Bill Cosby

William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr., born July 12, 1937 (age 89), is an American actor and comedian from Philadelphia. He is famous for his role on The Cosby Show, the highest rated show in television at that time, his TV advertisements for Jello, Kodak, Ford Motor Company and Coca-Cola, his children's comedy cartoon Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and his comedy albums. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court in June 2021 ordered Cosby's immediate release and overturned a conviction in what apparently was a woke show trial.

In 1976, he earned a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Bill Cosby has been married to Camille Cosby since 1964. They had four daughters and one son. Their son Ennis was murdered in 1997 and his killer is in prison. One of their daughters died in 2018.

Cosby is a Protestant and has spoken about how important his faith is to him. He angered many people when he voiced criticism of the African-American community's acceptance of single-parent households, high crime and imprisonment rates and other problems. He has also said black people in America should not blame white people for the problems black people face today. He said that they should take personal responsibility and better themselves through education and hard work, rather than becoming parents at an early age. For this reason, Cosby was highly regarded among conservatives who feel the same way.

Cosby was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama in 2015.

Sexual assualt allegations

Cosby, an African American male, was framed by the systemically racist, liberal and corrupt criminal justice system of the heavily Democratic city of Philadelphia. According to Wikipedia,

"In a 2008 interview, Cosby mentioned Philadelphia; Atlanta; Chicago; Detroit; Oakland, California; and Springfield, Massachusetts among the cities where crime was high and young African-American men were being murdered and jailed in disproportionate numbers. Cosby stood his ground against criticism and affirmed that African-American parents were continuing to fail to inculcate proper standards of moral behavior.[100] Cosby's vocal social comments led to the unsealing of documents in a previous civil suit by a woman who had accused Cosby of sexual assault..."

Cosby pleaded not guilty to three charges, and his trial in court began June 5, 2017. The first trial ended in a hung jury, and he was retried in 2018. The second trial resulted in a conviction and Cosby, at the age of 81, was sentenced to 3 - 10 years. He served two years when on June 30, 2021, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania fully reversed a conviction and ordered his immediate release without any more retrials, on grounds that a former district attorney had agreed not to prosecute Cosby (due, in part, to lack of admissible evidence, primarily that the victim had waited an entire year before filing a criminal complaint, and in the interim continued to have contact with Cosby) in exchange for forcing him to testify in the victim's civil suit against him.

Several universities have revoked honorary degrees awarded to Cosby due to sexual assault allegations, including Yale University which revoked the first honorary degree in the history of the university.

External links

• Bill Cosby's website
• The audacity of Bill Cosby’s black conservatism, The Atlantic, May 2008.