, so it’s dangerous to evaluate reactions to Cosby simply in the context of fame. It’s probably soothing, as it’s easier to consider capitalism protected Cosby rather than apathy. MORE
DAILY BEAST: “[There was the time] in Atlantic City, which was the final incident, where he came straight out and attacked me in his suite and tried to rape me and tried to tear off my clothes and he was trying to tear off his belt buckle and his pants,” the 47-year-old actress recounted. “I was screaming and yelling and scratching and wrestling to get away from him, and at one point he just got angry and viciously mad and threw me out.” MORE
CNN: A former prosecutor who declined to bring charges against Bill Cosby a decade ago said Wednesday that he wishes he could’ve nailed the comedian on an allegation that he drugged and molested a woman at his Pennsylvania home. Bruce Castor also told CNN that he believed Cosby — a beloved figure who, with his wit and boyish smile, has charmed audiences as a family-friendly stand-up comic, the voice of Fat Albert, the host of “Picture Pages” and the star of a wildly popular eponymous sitcom — lied to authorities. In January 2004, Andrea Constand, then a 31-year-old staffer for the women’s basketball team at Temple University, Cosby’s alma mater, was at the comedian’s Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, home when Cosby provided her medication that made her dizzy, she alleged the following year. MORE
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