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Bill Cosby to Forfeit North American Stand-Up Tour?
By: Sally Henry Fuller Dec. 13, 2014
The sexual assault scandal surrounding Bill Cosby may jeopardize the comedian's career in the near future.
Numerous venues have already canceled the comedian's engagements, and concert industry professionals speculate that many of the 10 upcoming venues in the United States and Canada scheduled to host Cosby will continue to follow suit.
"The venues are getting cold feet. Everyone is worried about protesters," Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar, a concert industry trade publication, says. "If I was advising him, I would tell him to cancel everything and lie low for a while."
Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada concurs, "A stand-up concert is a free forum for audiences to scream whatever they want. Would he want to do a concert?"
The 77-year-old comedian's last stand-up engagement, on Nov. 21, revealed that the allegations against Cosby have not tainted every audience's view of him. A large crowd in Melbourne cheered him on throughout his show and even gave him two standing ovations. A single protester was outside of the venue.
Read the full article on the matter here.
The statement from Bill Cosby's lawyer, Martin Singer follows:
"The new, never-before-heard claims from women who have come forward in the past two weeks with unsubstantiated, fantastical stories about things they say occurred 30, 40, or even 50 years ago have escalated far past the point of absurdity.
"These brand new claims about alleged decades-old events are becoming increasingly ridiculous, and it is completely illogical that so many people would have said nothing, done nothing, and made no reports to law enforcement or asserted civil claims if they thought they had been assaulted over a span of so many years.
"Lawsuits are filed against people in the public eye every day. There has never been a shortage of lawyers willing to represent people with claims against rich, powerful men, so it makes no sense that not one of these new women who just came forward for the first time now ever asserted a legal claim back at the time they allege they had been sexually assaulted.
"This situation is an unprecedented example of the media's breakneck RUSH to run stories without any corroboration or adherence to traditional journalistic standards. Over and over again, we have refuted these new unsubstantiated stories with documentary evidence, only to have a new uncorroborated story crop up out of the woodwork. When will it end?
"It is long past time for this media vilification of Mr. Cosby to stop."
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