Heyl: The Cosby Circus Comes To Town

The Improv this isn’t.

Bill Cosby is expected to make what could be his final appearance in Pittsburgh on Monday and it won’t be at a venue where you typically find someone who amused America for decades. Cosby likely will be in the Allegheny County Courthouse, a place where misery more often than not triumphs over mirth.

County officials expect Cosby to be in attendance when jury selection begins in his trial on charges he drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand, a former Temple University basketball official. The alleged assault took place in 2004 at Cosby’s suburban Philadelphia estate.

Twelve jurors from Allegheny County, perhaps one of them a friend or neighbor of yours, will be selected and then shipped off to Montgomery County for the actual trial. Cosby’s attorneys successfully requested that jurors be chosen from another county because of all of the publicity in the sensational case, a strategy that makes little sense. It’s not as though Allegheny County is some distant desert outpost yet to be exposed to cable TV or home-delivered Entertainment Weekly subscriptions.

Most middle-aged adults here probably recall Cosby as the famous comedian who starred in “Cosby,” which TV Guide believes was TV's biggest hit in the 1980s. They remember him playing Dr. Cliff Huxtable, the patriarch of an eerily near-perfect family that lived in a Brooklyn brownstone.

More recently, they can recall the monstrous accusations against Cosby. Nearly 60 women have accused him of sexual misconduct, of displaying a predatory pattern dating back to the 1960s. Cosby has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and has denied all accusations by the numerous other women.

On the eve of perhaps his last stop in town as his trial makes its peculiar Pittsburgh stop, Cosby last week debuted his first new material in ages. It was funny. Not funny in the sense of a joke uttered at the Improv or his old Fat Albert routines, but funny meaning “difficult to understand” or “strange.”

During an interview with SiriusXM host Michael Smerconish, Cosby was asked about recent remarks by two of his daughters that racism is behind the sexual assault claims. “I just truly believe that some of it may very well be that,” he said.

Making the racism claim during the trial would be a legal tactic as fraught with risk as walking on a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus high-wire. While Constand is white, more than a dozen of the women who have accused Cosby of heinous misdeeds are black. Two of them are expected to testify at Cosby’s trial.

Such a strategy would smack of desperation, but it’s understandable if Cosby is desperate. He'll be 80 in a few months and is facing 30 years in jail if convicted. Do the math.

For the the alleged victim in this case, and the nearly five dozen other women who allege the once-iconic comedian acted horribly, the stakes are high.

For Cosby, who appears poised to try to navigate a slippery legal tightrope, the stakes couldn't be higher.

Eric Heyl is Patch's Pittsburgh field editor. Reach him at Eric.Heyl@Patch.com or 412-334-4033.

Photo: Getty Images.