Camille Cosby has become an ancillary focus in the news surrounding Bill Cosby’s rape and drugging scandal. Much of what Bill and Camille Cosby seem to be focused on is assuring people that Bill Cosby is ‘the man they all thought they knew.’ They insist that he is not a monster, but is indeed Heathcliff Huxtable.
Over the years, Bill and Camille Cosby have given interviews that now seem treasure troves of hints as to what might have been happening during the years Cosby’s accusers say he was drugging and raping women.
For example, we know from an extortion case Cosby was embroiled in back in 1997 that he had an affair with one woman in the mid-70s. Bill and Camille Cosby were married in 1964. This time line concurs with something Camille Cosby told Oprah Winfrey in an interview in 2000.
Speaking about when she knew their marriage had “gelled,” Camille Cosby said, “When we knew that we really wanted to be with each other, that we didn’t want to live without each other. That probably happened ten years after we were married, when we really spent time talking about what marriage means.”
No one wants money, just justice. Well that is all they would get #CamilleCosby
— I P (@mytoy5) July 26, 2015
But in an interview Bill Cosby gave in 2001, he also hinted at something that happened as late as 1993. According to Time Magazine:
About eight years ago, he says, “if somebody had made me choose between my career and my family, I probably would have let the family go.”
He took his family for granted, Cosby says, and this attitude led to “selfish behavior” that he will not describe, except to say that it was particularly hurtful to his wife. Speaking cautiously in the second person, with uncharacteristic somberness, he says, “When you’re younger, you want to be sure that by the time you’re 80 years old you can sit on the bench and look back and say, ‘Man, I did it all. I didn’t miss a thing.’ What you never meant to do was to hurt anyone, but then you see the look on the face of the person you didn’t mean to hurt, and then you realize that what you stand to lose is worth so much more . . .” He pauses. “I just asked my wife and my kids to forgive me, and ever since then, they’ve been a part of everything I do.”
Bill Cosby’s characterization of his actions as “selfish behavior” is interesting. This is very much like another question that Oprah asked Camille Cosby.
Oprah: I read that you and Bill went through a time in your marriage when you were both focused on selfish needs.
Camille: We were both young. We had to go through a lot. It’s difficult to learn to live with somebody, to be unselfish and to be responsible for your behavior—and even to think how you hurt others if you do certain things.
Oprah: Like fool around?
Camille: Or anything that is selfish. You go through a transition, if you are committed to each other. You cleanse yourself of all of that baggage, and you look at each other and determine whether the relationship is worth salvaging, whether you really love each other and want to be together. Then you realize, “Wait a minute. I might have been doing this because I just didn’t want to think about how this would affect the other person or to allow myself to love someone with emotional intimacy.”
If the “selfish behavior” Bill Cosby talks about is the same kind of being “focused on selfish needs” that Oprah asked about, what might that mean about Camille Cosby? Oprah specified that Camille and Bill were “both” involved in that behavior. Camille responds that they “were both young”
And notice that Camille’s answer included allusions to ‘hurting others’ and doing “certain things.” Oprah specifically asked about ‘fooling around,’ and Camille did not deny that.
Might it be that Camille Cosby herself had also had an affair during the first ten years of her marriage to Bill Cosby?
I really feel sorry for Camille Cosby. She seems to be the most brainwashed individual in this whole situation with Combustable Huxtable.
— Taco Bell Biv Devoe (@JP_Izzzz_Me) July 20, 2015