I read the article about Bill Cosby’s sex scandal in Vanity Fair back in February 2015. Learning something new about the power of social media every day I went back to the article by James Wolcott “The Bill Cosby Scandal, Brought to You by YouTube” to share with you the perspective on how hard its to climb the career ladder and how easy and quick it is to destroy. Especially if you put the scandal on YouTube or any other social media networks.
No amount of riches or celebrity can stem the tide of Internet revelations of Bill Cosby’s predatory behavior. 70 Thirty years later, the Cosby sweater still rules, chirped a headline at CNN Entertainment in September 2014, a month before the levee broke. The affable array of colorful novelty knits that Bill Cosby lounged around in as Dr. Cliff Huxtable on his NBC sitcom, The Cosby Show, became a symbol of American fatherhood in the Reagan era—traditional values with a twirl—and still held a cozy appeal decades on. Now we know that those sweaters covered a multitude of sins.
Cosby might have been able to follow his blockers (the busy team of lawyers, publicists, and handlers he employed) and run out the clock, dodging the takedown of his reputation and showbiz edifice until reaching the final exit gate. But in October 2014, Philadelphia magazine put a video online of black stand-up comic Hannibal Buress performing a bit at the Trocadero Theatre where he flat-out, unambiguously, no-alleged-about-it labeled Cosby “a rapist.” The clip went viral with a vengeance, poking a hole in the dam that unleashed a flood of sordid revelations from the past unable to stay pent up any longer—a storm surge that carried all before it. Freud talked about the return of the repressed. This was the revenge of the suppressed. Bill Cosby was reduced to a bit player in a melodrama that was the monster of his own making.
he Internet is an accelerator and force multiplier of opinions and perceptions. Indignation is its rocket fuel. When social media swerve against a popular personality, the traditional damage-control methods of well-greased P.R. machinery are usually no match for the stampede of screaming meemies. Endearing personas and impressive careers that once took months and years to ruin can now crash and burn over the course of a few news cycles. The bigger they are, the faster they fall.
Read the full article here http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/01/bill-cosby-hannibal-buress-youtube
