Hannibal Buress calls Bill Cosby a 'rapist' in stand-up set

Hannibal Buress called Bill Cosby a “rapist” in a part of his stand-up set last Thursday in Philadelphia, referencing the numerous sexual assault allegations against the 77-year-old comedian.

Philadelphia Magazine has video of this part of Buress’s show, and his comments include the following:

Thirteen? It’s even worse because Bill Cosby has 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.’ Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches. ‘I don’t curse onstage.’ Well, yeah, you’re rapist, so I’ll take you saying lots of motherf—ers on Bill Cosby: Himself, if you weren’t a rapist. I don’t know what I’m doing by telling you. I guess I want to just at least make it weird for you to watch Cosby Show reruns. Dude’s image, for the most part, it’s f–king public Teflon image. I’ve done this bit on stage and people think I’m making it up….That shit is upsetting. If you didn’t know about it trust me. When you leave here, Google ‘Bill Cosby rape.’ It’s not funny. That shit has more results than ‘Hannibal Buress.’

Depictions of Cosby’s “Teflon image,” as Buress calls it, have been called into question as of late. Back in February, Tom Scocca of Gawker asked: “Who Wants to Remember Bill Cosby’s Multiple Sex-Assault Accusations?” More recently, BuzzFeed pointed out that a new biography of Cosby by Mark Whitaker fails to mention the allegations against the comedian. “What is absent entirely from Cosby is any investigation of the 2006 lawsuit against him in which a woman alleged he had drugged and raped her two years earlier,” Kate Aurthur wrote. “One striking aspect of the suit is that 13 women came forward with similar allegations of Cosby drugging and sexually assaulting them, and they all volunteered to testify against the comedian had the lawsuit gone to trial.” Vulture’s Matt Giles compiled a timeline of the charges against Cosby.

A representative for Cosby did not immediately respond to a request for comment.