“No, I was not sexually bothered by Bill Cosby. We met because he was curious about me.
My song “Society’s Child” was climbing the charts and creating a great deal of controversy. The Smothers Brothers took a huge gamble and had me on their hit television show. I was just sixteen years old when we taped it. I’d been on the road for months, doing press and one-nighters. My chaperone/tour manager, a family friend six or seven years older than me, was doing everything in her power to make sure I was protected and getting as much rest as possible.
“Remember. I was sixteen. Still in high school. Fairly naive, including about my own sexuality. For months on the road, my chaperone was the only consistent face I saw. Everyone else was a complete stranger – radio personalities, newspaper reporters, magazine photographers, audiences, promoters, disc jockeys, all strangers. So I clung to my chaperone.
“We’d never been to a big-time TV taping. We had no idea we’d have to be inside from early early morning until whenever they called for me. There were only a couple of chairs for us on the set – I was pretty low on the totem pole, way lower than Jimmy Durante or Pat Paulsen or Mason Williams (all of whom were wonderful to us). And I was exhausted. I’d been having nightmares for weeks, the result of the controversy surrounding “Society’s Child” and the death threats I was receiving daily. I needed to sleep. So I fell asleep in my chaperone’s lap. She was earth motherly, I was scared. It was good to rest.
“We taped the show. I had a ball. (You can see it on Youtube, in fact. That’s me, looking scared, in the green dress. My friend Buffy from East Orange, where I’d started high school, made it for me. I treasured it.) Then we went back to New York, and I went back to school.
“A while later, my manager called me into her office. “What happened at the Smothers Brothers show?!” I had no idea what she was talking about, and said so. “Well, no one else on TV is willing to have you on. Not out there, anyway.” Why? I wondered. And was told that Cosby, seeing me asleep in the chaperone’s lap, had made it his business to “warn” other shows that I wasn’t “suitable family entertainment”, was probably a lesbian, and shouldn’t be on television…Banned from TV. Unbelievable.”
— Lesbian singer/songwriter Janis Ian, retelling her experience with Bill Cosby in a recent Facebook update.
Xzamilio
It’s was the morally self-righteous ones that have the most to hide. Cosby would pull the same crap with up and rising black comics that used blue material. And it’s not even like Hannibal Burress was the only one that called attention to it… you can see old episodes of the cartoon show Drawn Together that used to air on Comedy Central that made multiple references to Cosby being a sexual predator.
Lewis Kinslayer
Can we start using his name as a curse word?
Hector Pagan
Yea lets he’s an ugly pig ð??¡even his statue at Disneyworld got removed
Desert Boy
Wow. Just wow. So Bill ‘serial rapist’ Cosby is also a homophobe? Well, if it’s any consolation to Janis Ian, Cosby’s career is over and hopefully, Gloria Allred, who is repping one of his recent victims, is out for blood and going for the jugular.
Jacob23
This is Queerty relating a story from Ms. Ian, who heard it from her manager 45 years ago, who heard it from unknown person in California, who heard it from another unknown person in California, who allegedly heard it from Cosby. Very reliable.
The one thing we do know is that the editors of this website today referred to a lesbian teenager as “queer.” So there is some confirmed homophobic abuse in this story after all.
Desert Boy
@Jacob23: Poor Jacob23. He’s watching his hero Bill Cosby crash and burn and there’s nothing he can do about it.
Blackceo
Typical. Hetero sexist serial rapist also has issues with gender non conforming individuals. Bill Cosby is getting everything he deserves at the present with his reputation being forever destroyed. He should also be in a jail cell getting raped raw without lube but unfortunately he will probably never spend a day in prison for his crimes. As a sexual assault survivor myself, I find it sickening his predatory behavior for years and how his power, money, and status allowed him to get away with it for so long.
MarionPaige
It might help to keep in mind that Bill Cosby is a Black performer. I mean, Cosby may have had some power over his own projects but isn’t it a stretch to argue that a Black performer, any black performer, had the power to ban a White Female singer from tv? Even the infamous Johnny Carson only had the power to ban people from The Tonight Show – not from all of television.
The most “legendary” story I know of of people setting about to try to ban a performer from tv was in re Suzanne Sommers. And, that attempt didn’t last very long.
NoCagada
When did Cosby have time to eat all that Jell-O?
Xzamilio
@NoCagada: When he was pudding his dick in all the wrong places.
1EqualityUSA
If this young sixteen year old was this stressed in her current situation, perhaps it is best that she didn’t go on to do television. More limelight? Cosby may have recognized that the child was cracking a bit under the pressure. Risk is weighed in dollars.
Merv
So, it turns out she actually learned the truth at sixteen, not seventeen.
Leonard Woodrow
Sadly, Mammon will always triumph over Morality … unless you’re not rich enough, of course!
Giancarlo85
@Jacob23: You constantly and consistently prove how little you know about anything. Keep your histrionics and unsupported statements to yourself.
chris_clb614
Bad Headline Alert:
Here I was thinking it was something during his Cosby Show days.
Bob LaBlah
What seems hard to believe about this piece is how no one paid attention to detail. If you mention the Smothers Brothers show along with Jimmy Durante why would you not mention the YEAR it took place? It looks more like she is trying to avoid letting on how old she is than an incident that we should care about involving Cosby, whom I had been hearing for years was nothing but an ass on any set he was involved in.
Kieran
Wow. When you think Bill Cosby was wielding that kind of power back in 1967, it really tells you a lot about what America was like back in the day.
Curty
It wouldn’t surprised me if Cosby is a homophobe. I remember when he and Luthet Vandross was a guest on the tonight show years ago and Cosby kept watching Luther’s hand gestures… he probably was thinking all kinds of homophobic things doing… Cosby is just a disgusting man, who very well should be in jail.
1EqualityUSA
We had his albums, Chicken-heart tonsil surgery, etc. We memorized them up in the mountains. Brilliant comedy. We were into building go-carts at this age. One of the albums had him on a go-cart. I analyzed these album covers. Bill Cosby was a significant source of entertainment in my fam.
As for the allegations, I can’t imagine living such a lie. The mind must split off into the hinterlands with some people. My creep-o-meter flashed during the animation cartoon phase. The power may have gone to his head. Honorary doctorates are bogus. Confessing and asking for forgiveness is always an option.
Clark35
Meh, it’s Janis Ian she was popular in the 70s even without Cosby.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhFnOAwr96o
stanhope
@MarionPaige: to that I would add keep in mind when this supposedly happened…..nobody Black had any power in television/Hollywood back then. That said, Bill Cosby is an arrogant asshole who deserves to go down to the hottest part of hell. His wife, misguided as she is, puts more value on an American Express black card that says Mrs. Camille Cosby than what is right. Seat 2 in hell is for you.
Doughosier
@Clark35: Thanks for posting “At 17” I haven’t heard it in a while.
Clark35
@Doughosier: You’re welcome. I see now even Janis Ian is writing about creepy Cosby just for media attention since her music career is basically washed up. But she’s bisexual and was OK in the 70s, but should just stick to singing folk music and being a wannabe Joni Mitchell.
Captain Obvious
@MarionPaige: He’s black so there’s no point using logic and reasoning skills let alone critical thinking skills.
There’s a very long history of black men being lynched in this country from the mere accusation of black men even interacting with white women.
Remember the mother who drowned her children and said a black man did it? Many black men were being arrested and many were ready with a lynch mob looking for the evil black man who destroyed a pure white family.
Black men have been accused of both being obsessed with white women and raping them since slavery… yet it was white men who were raping both black women and men during slavery which is why so many of us are mixed now(even those who don’t know it).
The modern day lynch mob doesn’t need evidence or proof. They have public opinion and are ready for a hanging. They want to see him lose everything.
Ironically this all came at the time where he had a bunch of shows ready to launch to inspire another generation of young black people to do better and be better.
He already inspired millions of black youth to both go to and finish college with A Different World and showed a positive image of a black family where there were only hood images of “black violence” all over television.
Cosby is such a terrible person, etc, etc. Ironically a lot of the women accusing him are junkies.
One woman called into a radio show and said she was offered a lot of money to accuse Bill of rape but turned it down.
Too many women, the stories are all the same(which shows rehearsal), and a black man as the rapist. In what world would a negro in 1960-1970 not be lynch for assaulting let alone raping a white female?
This is the same stupid country that thinks Sandra Bland smoked weed in a jail cell before hanging herself despite the fact that she was a member of Black Lives Matter and trying to prevent the murder of innocent black people at the hands of police.
Supposedly gay people stood up for black civil rights yet here we are seeing a resurgence of the same atrocities that occurred during civil rights and not only could they care less but they’re cheering on the lynching.
About time to pick a side because being black and a part of the so called “gay community” isn’t really working out for us. Some folks get what they want and are ready to kick the rest of us to the curb afterward.
Tackle
@MarionPaige: Thank you for adding that piece of logic. There is NO way that a Black preformer, ANY Black preformer could have gotten any White preformer banned 48yrs ago from TV. Bill Cosby did NOT have that kind of power in 1967. And even during the height of the Cosby show, I doubt if he could have gotten anyone banned from all network TV. Channel 4, prehaps, because the Cosby show was such a money maker for the network.
I would suggest that the culprit that got her banned in 1967 was r@cism.
“Society’s Child” was about “inter@cial love”, and this was 1967. Hence the death threaths she was receiving daily. More than likely, after she appeared on the “Smothers Brothers ” TV show, in that green dress, The network must have been flooded with hate and complaints from angry viewers about the contents of the song. This was 1967. And around this time, Sammy Davis Jr kissed Putula Clark on the cheek, on a varity show, and the network was flooded with compliants about that. Bill Cosby is guilty of a loy of things, But definately not having Janis Ian banned from TV.
Tackle
Hey Queerty, I don’t understand as to why, I can only see my comment if I log in?
1EqualityUSA
Captain Obvious,
Your comment split off a few times back there. The anger is palpable. The story is a grim one, especially since Mr. Cosby portrayed himself to be above probity. Your last two sentences are interesting to me. What do you want? Do you expect the gay community to give you something? If you have a gift, share it. Anger is frustration. If the allegations turn out to have merit, would you agree that Mr. Cosby should apologize and ask for forgiveness? Is your own gift being stunted by anger? Your identity is not reliant upon anyone but you. How do you see yourself as having been kicked to the curb? Have any of the decisions you’ve made in the past few years attributed to your having such frustration and hopeless views. People measure success differently. What is it that you want and what needs to happen to make it come about? Tend to your own garden because the moment you start popping your head over the fence and pointing out the weeds of others’, your own are wrapping around your ankles. I see so many success stories, ordinary lives, but successful in the way that you seem to indicate. Anger slows the body down and makes it sick. Think of it as a test, brush yourself off, stand up, and be what you want to be, irrespective of anyone else. Your words were steeped in truth. Work around it, the fires test you, and the gift you offer will have been made all the more true by having overcome. The road is rocky, so what?
Clark35
@Tackle: No r@cism did not get her banned from TV, and neither did her stupid song. She did that herself by being a wannabe Joan Baez.
Dinodogstar
I apologize for both the length and the rambling of it all. I really hope it gets posted, and I take full responsibility for anything I said. It took a lot of time, so please don’t toss it away. One day, I’ll write a more-well organized and literate commentary, and one less than ten-thousand words long…