Bill Cosby's wife, Camille, is 'very pleased' about appeal, suggests #MeToo has racist roots
Camille Cosby is speaking out about husband Bill Cosby’s appeal, saying she’s “very, very pleased” his 2018 conviction could be overturned. In an interview with ABC News, Camille doubled down on comparing the “unproven” sexual assault claims against the comedian to the brutal 1955 murder of Emmett Till. She also suggested the #MeToo movement is racist.
On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled it will hear parts of Bill’s appeal. The 82-year-old actor has been behind bars for nearly two years for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004. He was sentenced to three to 10 years in state prison.
“My first reaction is hopefulness, possibilities,” Camille told ABC’s Linsey Davis. “The state’s highest court ... has said, ‘Wait a minute. There are some problems here. They can be considered for an appeal.’”
Camille and Bill Cosby have been married for over 50 years, and she has stayed by his side throughout his #MeToo controversy. Dozens of women came forward and said they were sexually assaulted and/or drugged by the entertainer. The Cosby Show star was canceled before cancel culture was a thing — and Camille is unconcerned that many people view her to be on the wrong side of history.
“First of all, I don’t care what they feel,” she said.
“The #MeToo movement and movements like them have intentional ignorance pertaining to the history of particular white women — not all white women — but particular white women, who have from the very beginning, pertaining to the enslavement of African people, accused Black males of sexual assault without any proof whatsoever, no proof, anywhere on the face of the earth,” Camille added.
“And by ignoring that history, they have put out a lie in itself and that is, ‘Because I’m female, I’m telling the truth.’ Well, history disproves that, as well, and gender has never, ever equated with truth. So, they need to clean up their acts. And it’s all of us as women who have not participated in anything nefarious — we know how women can lie,” she continued. “We know how they can do the same things that men do — that some men do — because there are good men and bad men. There are good women and bad women.”
Camille defended comparing Bill’s situation to the horrific lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till. The teen was murdered in Mississippi for allegedly making advances at a white woman, a claim the woman admitted was false years later.
“The parallel is that the same age-old thing about particular white women making accusations against Black men that are unproven — Emmett Till’s outcome, to mutilate his body in the way that it was, was just really so deeply horrendous,” Camille said. “I mean — there’s a lack of words for that kind of hatefulness.”
“So you boil this all down to racism?” Davis asked Camille. “You feel that if your husband were not a Black man that these accusations would not have been made and he would not be in prison?”
“I don’t know that,” Camille replied, “because some white men have ... there are some who have been sent to prison. But ... it’s not the same situation as the history [of] particular white women with Black men.”
“We’ve seen them hanging from trees,” Camille said of the Black men, “once they make those accusations. We’ve seen them being incarcerated ... those accusations are made and — once again — unproven. Unproven.”
Camille noted that she speaks to Bill daily but won’t visit him.
“In terms of visiting him, no, I do not want to see my husband in that kind of an environment — and he doesn’t want me to see him in that kind of environment,” she said. “So we are in sync with that, but I speak to him every single day.”
Camille added that Bill does not have COVID-19 and is “doing fine.”
Watch — Bill Cosby granted appeal by Pennsylvania Supreme Court:
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