Hannibal Buress tells Howard Stern about his “Bill Cosby is a rapist” bit that caught media fire

Hannibal Buress has been telling a joke that’s not so much a joke as it is a declaration of news that few people want to discuss regarding comedy legend Bill Cosby.

When Buress told the bit last weekend in Philadelphia, the hometown for the Cos, the local media perked up and wrote about it. And then everyone else in new media felt comfortable saying “Bill Cosby is a rapist” because they weren’t saying it — merely saying that Buress had said it.

Just so happens Buress was scheduled for this morning’s Howard Stern Show on SiriusXM. Of course, Stern asked Buress about it. Buress told Stern what he told The Comic’s Comic last night. All of this media attention for his Cosby bit? “It’s very weird.”

“It was unexpected,” Buress said today. “Because I didn’t want to do that. If I was going to do that, I would’ve did it on my own — that wasn’t my intention to make it part of a big discussion. It was just something I was doing at that venue, right then. So for somebody to put it to the media and then…it’s crazy.”

Roll the clip!

Buress said he’d read the allegations against Cosby and merely remarked on them.

But in this age, audience members will post those remarks on YouTube, where everyone else can weigh in on them, as if it were a big discussion.

In fact, it was Philadelphia Magazine, the same publication that first went in depth on allegations against Bill Cosby in 2006, that started spreading the bit from Buress.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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