Kamau Bell is Wrong; We Don’t Need to Talk About Cosby, We Need to Talk About His Illegal Trials

Writer Kamau Bell proclaimed Black America’s “need to talk about Bill Cosby” in his Showtime documentary that included comedians, educators, journalists, and those who have accused the iconic entertainer of sexual assault.

Bell claimed that for the smart, funny, and politically aware at dinner parties, the conversation would have to center on Cosby.

But for many others who declined to indulge in exploration and dissemination of another African American that mainstream media proved human, Bell missed the mark. Badly.

“He may as well have worn Black face, because the documentary is a minstrel show and as much as you may agree that Cosby is a hypocrite, Bell can’t afford to look in the mirror,” said Lorenzo Simpkins, an actor who has appeared as an extra in multiple movies and television shows, including Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder’s “Stir Crazy.”

“Bell is as misled and foolish as the knuckleheads who said, ‘Cosby admitted to drugging and raping women,’” Simpkins offered about the tired and wildly misreported civil deposition the entertainer sat for in a lawsuit brought in 2005 by Andrea Constand.

During the deposition, Cosby acknowledges that he provided quaaludes to women who would have sex.

“He did not say he slipped them mickeys or gave them the quaaludes to knock them out so he could take advantage of them,” Simpkins insisted.

But Simpkins said that’s not his most significant problem with Bell’s one-sided documentary that didn’t include statements or appearances from anyone on Cosby’s team.

“The biggest problem is that it’s a distraction that Showtime will use to make money and to denigrate a Black man further, and they can say ‘look, it’s another Black man [Bell] doing the denigrating,” he asserted.

Instead, Simpkins and others said Black Americans – men in particular – should most want to discuss the two trials of Cosby and the way they were handled and reported.

The prosecutor ran for office with ads that promised: “to get Cosby.”

Juror nullification proved so intense during the first trial that Cosby’s attorneys successfully petitioned to select a panel from across the state in Pittsburgh.

One petition juror, a Black woman and a former police officer, was disqualified from serving based on a false charge that she altered timecards while working for the department.

Judge Steven O’Neill stacked the deck against Cosby, even refusing to allow him to call a witness who said the alleged victim had confided that she could set Cosby up.

Despite the defense not putting on a defense, the first trial ended with a hung jury.

The second trial began with racial epithets hurled by a prosecutor toward the defense, a juror who proclaimed that Cosby was guilty before the start of the trial, and O’Neill allowed five women to present unproven allegations.

The former District Attorney, Bruce Castor, wasn’t allowed to testify about a deal he hammered out with Cosby, and O’Neill allowed the use of Cosby’s infamous civil deposition.

#Metoo and Metoo-inspired signs littered the courthouse, and some of the alleged but uncharged victims communicated with prosecution witnesses on the stand.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Max Baer slammed Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele after the high court freed Cosby last year after spending nearly three years in prison.

Justice Baer called Steele’s conduct “reprehensible.”

“[The court] had to protect 13 million Pennsylvanians from that type of illegal conduct,” Justice Baer continued. “What we found was that what the state did was inappropriate.”

According to a report from the American Bar Association, the criminal justice system’s pervasive problems with racism start before the first contact and continue through pleas, conviction, incarceration, release, and beyond.

The net effects of history’s injustices are staggering. According to statistics the NAACP examined, although Black people make up 13.4 percent of the population, they make up 47 percent of wrongful conviction exonerations and 35 percent of individuals executed by the death penalty.

Further, the Bar Association noted that African Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at five times the rate of whites. In addition, black men face disproportionately harsh incarceration experiences than prisoners of other races.

“The evidence of differential treatment and injustice in the ‘justice’ system is overwhelming,” Bar Association officials wrote.

“Because the problems are historically rooted, pervasive, and ongoing, it is even more critical to take action now (and in the future).”

Yet, Bell wants to focus on white media-driven allegations that a group of primarily non-Black individuals made against an African American icon, Simpkins and others demurred.

“Kamau Bell is the kind of guy that would be the funniest slave on the plantation. He would never have to work on weekends,” deadpanned Dr. Boyce Watkins.

Nicole Lewis, the host of the podcast and YouTube program “Nicole’s View,” called Bell’s documentary “smut.”

“No relevance to anything besides tearing down his achievements,” Nicole stated. “This is what Kamau Bell is pushing for us to converse about?”

Further, in American culture “where sensationalism is what tends to sell, I knew it was only a matter of time before our courtrooms would be inundated with personal opinion, public antics and trial by public in general,” said Phoenix Jackson, the chief communications officer at Phoenix Affect.

“The Cosby trial displayed at its peak the type of sensationalism that perpetuates the classless culture in America,” Jackson continued.

“As a communications executive and celebrity publicist, I would never want my clients to experience a public trial. I would want an unbiased, clear-to-the-law trial for the best form of objectivity. No matter the circumstance or who is on trial. Everyone deserves that.”

Dean Tong, a nationally known defense expert in sex crimes cases, said it’s incumbent upon all parties who are potentially adverse to the African American male accused of the unthinkable to be free from confirmation bias.

“I was not at Bill Cosby’s trial, but I was at Michael Jackson’s trial in 2005 in Santa Maria, California, and these allegations foster and exacerbate emotions on steroids which can supersede logic,” Tong demanded.

“I’m not saying Cosby was or is innocent, although his conviction was reversed. All Black, white, Hispanic, Asian defendants must receive a fair and impartial trial by a jury of their peers. The Constitution has the last say so.”