The International Writers Magazine: Life itself
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The Devil Made Me Do It • Dean Borok Bill Cosby is now revealed to be incapable of doing what he has insistently been advising the younger generation to do – pull your pants up. This is why I have always been opposed to incontinent moralizing; we are but frail vessels, constructed of mud and clay, and incapable of resisting temptation.

This Bill Cosby gag makes my heart sing with joy. It’s the funniest joke since OJ. Cosby gets to join that select pantheon of loose-cannon, rampaging nutjobs who have found a home in the comedy business, like “beloved” BBC host Jimmy Savile, who was found to have gone right into mental hospitals and molested scores of teenage patients. Cosby, at least, restricted his depredations to attractive young adult women, and who can blame him for that? That’s why guys go into showbusiness: to get girls and money.

Cosby didn’t have to chase the women. They chased him for reasons of their own. Seduced by his repertory of cuteness, they pursued him in droves. But the selection of accusers who have come forward to confront him, like a time bomb from 30-40 years ago, suggests a different caliber of women from your usual predatory night club groupie. They were mesmerized true believers of Fat Albert and Cliff Huxtable. They gave life to the old adage that “there’s one born every minute”. Cosby was a master at marketing himself, and one of the side benefits was a fresh crop of passionate female worshipers who sprang up each season with the regularity of winter wheat.

These girls, attracted by the antiseptic kind of decency Cosby’s TV persona exemplified, seemed to be hoping for a kind of spiritual enlightenment of learning at the master’s feet, like Siddhartha or Somerset Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge”, where they could be enlightened about The True Nature of Life. They got enlightened about something else. One woman told the press, “I thought he might try to convince me to go to college”.

Yeah, right! She was expecting career counseling from a comedian at 2:00AM in his hotel room on the Las Vegas Strip. Instead, he offered her a communion of liquor, which she drank, and a selection of pills, which she voluntarily consumed, and then lullabied her with some boring conversation until she passed out, at which point he allegedly delicately removed her knickers and got on with it.

The latest girl, who just sprang up yesterday like a mushroom after a deluge, remembers Cosby inserting his member into her mouth. It may seem strange that these women might recall with such clarity a brief episode that took place a generation ago on a night when they were zonked out on whiskey and downers, until you realize that getting raped by Bill Cosby probably counts as one of the memorable milestones in their lives, sorry to say, like Monica Lewinsky conserving the blue Gap dress.

A lot of these cases seem to concern young, aspiring actresses who were lured to Cosby’s room by a suggestion from him of possible career advancement if they would submit to a private audition. Actresses are notorious for having round heels. This is a process that has its roots in ancient theatrical tradition. Russian ballerinas from the Kirov and Bolshoi theaters practiced oral sex on influential patrons in order to avoid pregnancy. The Hollywood casting couch, where producers conduct horizontal auditions, is such a shopworn joke that it has lost any currency at all.

You can’t cheat an honest man, and you can’t rape an actress if she is not in your hotel room at 2:00AM. All these cases require a degree of female complicity: Cosby used this to his advantage. When the girl woke up later and complained, Cosby would smoothly invoke the possibility of future consideration, “If you complain now, we would have to forget all the plans I have for your future”. Then he would rush her out the door and forget about her.

It’s hard to know whom to believe. The news is full of stories about women who get shitface drunk and are then are taken advantage of by taxi drivers and even cops. They’re demanding that society ensure their personal integrity, even as they find themselves splayed across unfamiliar circumstances and at the mercy of brutal, unforgiving males. They seem to be invoking a Victorian concept of male chivalry that was driven extinct at their own insistence on the right to behave as piggishly as men do. Sorry, but if I see a woman hanging onto a lamp post and puking her guts into the gutter, I am going to walk the long route around her.

I once wrote a nasty story, “The Thinker”, where an animalistic guy date-rapes a drunken girl who has just puked all over herself. It ain’t charming. I have repeatedly witnessed variations of it take place in bands’ dressing room and after-hours clubs. My best advice? Stay home and play gin rummy with your mother.

Part of the problem is Cosby’s success at marketing his toothpaste, soap powder image to a gullible public. Nobody can live up to that advance billing, and most comics don’t even try, which actually keeps them out of trouble. If some old girls popped up and accused Richard Pryor of raping them 40 years ago who would even care? “We smoked free-base cocaine and drank rum and beer, and I passed out, and when I woke up my knickers were gone!” Big Surprise!

We need Jay Leno to come back. This material was made-to-measure for his wacky interpretation, like OJ and Monica Lewinsky in the past. It’s basically The Greatest Story Ever Told This Season. I predict that in six months’ time all his sitcoms and reruns will be back. Michael Jackson’s various trials for pedophilia never hurt his career. All artists lead messy lives, but it’s only the artistic expression that endures.
© Dean Borok Nov 26th 2014
dean@200motels.net

The Gates of Hell
Dean Borok
Ferguson MO is the story that Tom Wolfe wishes he could have written for “The Bonfire of the Vanities”


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