Tina Fey And Amy Poehler Have Been Trying To Highlight Bill Cosby’s Rape Allegations For Almost Ten Years
They were talking about it on prime-time TV. Why didn't anyone listen?
Bill Cosby’s fall from grace just keeps getting more and more total; in recent days a woman has filed a $250,000 lawsuit accusing him of molesting her as a teenager, the US Navy stripped him of an honorary rank, and prominent civil rights lawyer Gloria Allred called for the statute of limitations on the numerous Cosby cases to be waived.
And all from a Hannibal Buress stand-up set shakily filmed on a smartphone.
Why it took until now for people to take the allegations against Cosby seriously is an extremely interesting question. The argument that it needed someone prominent, like a comedian, to come out and baldly say so is a very tempting one, but comedians have been openly calling out Cosby for years. Check out this clip of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update.
That’s from 2005. Nine years ago, prominent comedians were openly pointing out Bill Cosby’s dark history, and it was met with a collective “meh”.
That not the only time Fey tried to draw attention to the allegations, either; they even made it into an episode of 30 Rock, where a phone conversation between Tracy Jordan and a guy pretending to be Cosby ends in Jordan accusing him of raping his aunt in 1971. Seriously.
The whole thing is baffling. Fey and Poehler have been huge names in comedy for years; why didn’t their work, which doesn’t fall far short of Buress’, garner the same attention? Is it because Fey and Poehler are women, and we have a problem believing women who claim men are sexual harassers? Or is it something else? Either way, their vindication is long overdue, and could’ve done a lot of good if it had come sooner.