A couple of folks sent me essentially the same question Scott Reboul asks in this message…
Your comments on Cosby all make sense and put the matter into perspective clearly and realistically. And your unspoken words on the matter find their way to the reader through the discerning questions you ask. One thing you haven't mentioned much — but something I believe most of your readers would like to know — is your perspective of Camille Cosby and how she has seemingly stood loyal behind her longtime husband over the many years of their unusual marriage. I recognize that an easy answer to this question is that a wife in that position can put up with a lot of strife to continue living the life of luxury and status that being Mrs. Cosby affords, but I'm wondering if you have opinions beyond the norm on what she must be thinking and how she maintains an apparently sound relationship with her husband. Is this a matter you'd consider addressing on your website? (I surely hope so, but I recognize this subject may be considered "too personal" to suit your site).
I think my answer is that I don't know Camille Cosby…or for that matter, Bill, whom I only spoke to briefly, most recently in 1981. I have however been close (or close enough) to a number of marriages where the husband was "cheating" with the wife's consent.
I put that word in quotes because it's not really cheating if it's with consent. In some cases, the wife was "cheating" (with permission) as well and in some cases, she wasn't but — well, I'll give you three examples…
- He was a TV producer who at age 55 had a yearning to sleep with young women. His wife of many, many years was not a young woman and not all that interested in sex with anyone any longer. He cheated (no quotes) on her, she found out but (a) she still loved him, (b) he was a great provider and protector who still loved her, (c) he was not going to stop, (d) she didn't want to divorce him and start dating again at her age and (e) she didn't want to be alone the rest of her life. So she proposed a deal: He got his own apartment and could pursue his hobby three days a week as long as he was discreet and didn't embarrass her…too much. The rest of the time, he slept in the home they made together and was a perfect hubby.
- He was a famous comic actor who at roughly the same age had a yearning to sleep with young men. His wife of many, many years was unlikely to turn into a young man and she loved him, didn't want to live without him (etc.) so they worked out a similar deal. A couple days a week, he could go out and explore that long partially-repressed end of his bi-sexuality. The rest of the time, it was business as usual.
- He was a comic book artist, a bit younger than the above. One of the more surprising moments of my life came when the woman who'd been his spouse of around fifteen years (and still was) began coming on to me, assuring me that they had always had an "open" marriage and that he'd be fine with it. And when I politely declined, she had him phone me and assure me that indeed he'd be fine with it and that I'd really, really enjoy it. That was an even more surprising moment…and no, I did not act on his recommendation but I knew others who did.
These were all true cases and these were also, insofar as I could tell, arrangements that worked well for those couples. None of them got divorced or separated, and when I was around them, they seemed no less devoted to one another than any married couple I've known, and more devoted than many.
Don't write and tell me you'd never tolerate anything of the sort in any marriage of yours. This isn't about your marriage. And don't write me that you can't believe it worked for them. You don't know them. I also know a husband-wife duo where the two of them scream throughout all waking hours at each other — and it's not the cute Don Rickles style of insults. It's the kind of attacks where you know the person's areas of vulnerability and you go right for them. I wouldn't put up with that from a mate for five minutes but this one couple I know has been married five decades.
Not that I haven't also seen plenty of storybook happy-ever-after marriages. My parents had one. I'm just trying to make the point that there are many possible arrangements in the union of two consenting adults…and if an odd-to-us one makes those adults happy, I don't think outside opinions matter much, nor do we probably even know enough about them to have opinions.
The temptation is to try and view the Cosby marriage as similar to one of the above configurations…probably #2 except you substitute unwilling, unconscious women for willing, wide-awake men. But the truth is we don't know. We don't know what Mrs. Cosby knew. Since half of show business heard at least rumors of Bill's unfaithfulness, it's reasonable to assume she knew about that and maybe it was a little like Arrangement #1 above. But we don't know. Might she also have known of the drugging and raping? We — and I know I'm repeating myself here — do not know.
My feelings about Dr. William Henry Cosby Jr. (The "doctor" may be surgically removed shortly) are morphing from anger to a powerful, powerful disappointment. I keep hearing Al Pacino's voice in And Justice For All when he yells at the scumbucket judge played by John Forsythe, "You, you son-of-a-bitch, you! You're supposed to stand for something!"
But let's admit this: We don't know really why Cosby did it or why his wife backed him and I doubt we'll ever know with any true sense of understanding. Hell, there was a time when we didn't know he did these things at all and wouldn't have believed it if someone had told us. That's why it took fifty women showing the courage to stand up before some people decided maybe they didn't know the real Cliff Huxtable. We know even less about Ms. Camille Olivia Hanks Cosby.
Outsiders, perhaps projecting something about themselves, might assume that the money and the resultant lifestyle made it easy to look the other way about some or all of it. But maybe she just promised to love him in sickness and in health and sees raping as the sickness part. We — and I'm telling you this for the last time — don't know.