Bill Cosby's wife wants to know who the real victim is. There are all too many options
There’s standing by your man. And then there’s Camille Cosby.
On Monday, Bill Cosby’s wife Camille appeared to do the former, as she finally spoke out to defend her husband against the nearly two dozen women who claimthey were drugged and, in some cases, sexually assaulted by him over the last few decades. In a statement, she called Bill Cosby – with whom she celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary this year – “kind”, “generous” and a “wonderful husband”.
She added:
A different man has been portrayed in the media over the last two months. It is the portrait of a man I do not know. It is also a portrait painted by individuals and organizations whom many in the media have given a pass. There appears to be no vetting of my husband’s accusers before stories are published or aired.
Camille Cosby then went on to lambast a media “link” between the allegations against her husband and those in the widely derided article in Rolling Stone aboutrape at the University of Virginia.
I’m not sure what kind of magical thinking it takes to convince yourself that more than 20 women with very similar stories are lying or part of some huge media misstep, but I am sure it has something to do with being married for as long as the Cosbys have been. Because believing the women who have come forward would mean admitting that almost your whole life had been built on quicksand.
Indeed, Camille Cosby’s statement feels like a desperate plea for people to hold on to the untouched “Cliff Huxtable” narrative so that she can, too:
The man I met, and fell in love with, and whom I continue to love, is the man you all knew through his work ... He is the man you thought you knew.
I’m sure the women who Cosby allegedly attacked thought they knew him, too. That’s why they trusted him.
As easy as it is to fault Camille Cosby for defending her husband against the indefensible, there’s more than a tinge of “why didn’t she leave” in those criticisms of which we ought to also be aware. Because if the allegations are true – and, at this point, I’m sure even the most hardened skeptic believes something is up – they mean that Camille Cosby has spent the vast majority of her life with an abuser, the emotional ramifications of which are unimaginable.
We don’t know what Camille Cosby’s personal life is like. And while even the most generous interpretation of “for better or worse” shouldn’t include the requirement that one stick by an alleged serial abuser of women, we should summon more empathy for why Camille Cosby might.
I understand why we feel like we want a woman with an awful (and perhaps criminal) spouse to publicly excoriate him, to leave, to sit down with his accusersand say enough is enough. We feel like we need her to be a voice of reason because we don’t want to believe we could ourselves ever be the kind of person who would stand by and knowingly defend the person allegedly behind such a horror show. But it happens all the time. People tell themselves the most outrageous stories, just so they can keep living their lives – even just to make it to the next day. To think ourselves immune to doing the same thing is a mistake.
At the end of her statement, Camille Cosby wrote, “the question should be asked - who is the victim?”. She might just have been talking about her husband, but, to me, that’s difficult to believe.
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