Bill Cosby and Creepiness Creep

Cancel the culture war. When newspapers of record start writing headlines in the language of teenage girls, you know there’s no culture left to have a war over.

Following the public revelation of court documents in which Bill Cosby admitted obtaining Quaaludes for the purpose of getting women into bed, Washington Post associate editor Carlos Lozada reviews passages from the comedian’s books that he thinks reveal a predatory turn of mind. Or, as he puts it himself: “In hindsight, Bill Cosby’s old books on love, family and sex are incredibly creepy.”

As of this writing, more than 40 women have accused Cosby of drug-facilitated sexual assault – a fancy legalese way of saying he spiked their drinks and had sex with them while they lay unconscious. Because the statutes of limitations for these alleged crimes expired long ago, he’ll probably never face a judge or jury over any of them. To a point, the drive to exact justice through other avenues, either by petitioning President Obama to revoke Cosby’s Medal of Freedom, or here, by stigmatizing his entire body of work, is easy to understand.

If extralegal remedies are the end, then the word “creepy” offers the perfect means to them. According to the most popular definition in the Urban Dictionary, it means “sexually inappropriate or perverted or…attempting to derive sexual gratification through dishonorable means.” Unless Cosby’s been slandered and libeled with less shame or restraint than any man since Trotsky, that would describe him to the life.

But today’s courtship rules award the targets of sexual advances the exclusive right to decide which ones are appropriate, healthy or honorable — a right that goes beyond accepting or refusing. No “reasonable person” standard applies here. In the eyes of certain beholders, Benedict Cumberbatch with a spray of roses would be creepy, whereas a sjambok-swinging Rob Zombie wouldn’t be, and no one could claim the right to review the call.

The label is also designed to stick even after it’s become obvious no advances were made in the first place. Last week in Slate, Katy Waldman sadly agreed that YA author John Green had earned the title of creep even as she took his word that he would never sexually abuse his underage readers. “For someone who wants to encourage strong young women,” Waldman writes, referring to Green’s cultlike online following, “he certainly has them eating out of the palm of his hand.”

So “creepy” is both more and less than a concrete, provable accusation. It’s also a red flag, an early-warning signal. It works even better in hindsight, where troubling patterns and cause-and-effect relationships present themselves without begging much scrutiny. True enough, some of Cosby’s early material, in particular his routines about Spanish Fly, jump right out and smack the listener in the face as the work of a potential predator.

But the material in his books? I’m not buying. Lozada cites one passage from Time Flies where Cosby, then 50, confesses to lacking “the stamina to go one-on-one in bed the way I did in my salad days,” but goes on to reassure readers he’s “the Cary Grant of cuddling.”

After hearing everything we’ve heard, we might be tempted to call this camouflage. Otherwise, I should hope we wouldn’t find anything creepy in Cosby’s making himself out to be a sad sack (in the sack). Self-deprecation is what comics do, especially when they’ve become so grossly successful that we’re likely to resent them for it. The same can be said for Cosby’s meditations on his pubic hair. It’s a bit too much information, but since when is comedy – even mainstream comedy – supposed to make us feel nothing but comfortable?

Amateur psychologizing can be a fun way to fill column inches – I’m in no position to dispute that – but in many spots here Lozada tries to make his case through the sheer strength of his own piety. He sums up Cosby’s recollections of knocking down girls in his grade school days: “Cosby liked to hurt little girls, because they deserved it.” When, following puberty, Cosby observes that “objects of derision had become objects of desire,” Lozada observes, in parentheses: “(Objects either way, of course).”

It’s crucial to note that in these passages Cosby never describes these teenage crushes and conquests in terms that suggest he’s still drooling over them. All the drama, as well as the comedy, takes place inside the adolescent headspace he recreates; as a mature narrator, he observes his own former ardor and gaucherie with wry amusement. His stories resonated with readers not because they were shocking or even novel, but because they seemed so typical.

The label of creep has its uses. Where a threat of sexual assault exists, it’s important to validate feelings of discomfort. I made this point in a piece on convicted child pornographer Fr. Shawn Ratigan, one of whose parishioners did indeed complain to her parents of Father’s “creepy” behavior. But there’s a difference between praising vigilance in situations that demand it and encouraging a moral panic. By tagging a hostile childhood curiosity about the opposite sex and an intense, unfocused adolescent sensuality as signs of a future rapist, Lozada does no favors for anyone, except maybe the folks who make Depo-Provera.

As it turns out, Lozada denies doing any such thing. “It would,” he admits, “be too much to say that these pages foreshadow the accusations before Cosby today — they don’t.” Still, he insists, “They don’t really contradict them, either.”

So that’s where the creepiness bar now stands. By commenting on a few passages in a few 30-year-old books, the nonfiction book review editor of the Washington Post succeeded in knocking it down a fair few feet. Woodward and Bernstein should be proud.