A Tale, Told by an Idiot

        Comedian Eddie Griffin has apparently gone insane. His claim that  recent criminal charges against Bill Cosby are an "effort to destroy every black male entertainer’s image" has so many flaws that one wonders why it is even news. Oh wait...race is involved! Why?  Because, and only because, Eddie Griffin has decided to make it so. I'll revisit possible reasons at the end of this monograph.

        The 55 women (the current total) who have over the years accused Cosby of sexual impropriety include the gamut of American women from supermodels like  Beverly Johnson and Janice Dickinson to relative unknowns whose only apparent mistake was being attractive and near Cosby at the same time. These women  cover essentially the entire range of human skin pigmentation, so at least for Cosby, it wasn't racial, simply pathological.

        Perhaps the most abused woman of all is Cosby's wife Camille, who is either blissfully ignorant of her long term husband's proclivities or simply resigned to the fact that he is/was a horn dog with little self restraint. After 51 years of marriage and numerous public indications that she has known he was a serial philanderer, I'm opting for the latter.  

        An excerpt from a recent New York  Post article confirms much of this position:  "Bill Cosby’s wife knows her husband is a serial philanderer, but believes his scores of accusers consented to drugs and sex, two confidants of the couple say. Last week’s revelation that Cosby admitted during a deposition that he plied women with Quaaludes before bedding them barely fazed Camille Cosby, the ­insiders told The Post.

“Camille still doesn’t believe that Bill provided drugs and had sex with women without their consent,” said a source employed by the Cosby family. “She’s well aware of his cheating, but she doesn’t believe that her husband is a rapist.”......You might say  that she’s standing by her husband, but really, the more people stand against him, the more she perceives it as an affront to her and all that she’s done to make him a star,” said another source who’s done business with the Cosbys and remains close to them."  In fact The most meaningful and telling statement may be this, from the same article:  “I created him, I knew what I was getting and we’ll fix this,” she told the gathering at a meeting at the couple’s Shelburne Falls, Mass., home Tuesday night."

        Now, a story I have alluded to here previously:  We have a  friend of some 40 years, now a prominent medical  practitioner in North Florida, who when we first made his acquaintance was a singer/entertainer in New England. He told my wife and I of his first trip to Las Vegas, a sort of "testing the waters" excursion, and how delighted he was to meet his idol (he did a fair amount of comedy in his act) Bill Cosby.  He asked Cosby for career advice and was , instead, propositioned for sex. Cosby was married at the time but, as indicated above, not fanatic about it or, apparently,  gender exclusive.

        So, when Eddie Griffin or anyone else decides that this is all some diabolical racially motivated  sham to smear a good man who is above reproach, he is, simply put - full of shit. Anyone else with this many accusations of abuse from this widely varied group of accusers would have already been tried and convicted. I mean, hell the man has blatantly admitted in a deposition  drugging women for sex by giving them Quaaludes!

        So why Eddie Griffin? Might  his outrage, feigned or not, is more a reflection of the way he views women?   Could his lack of respect for women make him view all of them as simply items to be used and discarded, as Cosby did? we can't know his mind but his actions provide a little insight. At a fairly recent club gig, he did and said this to a pair of women, a couple, who made the mistake of coming to his show and sitting near the stage:

        “You are a lesbian!  All you need is a good man and I’ll volunteer my services.  You won’t be needing any strap-ons or vibrators with me!” He (Griffin) then approached (them) and according to the angry woman, “He started to pump his hips into my face.  I felt sexually assaulted and I wanted him to stop, then I threw the drink at him to defend myself.” After the drink was thrown at the performer,  Griffin went berserk, he began grabbing anything he could find within his reach and threw it at (the woman)  and her partner.  The women were bombarded with items, even salt and pepper shakers.  “Before we  could get away,  he poured a water bottle on my head and threw it at us” she lamented. He is currently being sued for his lack of control.

        Do we have race issues in America? You bet we do. Does someone like an Eddie Griffin enforcing a stereotype  do any conceivable good? Of course not, but then that wasn't his intent, was it? When one's career is flagging (we're still waiting for "Undercover  Brother II" [Not!]) and accusations of writing bad checks to charities  - $150,000 bounced check, suit in progress - and an assault charge from last March....well, I guess any press is better than none.  

        It seems to me that,  diametrically contrary to Griffin's loudmouthed rant, the media, all of it, has been remarkably restrained with respect to the Cosbys, providing more than a few opportunities to present their "side" of the story in the absence of direct confrontation by his victims. I use the word "victims" because this is really a story about the use and abuse of women, and a man who has made a career of it, enabled by a wife who liked the money enough to tolerate the cuckolding.  

        As for Eddie Griffin's ludicrous rant: He may have strutted and fretted too long, because his accusations are "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." This last with appropriate apologies to Shakespeare for using his words  and Eddie Griffin's in the same essay.