We Need to Talk About Cosby

Wow. Brilliant documentary. It certainly went back in his history and further afield with his life than I expected. I learned a lot about Cosby, the man, I did not know before.

I loved him as America's dad, but that ship has passed. Author Ann Rule said to love the man but hate the deed (and she was talking about Ted Bundy!), but Cosby went way over the line.

I am very glad I watched this with an open mind. Yes, I am going to say the women were awesome! And brave.

THANK YOU, Kamau Bell!!

Like Kamau, I grew up with Cosby. I adored Fat Albert, I laughed until I couldn't breathe listening to his comedy albums. It is incredibly heart wrenching to discover what a terrible person he was. It's also truly horrifiying to confront how many people over the years helped him keep that secret. And it's awesome in the worst possible sense of the word to realize how one person can be two utterly different people, one who does tremendous good in the world and one who is a monster. Thank you, Kamau, for this amazing and heartbreaking retrospective!

In the late 1970s, I went to a comedy club with my housemate, a woman from Philadelphia. I thought the young comics were great, but pretty raunchy. On the way home, I joked that there weren't any funny comics who didn't rely on dirt jokes.

She said, "Well, there's Cosby, He doesn't tell dirty jokes, but he acts like a dirty man. He put his hands on my friend when she went to see him,"

The cab pulled up to our building at that time, and we were distracted by paying the cab driver and getting out the flat keys. That was the end of it.

By 1985, I had moved across the country, gotten married, and gotten involved with showing dogs. My dog did well, and it wasn't until the Southwest finals that I found out it was the same breed that Cosby owned. In fact, my dog was from a litter by the same sire and dame that Cosby owned, which made our dogs brother and sister. I was grooming my dog backstage at the show, when I heard Cosby was visiting the private staging room next to the show ring,

One of the other dog owners knew him, and asked if I wanted to meet him. My husband said he would watch my dog if I wanted to go, and I started off to the staging room. Just then, a woman stepped in front of me and said, "Don't be alone with him. Take your husband with you. It isn't safe."

I only tell you these stories because I am not a model, beauty pageant winner or a showgirl. I am a 70 year old woman who isn't the least bit involved in show biz, And, I am telling you that, to young women in the 1970s and 1980s, Cosby's perfidy was the least kept secret in the United States. If I knew, everyone knew. I was no one special.

Why didn't anyone out him? Women tried. They were humiliated.

And, let's be honest, no one wanted to believe that a decent black man would do the things those two women told me he did. No one in my liberal, white and black circle of friends wanted it to be true. And we knew he wouldn't be prosecuted if he were arrested.

We hate Hugh Hefner and we hated that sexism, but there was no way to fight it. We just worked on passing the ERA.

I'm glad Cosby got caught. I wish he were still in prison. But, more than anything, I wish he hadn't been a monster who let down all the people who believed in him,

There's nothing new in this documentary, if you have been paying attention. But most people aren't paying attention, which is how Cosby got away with it so long,

This thoughtful and intelligent look at the complexity of the legacy of Bill Cosby is a must see. While the creator, W. Kamu Bell, makes it clear about his opinion of the guilt of Cosby, that does not stop him from doing two important things. The first is to provide a platform for a wide variety of opinions on Cosby and his legacy. The second is highlight the positive and negative impacts in a societal and personal way. There are a tons of interviews of people who have first hand accounts, were influenced by Cosby, and experts in the industry. The footage of Cosby on television, in standup, and in movies, makes this worth seeing alone. It is an archive of great film and television. One of the complexities of this project is that as it was completed there was a dramatic change in the legal proceedings against Cosby-which extended the project. I have seen Bill Cosby several times live. He was amazing. His impact on the world was amazing. That doesn't change by my belief that he did terrible things. It is complex. I don't have an opinion more than that people are more than any one thing they do, or don't do.

He was definitely both, monumentally important to black lives in the 60s and beyond, and a real monster to individual women. Horrible human being with two faces.