I guess I should adjust my opinion of Judd Apatow. I had thought of him as one of the pillars of Bro-world, whose citizens generally seem oblivious to the existence of women as anything other than platforms for genitalia. But that doesn’t seem to cohere well with his attitude to Bill Cosby.
If you’ve followed director Judd Apatow’s Twitter musings for the last several weeks, his views on the rape allegations against Bill Cosby won’t come as a huge surprise.
But over the weekend, Apatow went on a lengthy anti-Cosby rampage. He slammed Cosby’s “cold” defenders for siding with the comedian. He compared Cosby’s lack of conviction in a court of law to Hitler dying without being convicted of murder. And he labeled Cosby “a rapist” and “a monster.”
“I wish he wasn’t a rapist too. I am not sure why you feel the need to protect him,” Apatow told one Cosby defender.
“I always wonder why some people try so hard to not believe women who have been assaulted. What is the root of that?” he tweeted at another.
The usual – the failure to understand that women are human beings just as men are.
Asked by one follower why he had an “obsession” with Cosby, Apatow quipped: “I guess it’s because guys who rape a lot aren’t cool.”
Cosby has never been convicted of any of the allegations against him, but the recent allegations threaten to permanently tarnish the reputation of one of America’s most beloved and powerful comedians.
Not all the rapey priests and bishops have been convicted, either, but the hundreds of allegations threaten to tarnish the reputation of the Catholic church forever.
Apatow’s outspokenness is rare among entertainment industry figures, who have remained largely silent on the allegations that have swirled around Cosby for years but havereached a fever pitch over the last several months.
Save for a few of Cosby’s celebrity defenders like comedian Whoopi Goldberg and singer Jill Scott, the response in show business has been non-existent. Hollywood, it appears, prefers to stay out of the fray.
“Almost nobody here will acknowledge that Bill Cosby has been accused of rape x30,” he said earlier this month.
Well, I guess I do have to adjust my opinion.
What is it with Whoopi Goldberg and rape? I’m thinking of her defense, both irrelevant and false, of Roman Polanski, and now this.
Yeah, Whoopi Goldberg seems to have a history of defending the indefensible. I recall her leaping to Mel Gibson’s defense too with regard to his racist rants.
You’d think someone who’d excelled in portraying downtrodden oppressed people – see The Long Walk Home would know better and do better. Perhaps she just mouthed the words she learned and did what the director told her without letting it affect her too much.
(For anyone who watches the movie, there’s a little delighted moment when you recognise a very young Stephen Colbert playing a very minor role as one of the dinner guests.)
If you watch Apatow’s TV series ‘Freaks and Geeks’ (which, sadly, lasted only one season), it’s obvious that he’s not just a bro-dude. It’s too bad his movie output is so drastically different.
I wouldn’t rush to over-adjust that opinion, Ophelia:
Not exactly a blanket condemnation of rapists.
Welllllll that’s irony. I’d be very likely to put it that way myself. It’s deliberate understatement.
I just thought that ‘a lot’ was superfluous at best.