The story as I know it was that there was little news about the rape allegations that were published ten years ago until Hannibal Buress alluded to them. And ten years ago we didn't have the means of communication like Twitter and Facebook that we do now, so they were treated as tabloid trash and forgotten as quickly as David Hasselhoff drunkenly eating a cheeseburger on the bathroom floor.

Buress was (maybe still is) a writer for SNL, which is pretty powerful, since General Electric (NBC) is one of those six corporations, and Cosby had pretty much retired from NBC and acting to just do a few stand-up acts, so who knows?!!!?

General Electric sold NBC a long time ago, I think it may be comcast now.

No matter what business you're in, it doesn't hurt to know people, but outside of reality TV, I don't see a lot of whole lot of people in show business who don't have some kind of marketable talent. Of course talent matters. Talent is the product you're marketing.

What sunk Cosby was that women starting coming forward. Unless you think that he's being framed, there's no reason to suppose that was coordinated by some vengeful puppet master. Apparently there had been rumors about Cosby for a long time. I think a tipping point was reached. Buress created an environment in which victims could feel like they would at least be taken seriously, and every time a woman came forward, it was be easier for the next one. It may have left him vulnerable when the entertainment establishment no longer had a stake in protecting him, but I know of no reason to believe that this was coordinated by a more powerful person who Cosby pissed off.

Well, the trouble with that, John, is just as IZ says: women HAVE been coming forward. For years. People in the entertainment industry have known about Cosby's rape reputation for over a decade now, a decade at the very least. The current spate of "women coming forward" only came about because the media finally broke its silence on Cosby, throwing him to the tabloids; it was their decision to expose Cosby in the press that resulted in women coming forward, not women coming forward that prompted the media to expose him.

See, for example, Jimmy Saville - a known rapist whose bad behavior was actively (and admittedly!) covered up by the BBC. It wasn't until *after* he died that the BBC finally began reporting on the scandal which the BBC leadership had sat on for decades! Or Dennis Hastert, a scumbag Republican politician and known felon, whom the FBI had investigated for years over his own alleged rape hobby. Hastert should have been HUGE news - a hateable lobbyist and former Speaker of the house facing multiple rape allegations and the testimony of FBI whistleblowers - yet the story got buried. Why? Because evidently, dragging Hastert through the mud wasn't in anyone's interest. The facts and accusations are all out there, but you won't see his picture on the cover of Vanity Fair or Ebony magazine.

News memes don't just happen. The American media is highly centralized (thanks Reagan!) and as a result, Cosby's bosses have a great deal of editorial control over what gets published and what does not. Had Cosby still been worth defending, none of these allegations would have gone anywhere.

What's interesting is that Cosby was still worth defending, at least for the networks that had him on, since those reruns were their bread and butter.