Last Thursday night the comedian Hannibal Buress did a set at the Trocadero in Philly during which he not so casually called Bill Cosby “a rapist.” Cosby, a Philadelphia native/treasure and comedy legend, has been accused multiple times of drugging and assaulting women. He has been found guilty of none of the charges.
Buress is not a nobody, trying to hitch a ride on Cosby’s star. He’s a regular on comedy circuits and on Comedy Central’s Broad City. With the controversial bit on Cosby he’s doing what good comedians do, tearing apart something you think you know and asking you to look at it again. Cosby is seen generally as all cantankerous kindness and Jello pudding–with a little wise old man superiority thrown in. “I’ve done this bit on stage and people think I’m making it up, he told Philadelphia magazine. “When you leave here, google ‘Bill Cosby rape.’
