How is your day going? Good, good. Glad to hear it. Did anyone call you a rapist recently? No? Well, Bill Cosby wasn’t so lucky. In a stand-up set last week, Hannibal Buress — who has no tolerance for Cosby — called him a rapist. He didn’t use any euphemisms, either. He just straight-up accused him of raping women.
Holy sh*t.
Here’s what he said during a stand-up performance last Thursday, via Philadelphia Magazine
Bill Cosby has the f—ing smuggest old black man public persona that I hate. He gets on TV, ‘Pull your pants up black people, I was on TV in the 80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom.’ Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches. ‘I don’t curse onstage.’ Well, yeah, you’re rapist, so I’ll take you saying lots of motherf—ers on Bill Cosby: Himself, if you weren’t a rapist. I don’t know what I’m doing by telling you. I guess I want to just at least make it weird for you to watch Cosby Show reruns. Dude’s image, for the most part, it’s f–king public Teflon image. I’ve done this bit on stage and people think I’m making it up….That sh*t is upsetting. If you didn’t know about it trust me. When you leave here, Google ‘Bill Cosby rape.’ It’s not funny. That sh*t has more results than ‘Hannibal Buress.’
Honestly, if you Google “Bill Cosby rape” right now, most of the results are something along the lines of, “Hannibal Buress calls Bill Cosby a rapist.” However, this article is illuminating, as it refers to 13 women who accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting them many years ago. In that article, one woman claims that she was sexually assaulted by Cosby when she was 18 and 19 years old. Over on Vulture, they even have a timeline of the abuse charges against Cosby.
Cosby has settled previous cases, and mostly the allegations have been swept under the rug or didn’t stick because of statutes of limitations. But I’m telling you, in today’s current atmosphere, and coming from a progressive comedian and one of the best stand-up acts in the country, this story has the potential to derail what’s left of Cosby’s career. Sure, those allegations have always been out there, but now they’re about to go viral. Hannibal Buress turned them into comedy. With teeth. You might think, “Big deal. Cosby is 77. What’s left of his career?” Well, recall that the man does has a sitcom coming to NBC next fall.
Uh, I wouldn’t count on that, exactly. This 100 second stand-up act is going to generate a lot of think pieces over the next few days, and when the dust settles, Cosby’s reputation may not be what it once was.
For the record, this is not the first time that Burress has dealt with taboo subjects. He once took people to task for crying during Up. The man knows how to push buttons.
