Conspiracy theories fail to salvage Bill Cosby's legacy
Sometimes the greatness of a man is measured by the outlandishness of the conspiracy theories that pop up to explain his sudden downfall.
So many wild conspiracy theories have popped up on Twitter and in YouTube videos to explain Cosby's prosecution on aggravated indecent assault charges that entertainment writer Stereo Williams at The Daily Beast calls them "Cosby Truthers."
"It's a conspiracy," they'll tell you. What they can't tell you is who would want to do this to Cosby at this time in his life -- or why.
The Cosby Truthers appear to include Bill Cosby's television wife, Phylicia Rashad, who played Clair Huxtable to Cosby's Dr. Cliff Huxtable on the smash hit "The Cosby Show," which ran from 1984 to 1992.
"What you're seeing is the destruction of a legacy," she told Showbiz 411 blogger Roger Friedman two years ago. "And I think it's orchestrated."
She didn't know "why or who's doing it," she said, but, "Someone is determined to keep Bill Cosby off TV. And it's worked. All his contracts have been canceled."
Why would anyone want to destroy Cosby? Asked during a later appearance on ABC's "World News Tonight," she responded, "That's my question too."
Rashad was by no means alone in her suspicions. After typing "Cosby conspiracy theory" into a YouTube search, I found myself scrolling through page after page of videos speculating on anti-Cosby conspiracies.
I found one video featuring activist-comedian Dick Gregory, a Cosby contemporary who has become a famous conspiracist in his own right. Gregory describes what appears to be the most popular theory for Cosby's prosecution: punishment by the powers-that-be for Cosby's attempts to buy NBC in the 1990s.
Why would the conspirators wait all this time before unleashing the allegations, long after Cosby gave up his attempted purchase? Ah, don't expect perfect explanations in conspiracy theories. Conspiracists, in my experience, tend to connect their dots with dotted lines.
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