Posted on 02/11/2005 2:17:44 PM PST by swilhelm73
A stricter standard of sexual behavior for comedians than for Presidents? On Thursday morning, CBS Early Show co-host Harry Smith announced they would be interviewing a woman who claims entertainer Bill Cosby sexually fondled her thirty years ago. "This is a tough story to have to talk about," he insisted. But did they "have to" talk about it? When Juanita Broaddrick charged in 1999 that President Clinton had raped her in a hotel room, the CBS Evening News aired one story on a Saturday, but CBS This Morning never interviewed Broaddrick and aired no story on her charges. In the last five years, her name has been uttered on CBS morning shows just twice in passing.
[The MRC's Tim Graham submitted this item for CyberAlert.]
In Thursday's 7:30am half hour, MRC analyst Brian Boyd noticed that Smith declared: "This is a tough story to have to talk about. Bill Cosby, already under fire from one woman who claims he drugged and groped her, now another woman has come forward alleging he did the same thing to her about 30 years ago. We'll have that story straight ahead."
Smith, in New York, interviewed the Cosby accuser, Tamara Green, who appeared from Los Angeles, about her vague recollections of what happened to her. After a few minutes of talking about how she became employed by Cosby, and how he allegedly gave her pills and then took her home and assaulted her, Smith noted that Cosby is a public figure who's been the subject of extortion attempts before: "Without some sort of evidence, this is a cry from 30 years ago, and it sounds to me like you're not even sure when the date was." Green admitted: "I'm not sure when the date was." After she compared her experience to veterans of combat in Vietnam, Smith replied: "I'm still not certain why it is you would do what you're doing right now." She said because it's a woman's issue.
The better question is: why is CBS airing these unsubstantiated charges against Cosby when they wouldn't cover the story of Clinton accuser Juanita Broaddrick? On February 24, 1999, Dateline NBC aired an edited version of an eight-hour interview session with Juanita Broaddrick, more than a month after Broaddrick was interview by NBC's Lisa Myers about her story of being raped by Bill Clinton in 1978. To get the report on the air, Myers attempted to piece together evidence that both Broaddrick and Clinton could have been in the Camelot Hotel on April 25, 1978. (The Clinton White House would not respond to inquiries about his whereabouts that day.) While NBC aired an interview segment, and ABC at least mentioned it, CBS's This Morning would not utter the name "Broaddrick." For our CyberAlert at the time, see: www.mrc.org
There was a CBS Evening News story, detailed here: www.mrc.org
A Nexis search for the word "Broaddrick" on CBS revealed only four mentions, including the Saturday evening story, and a transcript of a March 19, 1999 press conference with Clinton (in which Sam Donaldson asked about Juanita Broaddrick, and then right after him, CBS's Scott Pelley changed the subject to Kosovo).
The next morning, on CBS's Saturday Morning, reporter Mark Knoller covered Broaddrick in passing in a story on the press conference: "Of the 22 reporters called upon, five asked about Kosovo, four about the allegations of Chinese spying at our nuclear weapons labs, and that was just fine with top White House aides. Those are issues they knew the President could handle. There were seven questions that would come under the heading of scandal, but the president's rhetorical agility saw him through, including one about the subject the White House feared most, Juanita Broaddrick's allegation of rape. Mr. Clinton would not address it directly." Clinton, at the press conference: "There's been an, a statement made by my attorney. He speaks for me, and I think he spoke quite clearly."
The Broaddrick issue disappeared again on CBS until July 8, 2004, when Early Show co-host Hannah Storm was interviewing Christopher Anderson on his Hillary biography, titled "American Evita." Anderson was explaining how Hillary was active in stopping Clinton "bimbo eruptions." Storm quickly skipped by Broaddrick as Anderson brought her up:
Storm: "So you're saying that she had an active role in silencing these people or making them go away?" Andersen: "That's what's so disturbing, because I think this is a major character flaw in Hillary. I find that for a feminist to go after women -- and we know the names of some of them are famous, I mean, Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones and-" Storm: "Monica Lewinsky." Andersen: "Monica Lewinsky, of course. This is the tip of, the tip of the iceberg, by the way. There are, there are dozens and dozens of cases like this. And Betsy Wright, his own chief of staff, is the person who called them the bimbo eruptions that had to be tamped down, but Hillary, the feminist, went after these women, and I think the most disturbing one, of course, was the case of Juanita Broaddrick, who accused him of sexual assault." Storm changed the subject: "You quote a friend of hers as saying that, 'She never seriously thought about divorce and she never will.'"
Other CyberAlert items from the time underlined the desperate Broaddrick avoidance of CBS:
-- It should go without saying that Dan Rather hated this story. When MSNBC's Don Imus said Time was reporting even Broaddrick was ready for the story to go away, Rather declared: "Well, let's hope she gets her way with that." See: www.mrc.org
-- On February 28, 1999, Broaddrick dominated Sunday morning, but for the second week in a row, CBS's Face the Nation (hosted by Bob Schieffer, now the interim CBS Evening News anchor in waiting) skipped the subject, focusing instead on Y2K computer problems. www.mrc.org
The media is out to destroy Cosby because he decided to shake up the status quo.
Isn't it odd that Coz had been a darling of the left until he had some scathing remarks for them, Julian Bond, and the NAACP?
Bingo.
If you are black and come off the plantation you are fair game!
I think this woman is bragging. 30 years is a long time to wait to bring forth a charge of fondling ,I doubt Cosby even remembers her unless she fondled him back.
Hope he fights this with everything he's got. If accuser is not telling the truth, she should be charged with
extortion.
Guess maybe his remarks weren't looked on kindly.
Greta is very much on this case, her first story every evening...just as we turn off Fox News for the evening.
Sounds v-e-r-y similar to the Schwarzenegger accusers, no?
Nobody is going to give a rat's ass about these old, weak charges. The Left is going to lose their deathgrip on the black vote if they keep this up and then they will become completely irrelevant.
The lefties should just break out the whip like they did in the old days when one of their slaves got out of line. It'd be less painful than this charda that they've put on now.
This is the price of going against the "progressive agenda".
You hit that one right on the head. I'm glad I'm not the only one who htinks that a mere six months after chastizing certain members of the community, these women come out of nowhere after years of silence.
What's Cosby going to do about this? Lord knows he's suffered plenty worse in his life - this is nothing for him.
I would soooooo love to see him just come out and say, "You know what, Democrats are screwing us blacks." Jump to the republican side and fight back.
really unbelievable, these people.
He's the best friend the black youth have - and the black libs are out to destroy him
We're really stretching things this Friday afternoon...
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