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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsREAD THIS: Janis Ian's Facebook Post Tonight About New York Magazine's Bill Cosby Victims Cover...
Last edited Tue Jul 28, 2015, 03:06 AM - Edit history (3)
This is a publicly embeddable Facebook post, so I am reproducing it all here:
[/script][div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/janisianpage/posts/880241212062598" data-width="500"][div class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore"][blockquote cite="https://www.facebook.com/janisianpage/posts/880241212062598"][p]http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/07/bill-cosbys-accusers-speak-out.htmlDo I have a stake in this issue? Yes. Of course....
Do I have a stake in this issue? Yes. Of course. Outside of being female, outside of knowing women aren't "heard" as loudly as men are heard, outside of firmly believing that if women were treated equally around the world, many if not all of the world's problems would no longer exist - outside of all that... I have a personal stake.
No, I was not sexually bothered by Bill Cosby. We met because he was curious about me.
My song "Society's Child" was climbing the charts and creating a great deal of controversy. The Smothers Brothers took a huge gamble and had me on their hit television show. I was just sixteen years old when we taped it. I'd been on the road for months, doing press and one-nighters. My chaperone/tour manager, a family friend six or seven years older than me, was doing everything in her power to make sure I was protected and getting as much rest as possible.
Remember. I was sixteen. Still in high school. Fairly naive, including about my own sexuality. For months on the road, my chaperone was the only consistent face I saw. Everyone else was a complete stranger - radio personalities, newspaper reporters, magazine photographers, audiences, promoters, disc jockeys, all strangers. So I clung to my chaperone.
We'd never been to a big-time TV taping. We had no idea we'd have to be inside from early early morning until whenever they called for me. There were only a couple of chairs for us on the set - I was pretty low on the totem pole, way lower than Jimmy Durante or Pat Paulsen or Mason Williams (all of whom were wonderful to us). And I was exhausted. I'd been having nightmares for weeks, the result of the controversy surrounding "Society's Child" and the death threats I was receiving daily. I needed to sleep. So I fell asleep in my chaperone's lap. She was earth motherly, I was scared. It was good to rest.
We taped the show. I had a ball. (You can see it on Youtube, in fact. That's me, looking scared, in the green dress. My friend Buffy from East Orange, where I'd started high school, made it for me. I treasured it.) Then we went back to New York, and I went back to school.
A while later, my manager called me into her office. "What happened at the Smothers Brothers show?!" I had no idea what she was talking about, and said so. "Well, no one else on TV is willing to have you on. Not out there, anyway." Why? I wondered. And was told that Cosby, seeing me asleep in the chaperone's lap, had made it his business to "warn" other shows that I wasn't "suitable family entertainment", was probably a lesbian, and shouldn't be on television.
Again, a reminder. I was 16. I'd never slept with a man, I'd never slept with a woman. Hell, I barely been kissed, and that in the middle of the summer camp sports area, next to the ping pong table.
Banned from TV. Unbelievable. Bless Johnny Carson and his producer Freddy de Cordova, one of the nicest men I've ever worked with, because they didn't listen. Or maybe they didn't give a damn. I don't know. I do know that they broke the barrier Cosby tried to create.
There's a lot to bother a sensible person about this. The years these women were ignored. The years they were derided. That the story finally really "broke" because a male comedian named Hannibal Buress kept bringing it up, kept calling Cosby a "rapist". Not because woman after woman after woman went to the police, to the press, to anyone who'd listen, with horribly similar stories.
Let me be snarky for a moment. Interesting that there are so few women of color in the New Yorker photo. Interesting that the ones in the photo all appear to be light-skinned. Perhaps darker skinned women have not come forward yet? Perhaps they're among the other 12 women who've accused him but aren't pictured?
Or perhaps not. I have to wonder if this rapist has some issues with his own race.
Continuing the snarkiness, I find it horrifying that his wife is still insisting it was all consensual. That she sounds more upset by "the invasion of privacy" than the rapes.
People seem to be confused because she continues to stand by him. I have just two words for that - money, honey. According to the press, she's his manager, and has been for years. And his "business manager", eg the person who handles the money. So if there were pay-offs, she saw the checks. She is complicit.
If it was consensual, why pay anyone to be silent?
If it was consensual, why are there so many women who do not want money, who do not need fame, who are by turns ashamed, violated, exposed, vulnerable, and still continue to speak out?
Cosby was right in one thing. I am gay. Or bi, if you prefer, since I dearly loved the two men I lived with over the years. My tilt is toward women, though, and he was right about that.
But what an odd thing, that a black man who slept with so very many white women chose to take my possible lesbianism away from our one meeting, rather than the message I tried to get across with "Society's Child." How pathetic. How truly, truly pathetic.
MADem
(135,425 posts)Hissyspit
(45,788 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)samsingh
(17,599 posts)and cosby should have helped talent like this.
so cosby is a perverted predator who has completely destroyed an opportunity to bring race relations to a better position - from the start.
1monster
(11,012 posts)raised me..." And chocolate cake for breakfast.
As he got older, he was less funny and more sanctimonious, then hypocritical and judgmental and I liked him less.
Now, I can only shake my head. It is a shame that such such a talented man has such a corrupted soul.
Lifelong Protester
(8,421 posts)Thanks for the post.
MADem
(135,425 posts)"auto-tuned" voice. People actually had to be able to .... (gasp) ... SING!
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)wonderful song writer for someone so young. Just blows me away.
MADem
(135,425 posts)She's on "the twitter:" https://twitter.com/therealjanisian and she still has a few irons in the fire: http://www.janisian.com/
She looks like someone I'd enjoy meeting and having a chat with....
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)She was beautiful as a young girl and she is still beautiful today.
tblue
(16,350 posts)"Society's Child" is truly a classic, and to think it was written by a young teen!
Anyway, Cosby is a monster. I know someone who shared a cab with him in Tahoe, and Cos said to this friend of mine, "How does it feel to be next to someone who will make more money tonight than you'll make all year?"
After hearing that, I knew the man was weird and disgustingly arrogant. Now, he's pure SCUM.
avaistheone1
(14,626 posts)This is the first link I have seen to the complete story that accompanies the New York Magazine cover picture of Bill Cosby's (alleged ) victims. The women's individual snapshots and their stories are incredibly moving and compelling. I think the NY Mag coverage may somehow help these women get some measure of justice.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Why wasn't he outed long ago?
Is it because women would rather not speak out. Count me in on that one.
Speak up about sexual harassment, let alone rape, and you get a certain "reputation." You are a troublemaker. This has to change. I don't know how it can be changed. But women need to be able to speak out, to warn and to protect themselves without being labeled as troublemakers.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)I have been in situations where I had less than consensual sex, and I have never spoken out about it. I can perhaps count myself lucky that it was never as these women experienced. But our inability and unwillingness to speak out is so much part of the entire problem.
Here's another aspect (which I do not think at all applies to the women in this case, but I'll say it anyway) which is that there is a very large gray area in the whole consent aspect. My personal situations (and I know I can only speak for myself and not ever for anyone else) that I refer to, were not by any means classic rape, but rather times in which I said a weak "No", that I didn't feel I could enforce. I wasn't harmed in the overt sort of rape situation, and I was never drugged. So I don't want to make a stronger case than is necessary, but I do want to say I more than get it about consent.
A close friend of mine, a very long time ago, nearly fifty years ago now, once related to me an incident where a man tried to rape her. She successfully fought him off, and was persuaded (mostly by other men) not to press any kind of charges, because of how she would be dragged through the mud. This was a young woman who at the time was a virgin (as if that should make any difference) and fortunately she was not actually raped, but the prevailing attitude that she should just ignore what happened and move on, is a sad indictment of our culture.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)they concern and touch upon and threaten our very concept of self-determination and self.
Thanks again. Your post is very helpful to me.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)I did this here because it is relatively anonymous. I have never told family or friends.
hunter
(38,317 posts)The entertainment industry is disproportionately loaded with sociopaths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile_sexual_abuse_scandal
There are codes of silence, just as there are in rotten police departments.
Entire segments of the business are held together by mutual blackmail: you don't share my dirty secrets, I won't share yours.
(Scientology works in a similar way, as do the dirtier orders of the Catholic Church and the Republican Party. Not surprisingly, there are some interesting crossovers.)
It's interesting that Cosby saw Janis Ian and her chaperon as a threat. I'm guessing he couldn't get a "handle" on them, couldn't figure out a way to use them, and thus he didn't want them around. He was probably hoping to catch them in some inappropriate relationship he could use against them and was disappointed.
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)But even without that, it hasn't always been OK to speak out about this.
MADem
(135,425 posts)That's an old Japanese proverb, but it applies.
There was a culture of "Go along, get along." I had a female cousin who protested unfair/inappropriate treatment at work in the early days of EEO, and they dogged that poor woman to death for having the "nerve" to complain. She had a spine of steel--took more shit in a day than anyone would put up with in a year, nowadays. She finally bounced to a better job (took a good severance on her way out the door), but she was made miserable and didn't get justice, either.
It's not always happy endings.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)I had the exquisite joy of meeting her and watching her perform at the Jean Cocteau Cinema here in Santa Fe, NM. George RR Martin, he of "Game of Thrones" fame owns the theater, holds amazing events there, including the recent concert by Ms. Ian. She has a strong science fiction connection, which I did not know until this event.
In any event, she was gracious, charming, performed wonderfully, had a conversation with George in the middle of her concert, and I am beyond thrilled that I was able to attend.
Her comments are quite interesting, and I'm glad she made them.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)and Gardner Dozios. The stories are all great, the narrators are all very spiffy....
https://mobile.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Rogues-Audiobook/B00L1GU3WC;jsessionid=37C22E6A439ED56BE228CDE8DCB9373C
Hissyspit
(45,788 posts)cwydro
(51,308 posts)I saw Janis in concert way back in the day when I was still in my teens.
She is older than I, but she was very young at that concert in upstate NY. I don't even remember the venue.
But I really loved her music in those days.
leftyladyfrommo
(18,868 posts)He didn't try anything with her but she said he was the scariest person that she had ever met. He was just so hostile, rude and aggressive towards her.
cwydro
(51,308 posts)he's superior to women.
Ugh.
bullwinkle428
(20,629 posts)K&R.
blue neen
(12,322 posts)...and another turn in a tale of a very sick and twisted man.
BuelahWitch
(9,083 posts)Now I like Johnny Carson even more!
MindPilot
(12,693 posts)I remember the controversy surrounding it very well and the times were, well let's say, not quite as enlightened racially as we are today.
And now this...holy shit, is there any end to the list of despicable things Cosby has done?
MyOwnPeace
(16,927 posts)a reminder of the courage and fights the Smothers Brothers had in presenting their shows - Janis Ian, Pete Seeger, their anti-war themes and "jokes" in their shows - cancelled by CBS through pressure from politicians.
Who was right?
JEB
(4,748 posts)Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)spanone
(135,844 posts)niyad
(113,336 posts)persona was just that--a mask to cover a truly despicable waste of skin and oxygen.
marym625
(17,997 posts)This is a spectacular post. Thank you for sharing it.
Johnny Carson didn't give a shit about anyone's sexuality, even back in the 70s, and had many people who were gay on his show and among his circle of friends
Dustlawyer
(10,495 posts)I am sure that he found that other than their sexuality, they were just people like him. Now that is is much more acceptable to come out of the closet, heterosexuals have discovered that gay people are just people like anyone else. It seems the only ones who feel threatened are the ones so openly hostile to gays that the gay people in their life choose not to reveal their sexuality. Thus, they think of them more like the bogeyman than human beings.
AllFieldsRequired
(489 posts)Snotcicles
(9,089 posts)[link:
|bvf
(6,604 posts)Snotcicles
(9,089 posts)Lifelong Protester
(8,421 posts)Gives me goose-bumps when I hear it.
Snotcicles
(9,089 posts)samsingh
(17,599 posts)what a complete asshole for doing this to a young girl's career.
colorado_ufo
(5,734 posts)Talent the size of a T-Rex. Rare and wonderful. It is a sorrow that she had to suffer so much, and it is a greater sorrow that Cosby deprived so many people of her message and her grace.
Hekate
(90,714 posts)...and try to put an "obscene" spin on it, and thereby try to ruin a young girl's life.
Here's the part that is making it literally hard to breathe: I remember coming home from college one time just so wrung out I couldn't have found words for it, and just crawling into Mama's lap. She sat on the couch and next thing I knew my head was in her lap.
Janis was a child of 16, exhausted and in need of comfort and rest in her surrogate mother's lap. And that miserable excuse for a human being Cosby went around trying to make that dirty.
This -- this makes me cry.
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)that was his problem with her.
Hekate
(90,714 posts)passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)jomin41
(559 posts)Cosby won't be wagging his finger at anyone anymore.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Hissyspit
(45,788 posts)But he admitted to drugging women, purchasing Quaaludes for that specific use, in the deposition. He's hung himself. (As it were.)
And my own experience with him is not an "allegation". It's a fact. My chaperone/tour manager is still a close friend. What he said about her, deliberately within her hearing was a whole lot more evil than what he said about me. (And not my place to repeat it here.)
You may not "care how many women said he assaulted them." I'd say 40+ is a pretty compelling amount, when the statute of limitations has run out on almost all, if not all, and there's no way anyone will be able to sue him or make money off it.
If you had any idea how shameful people (I include men) who've been raped feel, how humiliated, how made-worthless, you wouldn't be speaking that way.
Lis Carey is correct. Read these excerpts from the deposition before you spout nonsense. Here, I'll save you the trouble of looking it up:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/18/arts/bill-cosby-deposition-excerpts.html?_r=0
Here's an article explaining why the judge agreed to unseal the deposition, which had been sealed from public view for a decade:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-cosbys-moralizing-prompted-judge-to-release-testimony/
Here's a timeline for you:
http://www.etonline.com/news/154160_timeline_of_bill_cosby_sexual_assault_allegations/
Happy reading.
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)loved her waybackthen.
Here she is on Smothers Brothers. Voice of an angel. So much songwriting talent...