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Bombshell: Ex-NBC Employee Claims Bill Cosby Paid Off Women, Invited Young Models to Dressing Room as He Stood Guard. Plus, The Washington Post Publishes an Extraordinary Feature About the Allegations Against Cosby, Co-Written by Two Pulitzer Prize Winners

Nov 24, 2014  •  Post A Comment

“Veteran NBC employee Frank Scotti says he helped Bill Cosby deliver thousands of dollars to eight different women in 1989-90,” reports the New York Daily News.

The story says one of the women was “Shawn Thompson, whose daughter Autumn Jackson claimed the actor was her dad. Scotti also tells the Daily News he stood guard whenever Cosby invited young models to his dressing room, which eventually led him to quitting after years on the job.”

The Daily News adds about Shawn Thompson and her daughter Autumn,“Cosby, while denying paternity, paid out more than $100,000 to Thompson over the years after their 1974 affair began. Scotti told The News that he believes Cosby was sleeping with all the women who received money.”

At least one of the women said she had not slept with Cosby.

The story also reports: “Cosby lawyer Martin Singer scoffed at Scotti’s claims. ‘What evidence does he have of Mr. Cosby’s involvement?’ Singer said Saturday. ‘How would Scotti know if a woman was a model or a secretary? It appears that his story is pure speculation so that he can get his 15 minutes of fame.’ ”

Meanwhile on Saturday, Nov. 22, 2014, The Washington Post published an extraordinarily lengthy feature — more than 7,500 words long — about the allegations against Cosby, written by four reporters, including two who have won Pulitzer Prizes.

According to the Post, the reporters were:

“Manuel Roig-Franzia … a writer in The Washington Post’s Style section. His long-form articles span a broad range of subjects, including politics, power and the culture of Washington, as well as profiling major political figures and authors.

“Scott Higham … a Pulitzer Prize-winning member of the investigations unit of The Washington Post. He has examined the deaths of D.C. foster children, the murder of intern Chandra Levy, conflicts of interest in Congress, the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and waste and fraud in federal contracting.

“Paul Farhi [who] is The Washington Post’s media reporter, [and] Mary Pat Flaherty, [who] works on investigative and long-range stories. Her work has won numerous national awards, including the Pulitzer Prize.”

The Post feature said, in part: “Sixteen women have publicly stated that Cosby, now 77, sexually assaulted them, with 12 saying he drugged them first and another saying he tried to drug her. The Washington Post has interviewed five of those women, including a former Playboy Playmate who has never spoken publicly about her allegations. The women agreed to speak on the record and to have their identities revealed. The Post also has reviewed court records that shed light on the accusations of a former director of women’s basketball operations at Temple University who assembled 13 ‘Jane Doe’accusers in 2005 to testify on her behalf about their allegations against Cosby.

“The accusations, some of which Cosby has denied and others he has declined to discuss, span the arc of the comedy legend’s career, from his pioneering years as the first black star of a network television drama in 1965 to the mid-2000s, when Cosby was firmly entrenched as an elder statesman of the entertainment industry, a scolding public conscience of the African American community and a philanthropist. They also span a monumental generational shift in perceptions — from the sexually unrestrained ’60s to an era when the idea of date rape is well understood.”

USA Today published a good roundup of developments in the Cosby story over the weekend, including this from Cosby himself:

“I know people are tired of me not saying anything, but a guy doesn’t have to answer to innuendos,” the 77-year-old comedian and actor told Florida Today backstage at his show Friday night in Melbourne. “People should fact check. People shouldn’t have to go through that and shouldn’t answer to innuendos.”

Finally, on Saturday, Nov. 22, 2014, the Chicago Tribune published an editorial about the accusations against Cosby.

The editorial says, in part: “By Friday, 10 of Cosby’s accusers had identified themselves, something that is almost as rare in 2014 as it was in 1969. Take a look at the online comment threads if you wonder why that’s so. See the women’s stories picked apart by strangers who think rape happens only in dark alleys. Watch the video of a CNN interviewer asking Tarshis why she didn’t use her teeth to avoid forcible oral sex.

“No, these women aren’t basking in 15 minutes of fame. They’re not piling on a lawsuit. They’re not going to send Cosby to prison. They’re not going to get a confession or an apology or even a comment, according to Cosby’s lawyers.

“What they’re doing is airing a festering grievance, encouraged by a groundswell of public outrage fed by search engines and shared on social media. They’re making it weird to watch those reruns.

“They’re changing the conversation about rape in America. It isn’t pretty. But it’s a good thing.”

To learn more about the latest in the allegations against Cosby, we urge you to click on all of the links in this story.

One Comment

  1. Sounds like another widespread breakout of ASBs (Attention Seeking Bullshit).

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