Dear Gossips,

Bill Cosby was ordered to stand trial yesterday after a judge decided there was enough evidence to proceed. His defence team, obviously, thinks it’s a bullsh-t decision because of what they call “inconsistencies” in the victim’s claim. Her name is Andrea Constand. And Bill Cosby’s defence insists that since Andrea Constand went back to his home after the alleged sexual assault occurred and had dinner with him and gave him gifts that must mean she’s lying. Because victims must behave a certain way if they’re telling the truth. The “perfect victim” is the only version of victim that we can accept. So they’re going to point out all her “imperfections”. They will question why she didn’t behave in a manner that matches, line by line, the Guidebook for Perfect Victims, reinforcing the idea that it’s incumbent on the victim to check herself, that it’s the victim who ends up being held accountable for a crime that was committed against her. But that’s how power works, isn’t it?

Have you read the transcripts from Cosby’s deposition released by the Associated Press? All of it is disturbing – and through it all, even though you can’t hear his voice, you can feel his sense of entitlement, supported by decades of enabling, and his almost flagrant sense of his own power, especially when he describes how an agency would send over “5 or 6” models to see him every week, always “struggling, young actresses” and, in his words, he would provide them with a “very, very good meal”. Like he was doing them a goddamn favour. Like in his mind, that’s the kind of detail he thinks makes him look generous and decent when, really, that “very, very good meal” was at best a lure and at worst a f-cking loan that had to be repaid with a goddamn blowjob.

With all that in mind, the last article I read last night before bed was not about Bill Cosby but about Veronica Mars. It’s the show that Duana nagged me for years to watch and when I finally did, I had to submit to her superiority and wisdom. She will have that over me forever. The piece is titled Teaching Veronica Mars In A Season Of Campus Sex Crimes. It’s how Veronica’s fictional narrative mirrors the real life situation at Berkeley, and how the “nation’s top public university had systematically and scandalously failed to enforce the law”. Now go out there and be perfect.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey