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How Philadelphia is confronting the Cosby allegations

Philadelphia is grappling with a double narrative of the beloved, beleaguered and abhorred Bill Cosby as more women, as many as 16, step forward to describe…

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Philadelphia is grappling with a double narrative of the beloved, beleaguered and abhorred Bill Cosby as more women, as many as 16, step forward to describe how the comedian drugged and assaulted them.

Temple University, which had long welcomed Cosby as a commencement speaker and unofficial, sweatshirt-clad representative, still has not followed Netflix and NBC in disassociating itself with the Philly-born actor. In fact, Cosby is still a trustee at the university. Several student writers at the Temple News have called for some action on the university’s part in light of the allegations, including from former women’s basketball director Andrea Constand, especially during a nationwide push to combat the high rate of on-campus sexual assault.

“Temple seems to be banking on Cosby’s star power, remembering him for his colorful sweaters and Pudding Pops as it fails to acknowledge his muddy backstory,” Grace Holleran wrote in the Temple News earlier this month. “It’s perturbing that such publicly accessible information appears to have been brushed under the rug.”

Philadelphia writer Solomon Jones pointed out in a piece published by Newsworks that the allegations were never filed in court, and have been publicly known for decades. “Nothing has been proven,” he wrote, except that, “a social media trend can be reported as news.” Women who report assault every day don’t “seek fame” or “give television interviews.”

Jen Bradley responded to Jones in a Newsworks article, arguing that while it was difficult to let go of Cliff Huxtable and what he meant to Philadelphia, especially to Temple, and believe that so many women have lived with the abuse, the facts run against that narrative. The alleged rapes spanned 45 years, with the most recent from 10 years ago, and Constand’s civil lawsuit was settled in 2006, Bradley pointed out. The other women could not file suit because the statute of limitations had passed, but some had reported the assault to friends or police at the time.

Many critics in and out of Philadelphia have long argued that Cosby is not the family man that he is portrayed to be, and not just because of the assault allegations.

For years, poet Nikki Giovanni has also spoken out against Cosby’s idea of “good Blacks” and “bad Blacks,” and criticism of parents living in poverty rather than systems that sustain poverty and inequality.

“He’s gonna tell me I’ve done something wrong because I tried to give my kid what every other kids has,” Giovanni said at the 2007 Miami Book Fair. “Everybody in this room that has a kid, we all did exactly what we could do, and maybe it wasn’t what other people could do.”

Current Georgetown University (formerly University of Penn) professor Michael Eric Dyson, author of, “Is Bill Cosby Right,” told Meet the Press last Sunday that the comedian’s criticism of the poor will come back to bite him.

“He’s throwing rocks and he’s living in a glass house, so that contradiction will always get you sunk,” Dyson said.

 
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