The complex nature of human decency

What Lisa Glatt actually wants to say is the Bill Cosby we thought we knew actually exists, that this Bill Cosby we loved was decent and charming with her mother's memory, but Salon is such a bleeding heart progressive vehicle, that Glatt has to diminish an event that is important to her mother's memory.

Now, as you know, I follow Joan Tarshis, and I respect her memory, her emotional pain at the suppression of self blame. I have a lot of that. My trust was abused in numerous instances, including my very brief attempted date rape, but this doesn't mean, within those violations of interpersonal dignity, that Cosby isn't good, in certain respects, and contributors like Glatt should not fear this, nor is everything about being an icon a gross distortion. I do not get the joke about Wilt's shyness. I would not have been able to join in the humor of what was being underscored, but still. Americans still have a great deal of difficulty, unlike the French, with handling the more salient aspects of human need.

I have not yet been forcibly penetrated, and George Will, the embattled columnist, would say the number of hits I've taken veers on triviality, and taken out of context, he is probably right: Rick trying to force his penis through my robe and clenched legs was sordid but not truly traumatic. Beaky trying to rape me in the middle of my crush on Tassoni was as deflationary as Joan's account of her struggle with the celebrity she obviously looked up to, and I got lucky. I could not stop Beaky, his hands were up my blouse after I got home from that party before I could sneeze, and he made me jerk, but he was too stoned to make me eat that bullet.

Adding up my totals is another matter. Perhaps I over-reacted to former supervisor Linda's graphic statement of her sexual pleasure: I was, after all, soliciting her advice because I am plagued by dryness, however I stated it, and I showed her a Tassoni love poem (all dried up) but her need to be domineering and over the top was unexpected, and shocked me, even if I opened the door; it is too much. Destroying what we need to admire about Cosby's fictional restraint, responsibility of manner, destroying what reticence would, supposedly, increase in value, so yes, I mourn the luxury of ignorance for our greater good.