thedailybeast

His mask slipped. For the first time. The DA was trying to get his bail revoked, arguing Cosby could flee because he has a private plane (he actually sold it, which came out in testimony). Suddenly Cosby yelled "He doesn't have a plane, you asshole!" then muttered, "I'm sick of him." Weird that he refers to himself in the third person

Honestly the most shocking thing to me was when the story first broke in January 2005. I was a huge Cosby fan. I loved The Cosby Show. I thought he WAS Dr. Huxtable. But the more I started digging into this, the more substance I saw there was to the allegations. Then a second accuser - Tamara Green, a California attorney - came to me and told me the same thing had happened to her 30 years ago. We put her story on the Philly DN"s front page. Then 12 more women came forward. All in 2005.

It was awful. And unnecessary. Their behavior was over the top inside the courtroom and his spokespeople were equally outrageous outside the courtroom at their daily, sometimes twice-daily press conference. They called the DA an extortionist. They gave nicknames out-gloria Awfulred and Lisa "Blasphemous" Bloom. When publisher Judith Regan did an interview with me about how disgusted she was with the she was treated on the stand by defense attorney Tom Mesereau, this was his spokesman's reply to me: Saint Peter has been given direct orders from JESUS and HIS Father, not to let Judith Regan near the pearly gates, however, they have informed Satan that he will have a guest by the name of Judith Regan coming in on a rocket and she’s wearing gasoline stilettos.

I don't think Hannibal Burress wants to be credited with that! As he said at the time, this was a routine he'd been doing for months. It just so happened that he performed it in Philly in October 2014 and a Philly mag reporter, Dan McQuade, was in the audience. he shot a video of it and put it online the next day and it went viral. All of these women started coming forward-and they were all women I'd interviewed in 2005 when no one cared. But now there was social media and Cosby couldn't control it like he could the regular media. His people tried to do a funny meme contest on Twitter in response and it backfired. And it just kept growing.

It's hard to quantify. At the first trial, the judge only let one other accuser testify. For this trial, he let five other accusers testify. He never gave his legal rationale either way. They screened for #metoo bias in the jury pool. Out of 359 potential jurors, all but 5 had heard of the movement. But the ones who were chosen said they could put their personal opinions aside and make a decision based solely on what they heard in court. I think overall it's raised awareness that serial sexual predators aren't monsters we can identify just by looking at them. As we've seen before, often they're the most trusted people in our communities - priests, coaches..America's Dad.