Bill Cosby's Helping To Destroy Respectability Politics

“Bill Cosby raped me. Why did it take 30 years for people to believe my story?”

Screw facts - you've got to fit everyone's believability profile: smile and be positive

Barbara Bowman's question moved me, not least because no one's fully believed my story (of my wife killing three people) for almost a decade, either - and even after it was discovered to be true.

Waiting for anyone to call us,...sane

It's a funny ha-ha question, too, since it originated in (what the rest of the planet calls) "The New World," a culture - started in The Enlightenment - where the most educated people would rather believe psychics on The Montel Williams Show, and the quackery of Dr. Oz, than approach anything close to actual research.

What you may look like after being raped a second time in the public eye

What Ms. Bowman's really asking is why society willingly chose her to be part of it's wreckage?

These three are as "happy" as the rapist, Thomas Jefferson, said they should strive for

I've railed about that here, for quite a while, as well. Mrs. Bowman's story gained credibility only because Hannibal Burris was complaining about Cosby's campaign of respectability politics - a campaign that whites have repeatedly endorsed, and tried to force on blacks, despite all the evidence proving it's a harmful lie. Whites haven't cared about that. They've liked the way the lie sounds too much to care about the truth or who gets hurt by it. That's also how they feel about The Cos, too.

These two aren't protecting or serving but no matter

Wisconsin's repeated support for Scott Walker's campaign is as fine an example of how this mentality "works" as I can find:

Whites stay happy? No problem

As long as someone's smiling, or trying to protect someone smiling, they can do no wrong - even as they're doing wrong.

Few are allowed to speak up - or taken seriously - when they want to talk about what's wrong

Almost the entire history of the west, and it's ideals, has worked this way - and some Americans will still kill you for not going along with it. Honesty is a huge problem in America: we build giant cathedrals to a crock and let the innocent starve because they didn't contribute to it.

There are few "good options" left beyond the truth

That, Ms. Bowman, is simply how Americans are,....