The Cost of Accusing Bill Cosby
In 2005, Bill Cosby was interviewed by the National Enquirer about accusations—in part—that he’d drugged and sexually assaulted a woman in 1970. He didn’t deny anything. But he raised the prospect of how damaging such allegations could be for the people closest to him. “Who really wants to put his or her family in a position of information coming out publicly that will cause great emotional stress, challenge?” he said. “The choices that the family, friends have made in looking at him or her as a good person, a wonderful person, a person to be trusted?”
Who indeed? On Tuesday, during about the six women who’d appeared in court to testify that Cosby had assaulted them. Bliss likened the cavalcade of voices against Cosby to “witch hunts, lynching, and McCarthyism.” She called Janice Dickinson a “failed starlet” and “an aged-out model” who’d likely “slept with every single man on the planet.” She implied that Heidi Thomas had made up her allegations about Cosby to get the attention. Andrea Constand, the woman whose accusations against Cosby were being tried in court, was by defense attorneys as a “pathological liar” and a “con artist” whose sole intention in coming forward was to milk more money from the TV star.
