Eric the Red-Faced - The End

Eric Swalwell was one of the most esteemed members of the U.S. House of Representatives.  He was praised for his attacks on Donald Trump.  He was one of the Democratic Party's most effective communicators.  And he was on a glide path to the governorship of California. 

Then the roof caved in.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Friday that Swalwell had raped a female staffer and had sexually assaulted three others, with one woman insisting the Swalwell had assaulted her twice - both times when she was drunk.  Swalwell denied the charges, apparently hoping that he could navigate the accusations and ride out the storm.  But the storm was already past riding out.  The incident involving the woman accusing Swalwell of assaulting her while drunk occurred in New York City, which led Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to launch an investigation.  Several other women are alleged to have similar accusations against Swalwell as well.

All of this proved to be too much for Swalwell, who terminated his California gubernatorial campaign two days after the Chronicle's report, announced his intention to resign to avoid a congressional investigation three days after the Chronicle's report, and made good on his intentions four days after the Chronicle's report - right as Lonna Drewes, a former model who had sought help from Swalwell for her software firm, came forward to say that he had raped and choked her in a hotel room after he'd drugged her glass of wine in the hotel bar.  She claimed that Swalwell had raped her and even choked her, which sounds a good deal like something Bill Cosby would have done.

In fact, in this particular case, the accusation from Lonna Drewes is what I call the Beverly Johnson Coordinate, the point at which an accusation is so credible and so detailed, it must be true on top of all of the others that preceded it.  The Beverly Johnson Coordinate is named for the legendary fashion and beauty model who came forward with accusations of sexual assault against her by Bill Cosby and described the incident in great detail that more or less corroborated charges from earlier accusers.  Before then, I had dismissed claims of Bill Cosby sexually assaulting women as too wild to be believed.  But when Beverly Johnson - a model I had long had a crush on (she was one of a handful of black models who opened my eyes to how astonishingly beautiful black women can be) and a woman who I always knew to be someone of integrity - made the same accusations against Cosby, that's when Cosby lost me, as I explained back in December 2014.

(Aside: I saw Ms. Johnson's one-woman show about her career in February 2024.  She opened with a brief slide show of her most famous modeling photos.  It ended with a picture of Bill Cosby, to which Ms. Johnson said, "What a fucker!"  Her f-bomb got a positive response from the audience, including me.  Call it expletive-delighted.)

And so, once Lonna Drewes came forward against Swalwell, it became impossible for anyone still defending him (if there were any such people left) to continue doing so. Ms. Drewes even claims to have notes from therapy sessions over the incident.  Swalwell's withdrawal statement included a denial of the accusations against him while apologizing for mistakes and bad judgment regarding . . . what?  That's just it, he doesn't say.  

Uh, anything you want to get off your chest now, Eric?  So the investigators don't have to pull it off first?

Compared to Swalwell's downfall, Al Franken's fall, he being pushed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to ignite her unignitable 2020 presidential campaign, was much more gradual.  Accusations of a tryst in Bimini in late March 1987 brought down Gary Hart's presidential campaign in a week.  Swalwell went from the top of the world to the bottom of the heap (from Mount Whitney to Death Valley, as it were, seeing that he's from California) in four days - a new record for a disgraced politician, unless Matt Gaetz somehow counts.  And Franken and Hart were forced out for not even having done one one-hundredth of what Swalwell has done.  Rumors of Swalwell's sexual misconduct, it turns out, have been circulating for years on Capitol Hill, so the rush of all this news is an unfortunate but well-deserved cap to his political career, which was sound and fury signifying hubris.  And by the way, Swalwell is not the only House member out the door - Representative Tony Gonzales, a Republican from Texas, also resigned after having admitted to an affair with a staffer who later committed suicide.

People may get the government they deserve, but we won't get the leaders we need until we demand better leaders that we deserve better from.  That goes for both parties.

Robert and Ryan

It seems appropriate that, in a year where women dominated the Grammys, male pop musicians who have been subjected to greater scrutiny in the wake of the Me Too Movement have seen their time up.

After years of accusations, Chicago hip-hop/R&B pioneer R. Kelly (above) has been charged with ten counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse over a twelve-year period, from 1998 to 2010, and three of them were minors at the time.  Kelly didn't do himself any favors when he went on CBS to do an interview conducted by Gayle King.  If dressing for the occasion in a suit and a tie was an effort to be taken seriously, he didn't help his case when he got up and flew off the handle with a series of incoherent ramblings that sounded like he was saying anything just to dominate the conversation.  King had to act like a den mother, calling him by his full first name - Robert - and trying to get him to calm down. 

Meanwhile, in the indie-rock world, North Carolina rocker Ryan Adams (above) was looking forward to heading into a very ambitious period in 2019; he'd planned to go on tour, and he was about to release three albums this year, something neither the Beatles nor Elton John had done in their respective primes.  Then the New York Times reported that Adams had offered to help several women advance their musical careers and then made advances of a more sexual nature toward them - including his ex-wife, "This Is Us" actress Mandy Moore, who divorced him in 2016 - and then tried to sabotage and harass them when they didn't reciprocate.  Oh yeah, and Adams is also alleged to have sent sexually explicit text messages to an underage girl.when she was underage. This led to the FBI to announce an investigation to see if Adams - who has denied the charges, of course - committed a crime by sending such texts.  Adams' LP releases have been canceled, and his tour of the British Isles, set to start at the end of the month, has also been scrubbed.  

Both Kelly and Adams are grizzled veterans, Adams being the younger of the two, and if both end up falling, it will have different implications for their respective music scenes.   Hip-hop/R&B is thriving so much, with little chance of that wave cresting, that it can survive losing Kelly.  But rock and roll is in such a weak, precarious state - its weakest state in thirty years - that losing Adams at a time when there are so few rockers under 50 of his caliber would be a literal death blow for an already moribund musical form.  But even so - and even if Kelly's forced exit from the pop scene does have a large impact on hip-hop/R&B - both men ought to pay for whatever crimes and indiscretions they committed or might have committed, because no one wants to go back to a time where we would tolerate such behavior, like when Keith Richards would slap Anita Pallenberg around or when Ike Turner beat Tina (and I won't even bring up Jerry Lee Lewis).  So Kelly will never have the chance to concoct a song as good or as influential as "I Can Believe I Can Fly."  So Adams won't be able to make a grand artistic statement by releasing the equivalent of a triple album this year.  Too bad.  We have to have standards here.

And oh yes, to respond to the inevitable complaint that racism is the reason that the media are so focused on Kelly when they're not paying so much attention to Adams, that's only because Adams isn't a household name - he's an indie rocker, for Pete's sake!  Besides, some people might confuse him with this guy!

Bryan Adams, who, like Ryan Adams, celebrates his birthday on November 5 (my birthday!), is actually a nice, down-to-earth guy.  He's known for taking public transportation to his own concerts.   

Na, Na, Na, Gonna Have Some Jail Time?

Guilty.

Bill Cosby, now convicted of sexual assault in one out of 59 cases, will soon face sentencing.  People are talking about jail time.  Really? Jail time for a man who turns 81 in July?

It's too bad he's gone blind, because a better punishment would have been to make him sit through all of the movies he made after he stopped working with Sidney Poitier.  And make him watch The Devil and Max Devlin twice.  

In which case, how about have all 59 women slap him once?  Or let Andrea Constand slap him 59 times?  Better yet, have him listen to the audio-book version of Michael Eric Dyson's "Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?)" . . . 59 times.

Right.  Let's move on.  Hey, hey, hey!  

Na, Na, Na, Gonna Have a Mistrial!

So what was that all about?

After a two-week trial of Bill Cosby on sexual assault allegations in which the jurors were sequestered and shielded from any news about the case, in which the prosecution was well-prepared an armed for bear, two jurors rendered the jury unable to reach a verdict?  The recollections of Andrea Constand, the woman who brought the charges, were deemed inconsistent by the defense, and Judge Steven O'Neill, when asked by the prosecution to bring forward thirteen witnesses, allowed the prosecution to being forward all but twelve of them.  Of course Andrea Constand had inconsistent memories - after thirteen years,  I would expect her not to remember details clearly, but I'm sure she'd remember the central highlight of her case.  And thirteen witnesses would have backed her up. You call that a fair trial for the prosecution?

Let's not forget that Bill Cosby is not accused of assaulting only a few women, but 59 women - fifty-nine!  And he's made sexual boasts alluding to assault in the past.  What would have convinced those two jurors or anyone else in that group of twelve that he's as guilty as sin?

Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steel says he will try the case again.  Good luck finding another suitable jury.

More Model Misbehavior

You may not have heard of Helen Selby.  But you've most likely seen her before.

Yes, she was the Asian-American spokesmodel for L'eggs pantyhose in the early 1980s.  A model and an actress, she was chosen for her ethnicity to promote L'eggs' "Sheer Elegance" line for the similarity of its feel to "silk from the Orient," a politically incorrect sales pitch today.

Now, you're probably wondering why I'm telling you about Helen Selby on my regular blog and not on my beautiful-women picture blog.  Uh, yeah, that's the thing . . . I just discovered that she was one of the recipients of Bill Cosby's sexual advances.

"Oh, no," I gasped when I read about this online, "not Helen Selby too!"  But it's true.  In February 2015, Helen Selby - who had since gotten married and is now Helen Gumpel - told a group of reporters in Boston that, after playing a one-shot role on "The Cosby Show" in 1987, she was called back to the set of the sitcom and returned thinking that Cosby wanted to audition her again, presumably for another episode.  In fact, he wanted her to do an audition of a much different sort.  She was taken to Cosby’s dressing room, where Cosby handed her a drink and stood in front of her with his crotch in her face.

"I never thought of myself as a victim because I refused his advances," Mrs. Gumpel said of Cosby's obscene behavior. "But my career was a victim."

Fortunately, it was then Cosby's turn to see his career get victimized.  As soon as Mrs. Gumpel made those charges, Cosby was forced to cancel two successive appearances at a Boston theater.  He said it had nothing to do with Mrs. Gumpel's charges but instead was due to a winter storm expected to dump two feet of snow on the Boston area.  Oh, how convenient - but then, maybe Mother Nature isn't a Cosby fan.  In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who is a Cosby fan these days. 

As for the three charges of sexual assault against him from Andrea Constand that finally brought him before a magistrate this past December . . . well, here's where it stands.  A judge in Pennsylvania, where the Constand incident allegedly took place, ruled in May 2016 that the case can go to trial.  Cosby, free on $1 million bail, is to go on trial next June (June 2017); if convicted on all three charges, he could spend ten years in prison on all three charges concurrently or thirty years, ten for each charge, consecutively. (At 79 and reportedly blind as a result of a degenerative eye disease, Cosby may get a suspended sentence.)  Meanwhile, Cosby filed a motion to have his lawsuit against Beverly Johnson over her sexual-assault accusations dismissed so he could concentrate on his defense in the Constand case.

With so many women - 59, according to Wikipedia - having charged Cosby with rape and sexual assault, a prosecuting attorney would have to be ten times worse than Marcia Clark to fail to get a conviction in the Constand case. He's already been tried in the court of public opinion and found guilty; you can't find any of his old TV shows in syndication, you likely can't find any of his movies on video, and, assuming the recording industry still prints old comedy albums on CD, you're not going to find Cosby's comedy albums in a record store.  That's assuming you can find a record store, which is probably easier to find than anyone who believes that Cosby is innocent.  Apart from his wife or former "The Cosby Show" cast members, that is.  (Not to mention Kanye West as well.)  Meanwhile, at least fifteen of his 57 honorary degrees - including one from my alma mater, Drew University - have been rescinded.  His planned new sitcom for NBC was scrapped in November 2014, and the Creative Artists Agency dropped him as a client at about the same time.  It's as if he never existed.  

Bill Cosby is, in fact, what George Orwell described in "1984" as an "unperson."