There are many things I suppose I'll never understand about the whole Cosby matter, starting with the appeal of having sex with women who are unconscious and unable to consent. When I have been around guys who were engaging in what our Chief Exec calls "locker room talk," bragging about how they did this or that with a female, I have sometimes been envious of the alleged encounters but sometimes thought, "Gosh, why would anyone get excited about that?"
I know Cosby's m.o. must be a "power" thing but it's not like his life was devoid of moments when he was powerful and able to make people do whatever he wanted. There was a point where if he had told all the NBC Vice-Presidents to get down on all fours and make like cocker spaniels, you would have heard a sudden outburst of barking. He also probably had a nice supply of women who were willing to do whatever he wanted, including not hit him up for money for it.
Let us not forget the underlying weirdness of the whole matter. Sooner or later — probably sooner — someone's going to make a movie about this story. It's going to be about a man who seemed to have everything — money, admiration, power, fame, honors, everything — and pissed it all away because for some reason, he thought it was fun to rape women when they were asleep.
And let us also not forget how unusual it is for a man with that kind of money and power to be held accountable for any kind of misdeed. Time will tell as to whether this will become the norm in this country or if it'll just be an outlier. Adam Serwer reminds us of the unusual sequence of events that brought us to the reckoning.
Meanwhile, some of us still need to process what we're going to do with whatever positive feelings we once had for that guy who was so funny on stage and screen. My chum Paul Harris once again writes a piece that spares me the task of saying pretty much the same thing.
After the verdict yesterday, the judge declined to revoke Cosby's bail, rejecting the contention that he was a "flight risk." I'm pondering why Mr. Cosby wouldn't be plotting his migration at this very moment.
I'm not sure exactly where he'd flee. Apparently, Roman Polanski could run because he was a French citizen and the laws in France make it very unlikely that a French citizen would be extradited from there. But I got to wondering where Cosby might go. Here's what purports to be a list of countries that will not extradite. It contains a lot of what D.J. Trump calls "shitholes" where life might be worse than most prisons but there have got to be a few locations where a guy with Cosby's dough could get a mansion with servants and security and live comfortably for the rest of an 80-year-old man's life.
Living in that mansion versus living in even the cushiest U.S. prison seems like a no-brainer to me. I mean, it's not like he has a performing career and more honors to receive if he remains in this country. What I'm guessing would keep him here is a belief that somewhere, there are lawyers shrewd enough to be able to manipulate the appeals process — lawyers who even if they can't get him exonerated can at least run down the clock on Cosby's life and delay him indefinitely from having to live behind bars. I'm hoping they're wrong. The attorneys who told him they could win the case were certainly wrong. And well-compensated.