In Defense of Bill Cosby

A talented comedian can find humor in tragedy. So maybe, just maybe, this post won’t be a labored slog into a rape case. Maybe the legacy of Bill Cosby should be defended, and I can accomplish that with my typical mix of empathy and sarcasm. Maybe.

Unfortunately, I’m no comedian. This post will be laborious, the Cosby legacy deserves some reconsideration, and “sarcastic empathy” makes no goddamn sense. I have no idea where I’m going with this, so let’s just spin into darkness together, wanton and bewildered.

Because I might be defending a serial rapist.

Exactly.

For the uninitiated/willfully naive, here’s a brief rundown. A woman named Andrea Constand accused Cosby of battery and sexual assault in 2005. The lawsuit mentioned 13 Jane Does, all with similar stories of sexual misconduct. Cosby settled out of court, with no admission of guilt. Done, except not. Few things are that simple.

Now, the Jane Does are telling their stories. This prompted more women to come forward, more discussion online, more jokes from comedians, and fewer Cosby Show reruns. As accusations pile, Mr. Cosby has been stonewalling journalists. A perfect shitstorm of drama and controversy.

Cable news executives were both prudent and restrained. Obviously.

I remind you, these are alleged acts, and I’m not prepared to deem Bill Cosby innocent or guilty. Far smarter people are going to hash that out. But if you want more info, here are some horrifying Newsweek articles.

More, weirder info? Here’s a video of Cosby gibber-stuttering around journalist inquiries.

To be fair, it’s his primary mode of communication.

But whether or not he’s guilty, I have a problem with these allegations. Well, a lot of problems. It’s a rape case. No amount of funky sweaters or pudding pops can make that less disturbing. But I have problems beyond the natural response to forced sex.

In my research, I found many comments yearning for ignorance. People who “wouldn’t tell their parents,” who were “raised with Bill Cosby and refuse to imagine him as a criminal.” Many possess a yearning to retain his legacy, as it were. To them, Bill Cosby is somehow “too good to be remembered this way.” “I’ll just ignore all this til it blows over,” wrote one individual.

Frankly, it’s disgusting.

Exactly.

Maybe I can’t understand. After all, I have no childhood memories of The Cosby Show. I was raised on Nintendo, The Simpsons and Homeward Bound, none of which star real people I’d recognize. Mario wasn’t a personal father figure (phew), Bart Simpson wasn’t a role model and Sassy the Cat didn’t commit crimes in the years after her Incredible Journey.

“Don’t ask questions, boy.”

But no matter what, putting someone on a pedestal is grossly unfair. It’s what children do while still young and stupid, before they find out their parents are actual people with flaws and downfalls.

No one deserves the infallible label, because no one can live up to that.

It’s this willful naiveté that I find disturbing. Maybe these allegations are false, and this has become a witch hunt. Maybe the women are finding mild celebrity in this (most are not seeking financial compensation, so that dose of victim shaming can be disregarded). The Cosby scandal could dissipate and leave us with halcyon reruns.

But imagine these allegations are true, and we resign to willful ignorance. So what then, possible rape cannot be addressed because we like the guy? Ooh, he’s silly, he couldn’t have done this? Sins are impossible because he’s funny?

What kind of message does that send?

Imagine the trouble respected celebrities could get into with that kind of immunity and non-accountability. Bill Cosby doesn’t deserve that. No person alive deserves that, because no person can retain humanity under those circumstances.

“Yes… no person indeed…”

But in equal measure, we shouldn’t rush to demonize.

According to this Huffington Post article, Raven-Symone had to refute rumors that Cosby molested her while she was on his show. If you recall, she was practically a baby. And adding “pedophile” to a list of possible wrong-doings should only be done with prudence and careful restraint, not haphazard rumor milling.

“WHEEEEEEE!”

But that’s what we’ve become. We either deify or demonize, and see no area or possibility for gray. Gray isn’t bold and simple like black or white, but most of the world possesses that shade. We should probably grow up and get used to it.

Granted, careful consideration is hard. This Cracked article addresses why it’s easy to ignore the allegations, and this Boston.com article talks about the difficultly of separating Bill Cosby from his beloved TV character. It’s hard. But we can’t ignore the truth simply because we need The Cosby Show. It’s not fair to anyone, including Bill Cosby.

And eventually, maybe we can separate Dr. Huxtable from his portrayer. One day, The Cosby Show can start to recover. But no amount of fondness is worth denying the possibility of serial rape. Once The Cosby Show‘s back… just, um, ignore Dr. Huxtable’s profession.

Hell, if nothing else just watch it for Clair.

Dayum.

Does putting Phylicia Rashād on a pedestal make me a hypocrite? Perhaps. But I mean dayum.

In Defense of Lena Dunham

“Do we all have uteruses?” I asked my mother when I was seven.

That’s, um, not me. It’s a quote from Lena Dunham’s new book, “Not That Kind of Girl.” To reiterate, that quote was not me. I’m a late bloomer, so I’m texting my mother that question right now. And… back to Lena.

“Yes,” (my mother) told me. “We’re born with them, and with all our eggs, but they start out very small. And they aren’t ready to make babies until we’re older.”

Ah yes, exactly what my mom just said. Oh, sorry, I’m sure you’re just enthralled by Ms. Dunham’s account of anatomical discovery. I’ll be quiet.

I look at my sister, now a slim, tough one-year-old, and at her tiny belly. I imagined her eggs inside her, like the sack of spider eggs in Charlotte’s Webb, and her uterus, the size of a thimble.

“Does her vagina look like mine?”

“I guess so,” my mother said. “Just smaller.”

One day, as I sat in our driveway in Long Island playing with blocks and buckets, my curiosity got the best of me. Grace was sitting up, babbling and smiling, and I leaned down between her legs and carefully spread open her vagina.

Woah woah woah, what the what?!? Oh, sorry, shutting up…

She didn’t resist…

What?

and when I saw what was inside I shrieked.

Wait, WHAT?

My mother came running. “Mama, Mama! Grace has something in there!”

WHAAAAAAT?

My mother didn’t bother asking why I had opened Grace’s vagina. This was within the spectrum of things I did. She just got on her knees and looked for herself. It quickly became apparent that Grace had stuffed six or seven pebbles in there. My mother removed them patiently while Grace cackled, thrilled that her prank had been a success.

Ahem. WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

So yeah, this week I’m defending Lena Dunham. Let’s see how this goes.

Okay, real talk. We all did embarrassing stuff as kids, right? Kids are weird. I remember chucking my clothes at my brother when I was seven. Though I clearly had valid reasons. He was being a jerk and I needed projectiles. We’re all plagued by childhood weirdness for a few years.

And yet, that doesn’t come close to Lena’s tendency to TMI. But that’s her shtick. We’re talking about the frequently-nude writer/star of Girls, after all. Watching Girls is like an anatomy lesson, with awkward hookups and kooky, half-mumbled dialogue. So, like high school sex ed.

So many bananas…

So maybe the awkward story about her youthful vaginal curiosity is just another kooky overshare. In the same book, she talks about masturbation, bribing her sister to practice kissing, sexual encounters… but something about that one excerpt has caused abundant backlash. Well, that and this sentence:

“Basically, anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl I was trying.”

All of this is provocative out of context. Hell, it’s kinda disconcerting in context. That’s kinda the point. But it seems to be time for everyone to hop aboard the anti-Dunham bandwagon.

Meanwhile, she’s just anti-pants. But really, aren’t we all?

Conservative critics hate Dunham as much as ever. After she starred in an ad comparing voting for President Obama to losing one’s virginity, a Minnesota Republican accused her of being in league with Obama and Satan. For conservatives, it doesn’t get much worse than being in cahoots with Obama.

But on the more recent Dunham scandal, The National Review published an article about the evils of her childhood escapades and vaginal discoveries. Author Kevin D. Williamson writes…

“Dunham’s writing often is unclear (willfully so, it seems), but the context here — Grace has overheard her older sister asking whether her baby sister has a uterus — and Grace’s satisfaction with her prank suggest that Grace was expecting her older sister to go poking around in her genitals and inserted the pebbles in expectation of it. Grace is around one year old at the time of these events. There is no non-horrific interpretation of this episode.”

Um… it’s a joke? Dunham made a joke at the end of a weird story. Pretty non-horrific.

Unlike this dress!

But Williamson has other problems. He accuses her family of coddling her (fair), says she’s crude (also fair), says she’s overprivileged and vain and narcissistic (Justin, you’re supposed to defend!). Um… ah, here we go… Williamson claims Dunham has a degree from a school that doesn’t know “the difference between ‘nauseous’ and ‘nauseated.'” There’s a difference in the original Latin, but language evolves and dictionaries no longer distinguish between the two. So… there’s that.

Urp… was thinking about that turquoise floral print…

Williamson also maligns that Dunham didn’t make her rapist a character in her book. Apparently, her rapist isn’t treated fairly. Talk about nauseating.

But those are conservative analysts. They’ve disliked Dunham since she rose to liberal stardom. More shocking is the vitriol received from liberals and feminists.

The Twitter pile-on was swift. Ex-followers compared her vaginal pebble anecdote to child predacity. “Creepy.” “Not normal.” A “self-promoter.” “Full of herself.” A girl who needs to “sit the f–k down and learn something.” ​She was told to “get some boundaries.” To “stop being weird.” Her story was, as one blogger put it, “best kept in the confines of your family kitchen over Thanksgiving.”

“Wait… you found what in her what?”

So now, all her detractors accuse her of child molestation. From when she was seven. Do you see the problem there?

This Daily Banter article by Chez Pazienza contends, “What Dunham did is absolutely the kind of behavior I would have had a few very candid discussions about were I her parents, but I just don’t think it rises to the level of full-on sexual assault. Even Dunham’s analogizing herself to a sexual predator sounds more like her usual dry provocation than it does an actual admission that she was grooming or molesting her sister. I just can’t understand her actions being interpreted differently.”

And it should be said, this kind of curiosity is not abnormal. And her sister defended her, saying she gave permission to publish the story. Her parents’ laissez-faire reaction might be a little off, but it’s difficult to blame Dunham for that. So she was a weird kid with weird parents who let her explore the weird world. Hardly worth hate. In fact, candidly writing about those abnormal experiences could be considered brave.

Though some of her experiences aren’t abnormal… right?

Or maybe “brave” isn’t the right word.

As this Vulture article asserts, Dunham isn’t brave. Oversharing is the job of an artist. She’s just doing what she gets paid to do.

“Writers are narcissists,” author Brian McGreevy writes. “They presume that their personal obsessions and neuroses are of deep fascination — or even beneficial — to potentially millions of people. This is not a negative. Narcissism is as essential to the artist’s temperament as competition to the athlete’s.”

So maybe now I can defend.

Well…  not that.

Lena Dunham has apologized for the insensitive sexual predator line, but she hardly deserves the other accusations thrown her way. She’s just sharing her stories and monetizing her artistic voice, which is an impressive feat. Maybe that doesn’t excuse her behavior, but she’s certainly good at what she does. Her job just happens to be narcissistic oversharing.

Lena Dunham has supporters and detractors, but that’s a good space for any artist. No one is universal. You don’t have to like her, but she’s still capable and successful. I say, good for her.

And to reiterate, she’s not a child molester. Or in league with Satan. Though she does support President Obama, so take from that what you will.

Just go to your local polling place and… ew.

In Defense of Nicolas Cage

Ah, that face is tingling my nostalgia senses.

See, a year ago this week, I started the original “In Defense Of…” column for my college newspaper. In the past year, I have blogged about Lindsay Lohan and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Star Wars prequels and Star Wars sequels, Nickelback and Ke$ha and everything in between. And that’s not even mentioning pet costumes and cosplay…

Ah, the memories. The haunting, haunting memories. But it all began with one man: Nicolas Cage.

I find it appropriate that my first entry was Mr. Cage, a man who screams at the cross-section of lunacy and stupidity (my two favorite topics). Heck, I could’ve devoted all of my entries to him and his crazy, bugged-out eyeballs.

It’s like they’re trying to escape his face…

So this week, I wish to reaffirm my defense of Mr. Cage. But before I do that, I need to confess a severe oversight from my original column. Somehow, someway, I researched the man and never watched this. It’s a YouTube video called “Nicolas Cage Losing His Shit.” Oh, probably NSFW. Unless you work in a f***** prison or some ****baked *****house where f****** eat ****.

… yeah, definitely NSFW.

So can we all agree that this man is crazy? If you had the time and moral fortitude to watch that video, I think it becomes pretty obvious. Except for one little problem. One little, niggling suspicion.

He may be decades ahead of his time.

If nothing else, Nicolas Cage is a trailblazer, and every trailblazer in history was considered crazy. Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, Galileo… nearly every inventor was (rightfully) considered insane by their contemporaries. And Nicolas Cage is the literal inventor of a new, seemingly strange acting technique. He calls it, “Nouveau Shamanic” and it involves… going back to caveman acting and invoking… Picasso-like processes…Yeah, this guy is totally insane.

Probably shouldn’t have tried to argue otherwise.

Maybe his lineage will illuminate something other than lunacy.

At this point, I feel it’s necessary to point out the pedigree of this oft-derided thespian. To start off, let’s reveal Mr. Cage’s real name for the unenlightened: Nicolas Kim Coppola.

Yeah, Coppola. As in Francis Ford Coppola, the “Godfather-“directing cinema mastermind. Well, he also directed “Jack,” but one pile of toxic waste at a time. Mr. Cage is Francis’s nephew, imbuing him with at least some level of talent… I assume. In some way, there may be method to his madness. Maybe?

Naw, he’s just cray-cray. Mad cray-cray.

But I must ask… is being mad cray-cray such a bad thing?

Not sure how to answer that question…

Allow me to introduce a professional witness: film critic Roger Ebert, who wrote an essay on the acting prowess of Mr. Cage.

“There are often lists of the great living male movie stars: De Niro, Nicholson and Pacino, usually,” Ebert writes. “How often do you see the name of Nicolas Cage? He should always be up there. He’s daring and fearless in his choice of roles, and unafraid to crawl out on a limb, saw it off and remain suspended in air.”

Yeah. Roger Ebert wrote that. “Great Movies” essay on “Adaptation.” But he’s not the only one defending Mr. Cage.

Daniel Snyder, an entertainment writer for The Atlantic, writes about Cage’s willingness to accept any role that interests him. Cage has frequently expounded his love of comic books and pulp science fiction, so what does he do? Stuff like Ghost Rider, Kick-Ass, Astro Boy, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Drive Angry, Knowing, and Season of the Witch. Say what you will, but Nicolas Cage performs for his own sheer joy, not money or prestige like most actors.

Hack? Maybe,” writes Snyder. “The least pretentious actor in Hollywood? For sure.”

Those glasses aren’t helping the “non-pretentious” point, are they?

But beneath Snyder’s article, an Atlantic user named “Fakko” asserts something interesting. This is hopefully the last time I quote someone named “Fakko.”

“(Nicolas Cage is) the Michael Caine or Sean Connery of the 21st century. A lot of forgettable roles, some cringeworthy, some excellent, but always memorable.”

Do you love Michael Caine or Sean Connery? ‘Cause they may be just as “unpretentious” and “completely insane” as the venerable Nic. I mean, Sean Connery starred in Zardoz. If that’s not crazy, I’m not sure what is.

If an actor is consistently memorable, tears into roles with resolute gusto and inspires laughter and weird admiration, isn’t that pretty neat? In modern Hollywood, what other actor inspires similar emotion while shooting at the moon? Isn’t doing things differently at least somewhat fascinating?

Whether through mocking laughter or true appreciation, I think we can find it in ourselves to not hate Nicolas Cage. I don’t know about you, but I can appreciate a bit of crazy in our largely normal world. Who knows… maybe he’s like one of those inventors I mentioned earlier. One day, we may be able to… love him.

Too much, TOO MUCH!

And with that, I have finished my first year of pop-culture defending. Here’s to my future of Kardashian research, Michael Bay fan pages and Anime analysis. But first, I’m going to fulfill the wishes of one of my mother’s co-workers.

I don’t know anything about “Teen Mom,” but I’m already afraid.