It sounds like Bill Cosby’s public relations director may be looking for a new job pretty soon.
Cosby’s social media team created a meme-generator , obviously intending it for fun, and tweeted the link out into the internet world with the caption, “Go ahead. Meme me!”
And boy, people certainly did ‘meme’ Cosby — although not in the way his social media team probably hoped.
People instead began creating memes based on rape allegations made against Cosby twenty years ago, which recently resurfaced when writer Mark Whitaker published a biography about Cosby. The book noticeably lacked any references to Cosby’s legal troubles and rape allegations.
And then, just a few weeks after the book’s release, comedian Hannibal Buress took Cosby to task for the numerous rape allegations made against Cosby, calling Cosby “the f***ing smuggest old black man public persona that I hate.”
“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,’” Buress said, before adding, “Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches.” Mocking the clean, wholesome image Cosby tried to project, Buress said, “I don’t curse on stage!” and then, pretending to address Cosby, said, “Well, yeah, [but] you’re a rapist,” he said, “so I’ll take you saying lots of motherf***ers on Bill Cosby himself if you weren’t a rapist.”
The internet made it clear that the rape allegations made against Cosby by multiple women are believed and that no amount of portraying wholesome values is enough to make up for it.
The meme-generator has been taken down from the Cosby website, but that hasn’t stopped people from continuing to meme Cosby with the hashtag #CosbyMeme .
Here are a few examples.
A total of 13 women have said that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted them. The women came forward after Andrea Constand, an ex-Temple University employee, lodged an official complaint against Bill Cosby in 2005 for battery, assault, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Those thirteen women came forward in order to testify as witnesses if the case went to trial.
Bill Cosby settled with Constand out of court for an undisclosed amount.
For more on the rape allegations made against Bill Cosby, click here .
[Images via Twitter and imagearcade.com]