Overview
Background
In November 2006, Cosby settled a civil lawsuit with a woman who claimed he had drugged and sexually assaulted her in 2004. By the end of the settlement, 13 other women had come forward claiming he had sexually assaulted them.
Notable Developments
Hannibal Buress Jokes
In October 2014, comedian Hannibal Buress called Cosby a rapist during a stand-up performance in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in reference to the lawsuit.
“He gets on TV, ‘Pull your pants up black people, I was on TV in the 80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom.’ Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches.”
#CosbyMeme
On November 10th, 2014, Cosby tweeted featuring a photograph of himself with the caption “Happy Monday!” along with a link to a meme generator website inviting Twitter users to make their own Cosby image macros with the hashtag “#CosbyMeme”[1] (shown below).
Twitter users subsequently began tweeting photos of Cosby with captions referencing assault allegations against the comedian along with the “#CosbyMeme” hashtag (shown below). That day, the original Cosby tweet was deleted.
