Alan: The urge to believe that "the good guys" are good guys is powerful across the political spectrum.
However, the urge to believe in "the goodness of the great" is even more powerful "on the right side of the aisle" where conservatives conceive any criticism of "the best America has to offer" as traitorous determination to trash America.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it." Lord Acton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton
"Bush's Toxic Legacy In Iraq"
http://paxonbothhouses. blogspot.com/2014/06/bushs- toxic-legacy-in-iraq.html
"People Who Watch Only Fox News
Know Less Than People Who Watch No News"
"People Who Watch Only Fox News
Know Less Than People Who Watch No News"
"People Who Watch Only Fox News
Know Less Than People Who Watch No News"
Our Cosby delusions undone: We’ll go to great lengths to see powerful men as they want to see themselves
Bill Cosby admitted to the behaviors, but couldn't call his actions "rape" — and he's not alone
If you needed “proof,” you now have it: In a 2005 deposition compelled to public release by the Associated Press, legendary comedian Bill Cosby admits to obtaining Quaaludes for the express purpose of forcing sex on nonconsenting women. This is in connection to just one case—a civil lawsuit filed by Andrea Constand in Philadelphia—but in the deposition, Cosby testifies he obtained the pills for other “people” as well. At this point, more than 25 women have come forward with their own stories about the comedian assaulting them, going back to the 1970s.
That deposition was not the only invocation of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s party drug—created by Maalox!—to crop up in the media this week. Former bunny and star of the peppy reality show “The Girls Next Door” Holly Madison just wrote a memoir on her time there, called “Down the Rabbit Hole,” which reveals perhaps what we have all always known to be true—it’s an exploitative, abusive hell, where Madison was ushered into a sexual initiation before being slotted into Hugh Hefner’s sex schedule of two nights a week. Shortly after moving in, she sunk into depression and contemplated suicide. This truth, in contrast to the constructed reality of “The Girls Next Door,” which portrayed Madison’s life as more of a PG-13 sorority with an off-kilter celebrity boyfriend situation. To quote from a BuzzFeed piece about the book:
As Madison learned her first night out with Hefner and the girlfriends, sex was a requirement of living there. Wednesdays and Fridays were “Club Nights,” and Hefner and his ladies would go out in Hollywood, getting VIP treatment at various clubs. (Hefner’s fame as a septuagenarian sexpot novelty was then at its peak.) Hefner offered Madison a Quaalude, telling her, she writes in Down the Rabbit Hole, that “in the ’70s they used to call these pills ‘thigh openers.’” She turned him down, but did get drunk, and by the time they all went back to the mansion, she was told that it was time to go to Hefner’s bedroom.Cosby was a frequent guest at the Playboy mansion. Late last year, former Playboy bunny P.J. Masten came forward saying that she and 12 other bunnies were raped by Cosby at the Playboy Club. It appears the two old men may have shared some tricks of the trade.
I am not the first to note that what is so skin-crawling about the Cosby rape allegations is that the comedian was a children’s entertainer, respectability-politics conservative, and family sitcom-dad for his entire career. We identify irony in the outspoken tirades against homosexuality made by men who end up engaging in clandestine affairs with other men. We identify horror in the stories of men like Jimmy Savile and Jerry Sandusky, who used their positions as, respectively, a children’s entertainer and a youth football coach, to identify, groom and rape countless minors. With Cosby the irony and horror are not so easily available, because partly, the blame is on us. Despite a vanilla, audience-pleasing, white-safe demeanor, Bill Cosby has not been particularly subtle or particularly private about any of this—his notorious “Spanish Fly” comedy bit being the most public example. Despite whispers, it remained buried for decades. It took another black comedian, in 2014, to call Cosby out on it, and by then, the long litany of damage was over and done with.
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