My suspicion is that Bill Cosby will never go to prison, or even face criminal trial for the rapes he is (credibly, in my opinion) alleged to have committed. However, he may face a different, and almost as nasty, punishment.
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Even though his showbiz career seems to be effectively over, Bill Cosby has a lot of financial resources and connections to draw upon, which I suspect will combine with the length of time regarding many of the allegations to prevent Cosby from being successfully prosecuted. Fame, as always, has its benefits...
...and its drawbacks.
Bill Cosby is about to learn what it is like to go, in the space of a week or two, from being a national icon to a national pariah. A leper, subject to levels of opprobrium matched only by O. J. Simpson or Casey Anthony. His situation will be all the worse in that unlike Simpson, who was at most a B-level celebrity when he fell from grace, his fall is from the heights of respect to the depths of loathing. He is going from moral exemplar to cretin.
The crumbling has already begun. He has lost a Netflix special and a prospective series on NBC. TV Land has quietly cancelled an upcoming Cosby Show marathon, and it's likely that other stations will stop rerunning it as the scandal progresses.
Cosby's hypocrisy and sanctimony will make the fall even more painful. His attempts to lecture the black community on how it should behave now seem like a bad joke. Furthermore, one suspects that his attempts to bully other black entertainers and comedians into conforming with his supposed standards of morality will haunt him. Jamie Foxx almost certainly remembers how Cosby browbeat him for making Booty Call. Similarly, Wanda Sykes will remember how Cosby lambasted her-reportedly to her face-about her use of slang and curse words in her comic routines. One suspects Sykes, along with all the rappers Cosby has insulted, is already sharpening her nails for revenge. It would also be interesting to hear from Lisa Bonet, who lost her role on The Cosby Show-at Cosby's instigation-because she (gasp!) appeared nude in an R-rated movie with Mickey Rourke.
One could argue that this is hardly sufficient punishment for rape, and that is the truth. However, this is the next best thing.