I Didn't Say It

W. Kamau Bell, actor, comedian and producer of Showtime’s ‘We Need To Talk About [Bill] Cosby’ on whose side he’s on:

“I know some Black people say, ‘Don’t tear down this Black man,' but a third of the survivors are Black women. Why are we prioritizing one man over all these Black women? I don’t know how you don’t reckon with the fact that over 60 women have come forward. ,” he says, noting that women who do go public with sexual assault accusations do not have an easy time. [Cosby] had a very big influence on my life—as he did for a lot of people, specifically for Black people of that generation, and then you find out about all the accusations of sexual assault and rape and eventually I realized I believed all those women to be telling the truth. How do I then as a comedian answer the question, ‘Who are your favorite comedians growing up?’ How do I say, ‘Bill Cosby’? But if I don’t say ‘Bill Cosby,’ it feels like I’m lying, so it just felt like, if you’re gonna have this conversation, you have to have the whole conversation and you can’t split it off into parts. Ultimately, you have to figure out, what can I learn from this or what can we all learn from this?”

Bell says he hopes his documentary—which is wonderful, by the way—leads “to a further conversation” about sexual assault where women feel more comfortable coming forward because “that’s not the case right now and how do we create a system that limits harm?”

I, too, believe the women.

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Madison Cawthorn, North Carolina’s GOP Congressperson, threatening state officials that they could face “dangerous” consequences if he is removed from the ballot for his role in inciting the insurrection:

“This is only going to lead to one place if you want to try and take the right of the people away to be able to vote for their elected official. This is going down a very dangerous path.”

Um, Mads? You’re a traitor and traitors shouldn’t be on the ballot; they should be in jail.

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Adam Kinzinger, Illinois GOP Congressperson, on every Republican speaking to “legitimate political discourse”:

“This is a moment where every Republican, I don’t care if you’re running for City Council all the way up to Congress, Senate, etc., every Republican has to be clear and forceful on the record. Do they think January 6 was legitimate political discourse? Don’t let them avoid it, don’t let them hem haw, don’t let them transition to some other subject they’d rather talk about. This is an answer every one of them have to give, and then we can move on once they’re clear and on the record.”

Make them answer and if they don’t answer, vote them from office because they clearly think attacking the Capitol was the right move.

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Bianca Garcia, Texas House candidate and former president of Latinos For [Thing 45] saying God will punish you if you don’t vote for her:

“I just finished an interview with some pastors. And I told them, I said straight up, I’m only going to win if the church shows up. That’s it. If you do not show up, then you will be held accountable because I have been appointed and assigned for this position and God is testing you all. I don’t have anything else to say to you other than that. So, you’re going to either have to show up and show out, or you’re going to have to deal with it with the Lord. That’s where we’re at. We’ve drawn the line. We’re past the party lines. We are now fighting a very evil, evil, demonic. When I’m elected, I’ll be a little mini–Marjorie Taylor Greene. They’re gonna call me BRG.”

I think they’ll call you “defeated” you wingnut.

And if the choice is voting for you or being punished, there is no choice.

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Harry Hamlin, actor, on how he thinks that playing gay in 1982’s Making Love ended, or at least hindered, his career:

“I was told by a lot of people, you can’t do that movie. I think it had been offered to pretty much everybody in town and everyone had turned it down because they thought it might be damaging to their careers … I didn’t see it that way … I was looking for something serious and something meaningful, rather than doing a movie about vampire bats invading a small town in the Midwest, which is the type of fare I was being offered at the time. It was way ahead of its time … Even though I was told by my friends not to do it, my agent said I should. He said I was somewhat Teflon because I was out in the press having had a son with Ursula Andress. And he said, ‘Everyone knows you’re straight so you’re going to be okay,’ But I didn’t really pay much attention to any of that noise. I thought it was interesting and bold. I was attracted to that. [But since then]  I’ve done independent films but never [another] studio film. I had been doing nothing but studio films and basically going out on all the castings for all the movies. That stopped completely. [But] regardless of the effect it had on my film career, I went on to have a great career–and I still do. I’m very proud of having done that movie.”

Making Love is about a writer named Bart [Harry Hamlin] who falls in love with a young doctor named Zack [Michael Ontkean … yum] but is married to a female TV executive [Kate Jackson]. The movie was the first of its kind for a major studio to make and Harry Hamlin believes the film “never really got the attention that I think it probably deserves.”

Without Making Love you couldn’t have had Longtime Companion, or Torch Song Trilogy or Angels In America or Brokeback Mountain or Call Me By Your Name or Moonlight,  or any other gay-themed film.

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