Well, sure, and all of that is patently obvious in retrospect now that we know that there are twelve, but when you think you're the only one, and the lawyer you talked to told you that you're delusional and nobody's going to believe you or take your case, and you can't really afford a lawyer anyway, and Cosby himself…

I don't think the court of public opinion should be biased against anybody until evidence is taken into account. Based on the evidence, I think it's fair to lean either way.

I'd say that the court of public opinion gets it wrong in most cases. Yes, there are cases like the Duke case. There are also many cases where rapists are defended in the court of public opinion. There are cases where women who have been raped have their entire life blasted across the internet and called liars and…

I'm fairly sure the vast majority of the crimes took place in the '70s and '80s, so the statute of limitations had long run out by the time the civil case came around. At least one of the victims, Barbara Bowman, discusses going to see a lawyer about pressing charges long before the civil case came around, and said…

Nobody's talking about the legal system here. The legal system is biased in favor of the accused. There are very good reasons why it should be. There are no good reasons why the court of public opinion should follow that example, and in fact are several reasons why it should not.

"This Will Make You Question Your Faith in Humanity, But Read It Anyway, Internet!"

Can we drop the idea that "innocent until proven guilty" is some sort of neutral, middle-of-the-road stance here? Rape allegations are a zero-sum game. If you're saying that the accused rapist is innocent until proven guilty, you're saying that the accuser (or 13 of them, in this case) is guilty of lying until proven…

It's my understanding that only one of the women in the Cosby case could actually collect any money because the other women's crimes had passed the statute of limitations. They were there as witnesses, not plaintiffs. Money was not a motivating factor for the remaining 12.

Did you . . . miss last winter? Not only did we have multiple posts here about the Woody Allen accusations, they were in every media outlet for weeks, including the New York Times. The Polanski allegations were also dredged up by basically every media outlet in the Western world a few years back when all those…

It's not really just about it "sucking." A not-insubstantial number of victims are quoted as saying that the court case for their rape was worse than the actual assault, and that if they had to do it over again, they wouldn't. It has a substantial chance of re-victimizing them, of interfering with their healing…

Okay, fair enough.

I like your reference to "only four women" as if that isn't a ridiculously high number already.

30 is pushing it.

He's white, so never.

I love the juxtaposition of our two comments right next to each other.

The onus IS on the accuser. Cosby, in this case, would be the accuser. He would be accusing Burress of slander.

There is a bar here that legitimately makes pudding shots. (They're about as horrible an idea as they sound.)

No, female genital mutilation was definitely on the radar as a political issue (and I would argue maybe even at its peak as a political issue) in the mid-90s. (I have no idea if that's what the song's about, but it's definitely possible, at least.)

I think an American remake of the IT Crowd could go in the same direction as the American version of The Office—not terribly similar to the original, but still pretty good (at least for a handful of seasons). You're right that it could also easily go in the BBT direction, though.

"Liking" and "thinking they know how to read" are two different things.