BILL COSBY ACCUSED OF RAPE

[HairOfTheDog]

As I said, you can't prove a negative. He can't prove these women are lying (if, suppose they were) any more than they can prove he's a liar. It's a he-said, she-said situation and the only ones who have credence right now are those accusing him (because they're a group who have similar stories). I don't think he could rightly accuse them of extortion (for sure) and defamation...who in their right mind would challenge that large of a group of women?

He'd be an idiot to come forward and try to fight that battle. Sorry HotD, but the story is dying already because he's not feeding the media frenzy. It will continue to die. He may lose jobs, endorsements etc. and his legacy will always be tarnished because of this but speaking out about it? It would only make things worse.

The "can't prove a negative' works both ways. It would be working in his favor if he was innocent and directly claiming so. He'd be an idiot to remain silent if he's innocent. The story is dying and so is his whole career and his legacy. If he's innocent, that's an idiotic trade off.

If he'd directly claimed his innocence earlier, many would still likely be focused on how all those women had to be asking for it, or lying, or looking to profit, or whatever.

By continuing to not directly state his innocence and remain silent, he's shifted the burden of proof (in the court of public opinion) from the women to himself.

Also, Cosby has enormous wealth and resources which could have (and would have, IMO) been focused on uncovering lies and holes regarding dates, times, places in the women's stories. That's not that hard to do for a public figure, even in regards to details from all those years ago. If he were innocent, all he'd have to do is directly declare his innocence and present or leak a few such details and the pendulum of doubt-benefit would swing back his way. The cost of protecting and defending himself in such a manner would be way less than the value of his lost contracts and the hit to his image and legacy.

It doesn't much matter -- we agree that remaining silent is prudent if he's guilty. We don't agree on remaining silent if he's innocent, but neither of us believes he's innocent anyway. Still fun to hear your view and go round and round about it, but I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree again, French Fry.