Earlier this week, Bill Cosby was found guilty on three counts of sexual assault.
The news didn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s paid attention to the seemingly endless allegations against Cosby, but remarkably, it seems there are some who were caught off-guard by the verdict.
For starters, there’s Camille Cosby, who apparently believes her husband was convicted because of racism.
We’re no legal experts, but we’re gonna go out on a limb and say it had more to do with the overwhelming evidence against him.
Anyway, it remains to be seen if Cosby will actually serve time behind bars, but in the meantime, he’s already suffering the consequences of being one of the worst humans on the planet.
Toray, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences – the organization responsible for the Oscars and the Emmys – announced that Cosby has been expelled from its membership.
Not only that, Cosby’s fellow sex offender Roman Polanski has also been expelled by the Academy more than 40 years after he allegedly raped a 13-year-old girl.
“The Board continues to encourage ethical standards that require members to uphold the Academy’s values of respect for human dignity,” read a statement from the Academy.
They should’ve followed that up with “but only in cases where there’s a lot of publicity and it looks like we might wind up taking some heat.”
Obviously, the decision on Cosby was prompted by his guilty verdict.
But it remains unclear why the Academy decided to finally take action more than 4 decades after his alleged crime.
Most likely, the decision was a result of mounting pressure and the massive cultural shift that’s taken place in Hollywood over the past eight months.
Ever since the Academy expelled Harvey Weinstein in October, they’ve faced increased pressure to continue cleaning house.
Don’t get us wrong – better late than never, but we would be remiss if we didn’t ding the Academy for waiting until this scandal was middle-aged to do something about it.
Hopefully, they’ve learned a lesson from all of this.
When people are accused of genuinely monstrous acts, you don’t need to wait until dozens more accusers come forward of multiple decades pass to do something about it.
And it doesn’t matter how much you love their crappy sitcom, their pudding pop ads, or their overwrought psychological horror flicks.
