Camille Cosby is rumored to be a major force in the success of her husband’s career. Bill Cosby and Camille were married in 1964. They have had five children together. Now, after information revealed in a deposition Bill Cosby gave 10 years ago, we learn that Camille knew about Bill Cosby’s philandering as far back as 1997.
Ever since the Cosby rape allegations scandal broke into wider news, Camille Cosby has said little publicly about it. Most news has come from second-hand “insider” sources, which may not be reliable.
What Camille Cosby has said seems now to be an attempt to salvage a career and reputation — not her own, but Bill’s.
“The man I met, and fell in love with, and whom I continue to love, is the man you all knew through his work,” Camille said. “He is a kind man, a generous man, a funny man, and a wonderful husband, father and friend. He is the man you thought you knew.”
But the new information, direct from Bill Cosby’s own statements in deposition paints a picture of a man who not only pursued other women, but went to great lengths to hide it from Camille.
Bill Cosby’s deposition really is an glimpse into the mind of a man who has never considered the possibility that women are people.
— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) July 19, 2015
Bill Cosby said he paid money to keep women quiet, to keep news of his affairs out of the press, and to keep employees making the payments quiet. How did he hide all this from Camille?
In the case of Andrea Constand, one of the women accusing Bill Cosby of drugging and raping her, he said he told Camille he was helping her.
Cosby said, “I would say to [Camille] that here is a person I would like to help. My wife would not know it was because Andrea and I had had sex and that Andrea was now very, very upset and that she decided that she would like to go to school.”
Other things Bill Cosby said in his deposition run afoul of Camille Cosby’s insistence that he is “the man you thought you knew.”
“I think that I’m a pretty decent reader of people and their emotions in these romantic sexual things, whatever you want to call them,” Cosby said of his seduction skills with women.
He admitted to asking one woman about her father’s cancer, just to ingratiate himself to her so she would have sex with him.
It would be one thing if we were given a picture of an “open marriage” between Bill and Camille Cosby. That would be their business. But there is an effort to preserve the reputation of Cosby as a family man. His admission of hiding affairs from his wife by paying out money and misleading her about why it was paid, paints a very different picture.
And it now seems that Camille Cosby knows at least some of this.
Staying is a choice………and it is HERS to make. None of our business. Camille Cosby
— Serenity (@nschim) July 12, 2015
Why does any of this matter? If there is no proof of drugging and assault now, shy should anyone care if Bill Cosby cheats on his wife, or if Camille knows about it and denies it to the public?
Because, as an attorney might say, “it goes to character.” Bill Cosby and Camille are using his reputation as their defense against these allegations. ‘You know him,’ Camille insists. ‘He is the man you thought you knew.’ But now we see from Cosby’s own words — words he tried hard to keep sealed — that we did not know him.
The question now is: What else might he have done that we did not know?
Or, as Whoopi Goldberg put it:
“All the evidence out there kind of points to guilt… It looks bad, Bill. Either speak up or shut up, because people know now there is a lot more out there than they thought.”
Nobody thinks it's not okay that #BillCosby cheated constantly on Camille Cosby? I always wondered what was behind her ever tolerant smile
— Sherri Shepherd (@SherriEShepherd) July 19, 2015