Damon Wayans Defends Bill Cosby, Clearly Doesn’t Understand Rape

After the startling revelation earlier this summer that Bill Cosby admitted to purchasing sedatives to give to women he wanted to have sex with, many celebrities, including those who had at one time been his adamant supporters, have turned against the once beloved comedian. But not Damon Wayans. The Wrap reports that Wayans called the rape allegations leveled against Cosby nothing but "a money hustle" in an interview with Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club, a New York radio show. "How big is his penis that it gives you amnesia for 40 years?" Wayans asks rhetorically. "If you listen to [his accusers] talk, they go, 'Well, the first time...' The first time?...How many times did it happen? Just listen to what they're saying and some of them really is unrape-able. You just look at them and go, 'You don't want that. Get outta here.'" Wayans knows he's courting controversy, but he doesn't seem to get that rape is not usually about perceived attractiveness; it's about power. The former In Living Color star waded further into misogynistic territory and advised Cosby to leave his beleaguered — and divisive — wife Camille and let loose on his alleged victims. “If I was him, I would divorce my wife, wink-wink, give her all my money and then I would go do a deposition. I would light one of them three-hour cigars. I’d have me some wine and maybe a Quaalude and I would just go off, because I don’t believe that he was raping. I think he was in relationships with all of them and then he was like, ‘You know what? [I’m] 78. It don’t work like that no more. I can’t get it up for any of y’all. Bye, bitches.’ And then they’re like, ‘Oh, really? Rape!'” To Wayans, the allegations against Cosby are not a sexual assault issue; they're a race issue. “You know what Bill Cosby did wrong? He started criticizing young black men and then he lost us, and so we’re not supporting him and they see that opening so now, you know what? ‘Attack him! Kill him!' But the dude from 7th Heaven, his show’s still on TV. Woody Allen's making shows and movies. I just don’t believe this. It’s a money hustle." Wayans isn't the first to draw comparisons between Cosby and Woody Allen's notorious affair with Soon-Yi Previn. When New York magazine did an in-depth feature on 35 of Cosby's accusers, #TheEmptyChair began trending across social media in recognition of all the women who cannot — or are not ready to — come forward with their stories, and our own Kelsey Miller cited Previn as one of them. But as more and more victims continue to come forward and evidence continues to mount against Cosby, it's hard to fathom how stars like Whoopi Goldberg, and now Wayans, can continue to support him publicly. He has yet to be proven guilty in a court of law — and he may never be, but dismissing his alleged victims as "unrape-able" and reducing decades of potential assault to a "money hustle" is bold. Even for the most cutting-edge comedian.