Cosby interview on GMA
Cosby spoke from Selma, Alabama where he was asked by the Black Belt Community Foundation to help them raise awareness about schools there that are underfunded. He is to speak to students Friday night but he sat down with ABCs Linsey Davis on ‘Good Morning America.’
Davis asked if he was prepared to be asked about the accusations – many of which involve drugging women and sexually assaulting them – by students. Was he worried, Davis asked Cosby, a student might say that they’d heard he’d done “some bad things.”
“I am prepared to tell this young person the truth about life,” Cosby began. “I’m not sure that they will come like that. I think that many of them say, ‘Well, you’re a hypocrite, you say one thing, you say the other.’
“My point is, OK, listen to me carefully. I’m telling you where the road is out. I’m telling you, where, as you’re driving, you’re going to go into water and it looks like it might only be three inches deep. But, you and your car are going to go down. Now, do you want to go here or do you want to be concerned about who’s giving you the message?”
Bill Cosby “can’t speak”
Davis didn’t ask him for clarification of his remarks, but neither did she back off from difficult questions. She asked Cosby directly about the allegations: “I have been in this business for 52 years,” he said. “And I have never seen anything like this. Reality is the situation. And I can’t speak.”
She asked about his legacy, noting that those who still supported him have a concern that with so many allegations it would be tainted, His response was to say that he had “a ton of ideas to put on television about people and their love for each other.”
One of Cosby’s accusers, former model and actress Angela Leslie, who said he raped her in Las Vegas in the early 90s, told the New York Daily News his responses were not what she needed to hear from him. She said he can’t move on until he admits what he’s done.
“The man was radically incoherent. He just strung together some words that had no meaning whatsoever,” she told the newspaper. “Cosby just needs to accept that he is a guilty party and he needs to apologize and seek help.
“He’s trying to move on as if nothing happened, and people know something happened. An apology is the only way he can redeem himself and become a better person and change the way he was.”
‘Far From Finished’ comedy tour
It seems a risk and a potential reward for the foundation to ask Cosby to be part of their fundraising and awareness efforts. But his name and involvement has already brought their cause into the public eye. Foundation president Felecia Lucky said that it was about the world knowing that Black Belt children matter.
Cosby will speak to Selma students and march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma with them, the bridge where peaceful protesters marched across for equality in 1965 and were attacked by police.
Although he lost television deals as allegations mounted, Cosby continues with stage performances. This year, his ‘Far From Finished’ tour started in Canada in January and while some venues have cancelled others have not, some saying they could not legally pull out from a signed contract.
All his shows, including recent shows in Baltimore and Atlanta, have been met by placard-waving protesters chanting “We believe the women.” In Baltimore, Cosby told the audience: “We are here to enjoy my gift. We are not here to argue.”
The allegations date from the 60s but Cosby, who settled a sex assault civil suit in 2006, hasn’t been criminally charged, though some have tried but the statue of limitations prevented them. He is currently facing two civil lawsuits, one a defamation suit from three women suing him for calling them liars after they came forward with accusations, another from a woman claiming he raped her when she was 15.
More of the Davis interview with Cosby will air on ABCs ‘Nightline.’
