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Part II: Speed
Colleges and Cosby ——Universities patronized by Bill Cosby wrestle with whether to distance themselves from the actor. Ry Rivard
This article originally appeared in Inside Higher Ed.
[Time 2]
At least one college is distancing itself from Bill Cosby, the once family-friendly comedian who has been accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women.
Cosby’s involvement in higher education is extensive. He has been among the most prominent and generous donors to historically black colleges, especially with a $20 million donation to Spelman College. He was leading the capital campaign at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania until a few months ago.
Cosby has also been a trustee at his alma mater, Temple University, since 1982. That’s where Cosby met one of his accusers, the former director of operations for the Temple women’s basketball team. Cosby settled a civil lawsuit brought by the woman, Andrea Constand, after she accused Cosby of drugging her and then sexually assaulting her in January 2004. Her lawyer told a judge that 13 women were prepared to testify about similar incidents of sexual assault involving Cosby.
Cosby was attempting to resurge as an entertainer when old allegations gained new traction and new allegations of older incidents became public, including one by model Janice Dickinson, who accused him of sexually assaulting her in 1982.
In an unusual retrospective remark, a former prosecutor has since said he believes Cosby did something “inappropriate” to Constand, even though the prosecutor didn’t bring charges at the time.
Temple is standing behind Cosby. “Dr. Cosby continues to be a member of the Temple University Board of Trustees,” a Temple spokesman said in a statement.
Cosby has previously denied Constand’s and others’ accusations. His lawyer said recently that “decade-old, discredited allegations have resurfaced,” but their being now repeated “does not make them true.” At least one new alleged victim has come forward in recent days, putting Cosby’s total number of accusers at 15, including more than a half-dozen whose names are public.
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[Time 3]
A new biography of Cosby was just released. NBC, which aired his long-running, immensely popular Cosby Show, was planning a new series with him. Netflix was set to post a Cosby special. The author of the biography has been questioned over its failure to mention the long-standing allegations against Cosby. NBC canceled production of the new Cosby project. Netflix postponed releasing the special. Even TV Land, the channel that shows reruns of classic television shows, stopped airing the original Cosby Show.
The Berklee College of Music is following the lead of those companies in distancing itself from Cosby. The college named a scholarship for Cosby after he appeared several years ago at its 60th anniversary bash; on Wednesday, it decided to take his name off the scholarship, said Berklee spokesman Allen Bush. Bush said college officials should be aware of the perception that campuses are unsafe—even if that isn’t true for their particular college—and that awareness should include partnerships and how they are perceived by students.
Another college, High Point University, announced a temporary shift on its ties to Cosby, who had been named to its National Board of Advisors in July. The university removed his name and photograph from the Web page of board members, and a spokeswoman told the Associated Press that “we are removing his name from our board of advisors until all information on this matter is available.” When High Point named Cosby to the board in July, the university's announcement hailed him as “one of the most influential performers of our time.”
Cosby’s most important contributions to higher education may be at historically black colleges—which Berklee and Temple are not—and those colleges are, so far, sticking with Cosby or at least declining to say they are not. In 1988, Cosby gave $20 million to Spelman College, the women’s college in Georgia, which is the largest donation ever made to a historically black college by a black donor. Endowed chairs and a building are named after Cosby and his wife. Cosby even filmed part of a short-lived TV show at Spelman. Spelman said Thursday it had no comment.
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[Time 4]
Cosby was also leading the capital campaign at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania. The university’s president has recently come under fire for being dismissive of female students’ rape accusations. A video on Lincoln’s home page that featured Cosby was apparently removed in recent days.
Lincoln representatives said Cosby’s relationship with the university had ended this summer, as planned. The university said Cosby was recruited to be part of the first phase of its “Student First” capital campaign. That started in summer 2013 and ended this June, though Cosby performed at a July concert to mark the end of that phase. “Mr. Cosby has no current association with the University’s Student First campaign,” the university said in a statement. Johnny Taylor, the president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which represents public HBCUs, said neither he nor the organization’s members were preparing to back away from Cosby without independent evidence of Cosby’s guilt or a verdict. Last year, Cosby hosted a black-tie gala for the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
Taylor said he had been at Lincoln on Thursday and spoken with some male students who were concerned they could be wrongly accused and the entire world could turn on them without evidence. “We just don’t have the basis to know if this is true or not,” Taylor said of the allegations against Cosby. “And thus it would be horribly unfair to turn on someone who has been very generous with his time and his money based purely upon accusations that are, at this point, unfounded.” If independent evidence emerged that proved Cosby’s guilt, Taylor said, “we absolutely would not condone that behavior and we would have to officially take a different position.”
On the historically black college scene, Cosby is a major presence: He speaks frequently at campus events and helps with fundraising. At a Tuskegee University last year, donors paid $5,000 or $10,000 to speak with Cosby and get a souvenir photo. When Norman Francis of Xavier University of Louisiana announced his retirement in early September, Cosby called him. Francis got off another call with a reporter to speak with Cosby. Xavier and Tuskegee did not respond to requests for comment.
Cosby is also still expected to be the speaker at a fundraising dinner Dec. 5 for Freed-Hardeman University, a Christian institution in Tennessee. The university's website says of its speaker that Cosby is “one of the most influential performers of the last half-century.”
Berklee’s decision to take Cosby’s name off one of its scholarships was first reported by the International Business Times.
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Source: Slate
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/inside_higher_ed/2014/11/bill_cosby_rape_allegations_mean_colleges_decide_to_distance_themselves.html
The National Organization for Marriage Has Collapsed Into Debt Mark Joseph Stern
[Time 5]
On Wednesday, the viciously anti-gay National Organization for Marriage finally released its 2013 tax filings—two days late, in direct violation of federal law. The results are nothing short of brutal. NOM raised $5.1 million last year—a 50 percent drop-off from its 2012 earnings. Two donors accounted for more than half of that money. And the group’s “Education Fund,” which churns out anti-gay propaganda and homophobic calumny, raised less than $1.7 million, a 70 percent decline from 2012. NOM closed out the year more than $2.5 million in debt.
How did this collapse occur so quickly? I have three theories. The first is that casual donors grew weary of NOM’s execrably hateful campaigns and craven refusal to face public censure. In 2013, the group’s anti-gay rhetoric sounded barbaric and, at a fundamental level, simply impolite. Even if you didn’t like gay people, you probably didn’t want to associate with such a rabid crowd.
My second, related theory is NOM’s donors are increasingly terrified of being unmasked. For years, the group flew under the radar, and donors could give anonymously. But since the Prop 8 debacle, the indefatigable Fred Karger and his merry band of campaign finance lawyers have been fighting in court, successfully, to force NOM to disclose its donor lists. As the Brendan Eich controversy illustrates, having your name linked with an anti-gay cause can irreparably tarnish your public image. For anti-gay Americans without the backbone to weather harsh criticism, a NOM donation simply isn’t worth the risk.
My third theory—and probably the most likely one—is that NOM’s former donor base has simply lost interest. The battle is over. They know it, and they’re moving on. Gay marriage is here to stay; a $100 (or $100,000) check to NOM won’t change anything. Maybe a few former donors have even changed their mind about the whole gay marriage issue. Either way, most people know a lost cause when they see one. And anyone not totally blinded by bigotry can see pretty clearly that NOM is waging a war against the inevitable.
There could, of course, be other factors at play; because the group is so deliberately opaque, we can’t really know if there was a breakdown in leadership. (That purported 2011 putsch against Maggie Gallagher remains shrouded in mystery.) But even if morale is high at NOM today, it won’t stay that way for long. In the near future, NOM’s higher-ups will release that they’re on the brink of officially folding. At that point, they’ll give the piggy bank one last shake, then jump ship for good. The resulting collapse will be pitiable, painful, and pathetic—a finale befitting an organization built on a platform of nothing but hate.
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Source: Slate
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/11/19/the_national_organization_for_marriage_has_collapsed_into_debt.html
Why Is Sheldon So Clueless When It Comes to Race on The Big Bang Theory? Kimberly Potts | November 21, 2014
[Time 6]
Please do not consider this a call to the political-correctness police. I do not wanna be that person. But.
Sheldon Cooper has a problem, and it’s time it was addressed.
Since we were first introduced to the socially inept one, Sheldon has evolved. He not only understands sarcasm now — a skill with which he was not equipped in the early seasons — but he can use it as cuttingly as any of his friends. He’s also now more attuned to various social cues, savvier about matters of dating, friendship, and other interpersonal relationships, and less awkward, relatively speaking, in his communications with others.
Except for one area: Sheldon remains shockingly clueless — offensively clueless — on matters of race. And why?
“The Champagne Reflection,” in which Sheldon films the series finale of his "Sheldon Cooper Presents: Fun With Flags" podcast, includes the latest examples of his missteps: one when he shows "Fun With Flags" guest-star LeVar Burton his tribute to George Washington Carver, with Sheldon portraying Carver. We don’t see the video onscreen, but considering that Leonard had earlier told him it was “wildly racist” and that it caused Burton to react with an “Oh, hell no” upon viewing it, the assumption is that blackface may have been involved.
Later, when a single, tepid, comment on the podcast leads Sheldon to conclude "Fun With Flags" is too beloved to cancel, he visits Burton at his home and asks him to make another guest appearance. The theme is flags of Germany, and he wonders how the Reading Rainbow host would feel about dressing up like a swastika.
These are not the first instances in which Sheldon has behaved so ignorantly in matters of race. Remember his season-six meeting with Caltech human-resources administrator Janine Davis (guest-star Regina King), which was so fraught with gaffes that he felt the need to smooth things over with a gift later in the season? Unfortunately, that gift turned out to be a Roots DVD box set, which he selected for her because, “You’re black, right?”
The Sheldon character is clueless; it’s certainly not some malicious effort on his part to be offensive. If anything, like many of Sheldon’s strange behaviors, he’s actually making an effort to click with the other humans.
Still.
Not understanding sarcasm is one thing. An important thing — who’d want to live in a world without that? But given that Sheldon sought out Leonard’s help in shoring up his sarcasm-detection skills, Leonard and his other friends should make it a point to help Sheldon understand why his comments vis-à-vis race-related topics are so not okay. Otherwise, this could just appear to be lazy writing designed to get laughs with the least possible thought and effort, and both viewers and the Sheldon character deserve better.
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[The Rest]
And now we jump down from the soapbox.
Otherwise, what was supposed to be the "Fun With Flags" denouement is a greatest-hits collection — again, relatively speaking — of Sheldon’s series, with a show-within-the-show highlight reel that includes Amy Farrah Fowler dressed up like a kangaroo (Australian flag), Sheldon dressed up like Betsy Ross to express his skepticism that she really sewed the first American flag, and a game of “Fwag or Not a Fwag” with Barry Kripke. It also serves as a chance for Sheldon to harp repeatedly on Amy for having once forgotten to hit record when they were creating a two-hour Fourth of July installment of the podcast. Given the repeated rebukes of his girlfriend and those LeVar Burton faux pas, "Fun With Flags" kinda turns out not to be. Fun, that is, or at least, not as fun as it should have been.
No one else is having much fun in the episode, either. Penny and Bernadette attend a work soiree where boss Dan (the always-delightful Stephen Root) and Penny fess up to Bernadette that she’s seen as a big (well, petite, but powerful) bully who has intimidated her co-workers into buying her coffee every day and allowing her to have a private bathroom at the office. The revelation drives Bernie to tears, albeit fake ones, which she uses to manipulate Penny and Dan into agreeing to continue funding her java jones.
Leonard, Raj, and Howard, meanwhile, are tasked with cleaning out the office of the recently deceased Professor Roger Abbott (whose name, Howard points out, sounds like “Roger Rabbit”). The most interesting data they find among his notebooks is a log of everything he ever ate — he was trying to prove caloric restriction extends lifespan — which is why he never got to enjoy the bottle of Champagne his mother gave him, 50 years ago, with a note urging him to open it upon his first great discovery. The trio tries to put an upbeat footnote on Professor Abbott’s disappointing career by agreeing they’ll toast him with the Champagne when one of them gets their first big breakthrough (followed by copious amounts of rubbing the accomplishment in Sheldon’s face).
Sheldon, instead, opens the bottle when he gets that less-than-rave feedback on "Fun With Flags," not because he wants to celebrate with libations, but because he likes the sound of the cork pop.
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Source: Vulture
http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/big-bang-theory-recap-season-8-fun-with-flags-finale-levar-burton.html?wpsrc=nymag
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发表于 2014-11-23 07:12:52
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