The new Bill Cosby documentary ‘We Need to Talk About Cosby’ refuses to make a case against him

Source: news.yahoo.com 1/25/22

Showtime’s four-part series “We Need to Talk About Cosby” debuted at Sundance over the weekend. Comedian W. Kamau Bell, a self-described “child” of Cosby, directs. Unfortunately, Bell merely refuels established debates around Cosby’s complicated legacy.

At the outset of “We Need to Talk About Cosby,” the new Showtime documentary about the comedian, actor, and accused rapist Bill Cosby, director W. Kamau Bell concedes that over the last few years there has been a lot of talk about the man who was once known to millions as “America’s dad.”

“Honestly, it feels like everyone has weighed in,” Bell says as a cacophony of images of people discussing Cosby during interviews and talk shows flash onscreen.

Bell is correct. The accusations in 2014 that Cosby had, across the span of his six-decade career, drugged, raped, and sexually harassed dozens of women made headlines across the world. (Cosby was convicted on three counts of aggravated indecent assault in 2018 and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. Cosby’s sentence, however, was overturned in 2021 after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Cosby shouldn’t have been charged due to a deal made by a former prosecutor.)

In this docuseries, which debuted as a part of the Sundance Film Festival over the weekend, Bell, a stand-up comedian best known as the host of CNN’s documentary series “United Shades of America,” guides sharp commentary with archival footage of Cosby’s career.

In doing so, the comedian and filmmaker, who describes himself as a “child of Bill Cosby,” refuses to make a case against his former hero but rather refuels established debates around his complicated legacy.

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This documentary has the benefit to us of bringing up the core issue that hurts us, which is that anyone with the label “sex offender” is usually assumed to be a monster for life, which the public uses to justify heaping on never-ending new hateful laws and restrictions on registrants.

However, in the case of Cosby, he is so deeply embedded in American culture that people are forced to reconcile the good that he has done with the bad he has done. People love his work as a comedian and as a black pioneer actor on TV (I Spy, The Cosby Show, etc.) At the same time, people not in denial are shocked at the crimes he has committed. This seems to be making many people take a more nuanced view of his life. More people are able to hate what he has done but not condemn him as irredeemable. (I hope we registrants can have the same attitude, since we want that for ourselves.)

The hopeful thing for us is that Bell doesn’t automatically call Cosby a monster and throw hate at him. He wrestles with the paradox. He leaves people to make their own conclusion. I think that is a major change!

Many people have watched documentaries on the failure of the useless 3-strikes “lock-em-up” mentality of the 80s and 90s to being more accepting of restorative justice.

In the same way, I think this documentary is a major catalyst for turning public opinion on registrants toward a more balanced view of registrants. It will take years, but there is hope.

The COA didn’t merely reject Crosby’s sentence, as this article states, the overturned his trial conviction because the prosecution cheated in its use of evidence against him at trial! Essentially, the COA tossed it back to the circuit court because the judge admitted evidence (of testimony about other activities) that should not have been developed for the jury in a (constitutional) fair trial. The same was done to me in 1992.