This is a real thing that exists
Earlier this month, A Voice for Men published a post by its founder, the reliably odious Paul Elam, with the lovely title
Bill Cosby’s victims? Or just a bunch of drug whoring star fuckers?
In it, Elam suggested that Cosby’s 46 (so far) accusers were nothing “a bunch of greedy women who commoditized their bodies like groupies” in order to get drugs from the comedian, indulging in an age-old transactional sort of sex that Elam referred to, with his customary delicacy, as “gash for stash.”
I didn’t think AVFM’s ongoing, er, coverage of Cosby could get any more ludicrous than that. Then yesterday a post by Jonathan David Farley appeared on the site with the headline:
Cosby deposition shows he loves women and women love him─and the liberal media hates it!
As it turns out, Farley spends little time meditating on Cosby’s peculiar version of “love.” The bulk of the post instead offers a highly selective “reading” of Cosby’s deposition to prove that the “liberal media” is lying about Cosby:
[A]t no point in the purported deposition transcript does Bill Cosby admit to drugging women in order to rape them. But a dying newspaper industry seeking easy clicks can hide behind the fig leaf of Fallwell v. Flynt─newspapers can basically lie about public figures with impunity─rather than present confirmed facts.
Naturally, this being AVFM, the post offers no evidence whatsoever that the “liberal media” is lying.
It’s just a teensy bit hypocritical to attack the media for allegedly not “present[ing] confirmed facts” when you present none yourself.
Farley starts off his post with this claim:
The media is breathlessly reporting that “Bill Cosby Admitted To Drugging Women In 2005 Deposition,” the implication being that he gave women drugs without their knowledge to knock them unconscious and then have relations with them.
Farley’s evidence for this assertion? He provides none.
Which makes a certain kind of sense, because that’s not what the media has reported, “breathlessly” or otherwise. Sure, a few careless headlines did in fact declare that Cosby had admitted to giving women (plural) drugs and having sex with them.
But most serious media outlets were in fact quite careful about getting the details exactly right, reporting that Cosby had admitted only to procuring drugs with the intention of giving them to women, and that he had only explicitly admitted to giving the drugs to one woman.
Here are the top ten results you get when you search Google for the phrase “Cosby admitted.”
As you can see, all but one of the headlines, from an assortment of major media outlets including the BBC and the Washington Post, report what is in the deposition exactly. The only outlet to declare, incorrectly, that Cosby had admitted to drugging women — plural — was Fox News, not exactly a bastion of the “liberal media.”
That said, it’s certainly true that plenty of people believe that Cosby actually gave women the drugs he got in order to give them to women.
Hell, even Farley’s boss at AVFM, the aforementioned Paul Elam, thinks so, writing in his post last month that Cosby had “probably” used “his fame, fortune and pharmaceuticals to grease the wheels of his sex life?”
Farley also tries to insinuate that the deposition itself is somehow unreliable.
Question the source: the document was created by one of Bill Cosby’s accusers. It makes far-from-objective statements like “[Bill Cosby’s] testimony become [sic] more and more unbelievable” (page 20).
While the document that Farley points to was prepared by a lawyer for one of Cosby’s accusers, not even Cosby’s lawyers are suggesting that the extensive excerpts from Cosby’s deposition that appear in it are distorted or fabricated. While his lawyers aren’t happy about any portion of Cosby’s deposition being made public, they don’t deny that Cosby said what he said.
Ironically, Farley himself blatantly misrepresents what’s in the deposition:
The anti-Cosby articles insist that none of the accusers are in it for the money, but the deposition reveals how false this is: The hostile lawyer asks, “Mr. Cosby, did you believe that T—— P—– would go to the press with her story when you sent her the money?”
There is zero evidence in the deposition that any women demanded money from Cosby, though there’s no question that he sent money to some.
In the deposition, Cosby admitted that he’d offered money to the plaintiff in the case. But he explicitly denied that she or her mother had demanded hush money from him — or that he’d ever claimed that. As the defense attorneys summarized what he said:
Defendant testified that even though both Plaintiff and her mother told him that all they wanted was an apology, he called Plaintiff’s home and spoke to her mother to offer money for Plaintiff’s “education.”
And here it is in Cosby’s own words. Or, rather word.
Q. So, you did not believe that [name redacted by DF] or her mother wanted money from you at the time they made the phone calls to you?
A. No.
While nothing in Cosby’s deposition proves that he’s a woman-drugging serial rapist, it certainly seems to back up a good number of the allegations made against him, and at the very least reveals him to be a sleazy adulterous creep.
But the main conclusion that Farley draws from it all is … this:
The old saying is still true: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Clearly, Farley has a much bigger problem with the facts — not to mention reality itself — than the “liberal media” he’s criticizing.
And an even more screwed-up definition of “love.”
