ColumnThe Bill Cosby case is in full swing and already — already — there’s a lot of equally wonderfully cringe-worthy and soul-crushing gems emerging from the grand ordeal.

Let’s begin with the legal and end with the commentary from the peanut gallery…

It all started on February 3, 2016 when a judge decided that a Pennsylvania sexual assault case against Bill Cosby could continue. While Cosby’s team thinks the decision to move forward is “wrong,” the case, “in which former Temple University employee Andrea Constand accuses the TV star of assaulting her in his home in 2004, will go forward,” CNN reports. The preliminary hearing for this case is planned for March 8.

In addition to this criminal case, “Cosby is also facing a lawsuit from Tamara Green, Therese Serignese, Linda Traitz, Barbara Bowman, Joan Tarshis, Louisa Moritz, and Angela Leslie over denials by his reps that they were sexually assaulted. Last November, a judge rejected Cosby’s motion to dismiss, which put in motion more Cosby testimony to come.”

However, on February 10, 2016 it was reported that Cosby wants the “proceeding paused.” Here are the details according to The Hollywood Reporter via Cosby’s motion:

“The District Attorney of Montgomery County has pursued his charges at the eleventh hour, years after an initial investigation in 2005 determined that no charges should be filed… The state’s case relies on Defendant’s previously sealed testimony, given by Defendant in a civil case that was made public — demonstrating the direct impact that civil litigation can have on criminal matters. And it is precisely for such reason, i.e., the preservation of Defendant’s right against self-incrimination, that this civil action should be stayed during the pendency of Defendant’s criminal case.”

It also appears that Cosby will be making similar motions soon.

And just a few days ago, on February 9, Cosby received good news from California courts. An L.A. Superior Court judge “agreed with the actor-comedian’s lawyers to toss an amended complaint by Janice Dickinson in her defamation suit against Cosby and his former attorney Marty Singer,” Deadline reports. “In a tentative ruling read from the bench, Judge Debre Weintraub also allowed Singer to be dismissed from the case.”

In addition to all the legal updates about the various Cosby cases, Kanye West recently joined the discussion about the comedian, and, surprise — West’s thoughts are stomach turning.

According to The USA Today, West took to twitter on Feb. 9 and tweeted: BILL COSBY INNOCENT !!!!!!!!!!

Not sure if he used enough exclamation points.

While the tweet was posted without further explanation, one can assume that West is a Cosby supporter, and thinks the current legal battles the comedian is facing are bunk. No one really knows what’s going on in West’s head — honestly, we wonder if West even knows — it’s still rather disturbing that he’s putting those kinds of thoughts out there.

Sure, Cosby is innocent until proven guilty, but Cosby’s accusers had enough trouble coming forward — they don’t need Ye dismissing all of their experiences.

This whole Cosby ordeal is far from over, so, rest assured that we’ll be here to report on all the gory, depressing details.

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When did we all start trying to look like celebrities? Is the selfie to blame?

In a recent op-ed piece for the New York Times, actor James Franco defended his love of the selfie. Clearly, the Instagram-obsessed Franco is a self most of us won’t complain about looking at…but it’s more than just his hotness that makes his selfies meaningful. He writes, “Attention is power. And if you are someone people are interested in, then the selfie provides something very powerful, from the most privileged perspective possible.”

Franco’s right. Attention is power. It’s why little kids jump around the rooms like maniacs to get their parents’ attention. It ensures that the energy goes towards the person making the scene. For a little kid, that’s kind of important. They’re little. Somewhat helpless. They need attention. But it’s a security issue we outgrow, usually. At least, we used to.

“[T]he selfie provides something very powerful, from the most privileged perspective possible…” It’s a really bold presumption, but Franco does make the important distinction: “if you are someone people are interested in,” that is. Did he just put us in our place?  Are we not interesting unless we’re as beautiful as James Franco? Or Lady Gaga or Justin Beiber?

Whether James Franco or Kanye West (or James Franco as Kanye West) or boring old me, someone is going to see what we post on our preferred social networks. Franco’s legion of fans on Instagram certainly garners more of an audience than the rest of us, but the point is really that someone is “watching” us virtually all of the time. And when we’ve got an audience—be it only on Facebook or Instagram—we inevitably start to perform, to play a role, pay more attention to whether or not we’re having a bad hair day.

The doppelganger game may have peaked on Facebook a few years ago, but it’s morphed into less of a game and more of a homework assignment these days. If you kind of look like Kim Kardashian, you might as well do what you can to look even more like her at all times. “Now, while the celebrity selfie is most powerful as a pseudo-personal moment, the noncelebrity selfie is a chance for subjects to glam it up, to show off a special side of themselves — dressing up for a special occasion, or not dressing, which is a kind of preening that says, ‘There is something important about me that clothes hide, and I don’t want to hide’,” writes Franco. At least we have our options then. Glam it up or scale it way down. Either way, we’ve got an audience waiting for our noncelebrity selfies. But what fun is being a noncelebrity? We want A-list audiences and Beiber-esque fanclubs, too. We want cyberstalkers. But since we can’t have those, at least we’ve got companies eager to capitalize on our selfie-obsession. “The quantified self movement can be, and has been, exploited for profit. Once the quantified self became marketable, smart marketers and developers sprang into the vacuum, coming up with more ways to monitor more behaviors. Our quantified selves get us hooked on the products, platforms, and services that promise to make us better versions of ourselves,” writes Sarita Bhatt in FastCoexist. They love us. They really love us! Thank the lord.

Society has always been capable of handling a few self-obsessed narcissists. But the tide is shifting and the condition has spread deep and wide. “[A]s a culture, we seem to believe that it is vital to not only track, but post our personal actions on every possible social network,” writes Bhatt, “The world must know how many miles we ran, the scenic views that accompanied the run, and what we did afterwards to celebrate the run.” So, while we may be forced into the nonceleb class, we can live a pseudo-celeb life for our followers. They think we’re beautiful, right?

Of course, this epidemic “self movement” also leads the way for issues like body dysmorphic disorder, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, anxiety and depression, not to mention the substance abuse and other ways we attempt to soothe ourselves from the stress our public personae put on us. Just like the celebrities we’re trying to emulate, we’re starting to suffer from the same disorders that often afflict people subject to high levels of adoration.

Franco defends the accusations that the selfie is an indicator of self-involvement, “in a visual culture, the selfie quickly and easily shows, not tells, how you’re feeling, where you are, what you’re doing,” he writes. But isn’t that also kind of making another equally important point? Why do we need to “quickly” or “easily” show how we’re feeling, where we are or what we’re doing? Can’t some of our lives be private? (Don’t answer that, NSA.)

Our sense of self-worth, the Mister Rogers kind of beauty that we’ve been taught matters most of all, has  taken a backseat to how pouty our lips look in the bathroom mirror selfie we just took. We’re in competition with everyone else online. If we can’t be as important as James Franco, at least we can make other people in our feed seem less important than us. But the selfie is a “tool of communication” more than vanity, according to Franco. It’s what we use to give the world “a sense of who we are.” And on that, I couldn’t agree with him more. But with a few caveats: Who are we, really? Do we know? Do we want to? And can we be beautiful without an audience?

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers. 

Manners are important—in life, in the bedroom, and in the boardroom. This week’s Sex By Numbers highlights some lapses in etiquette, including one we never thought we’d have to correct: answering the phone during sex.

A few weeks: Now that the much talked about pregnancy of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is over, everyone can commence criticizing the length of her relatively short maternity leave before she returns to work. We say: it may not work for everyone, but let mom make her own decision.

50 Years: Rachel Carson’s seminal environmental work Silent Spring was published 50 years ago. At the time, no one could quite believe a woman wrote the piece, leaving some readers to “assume from the author’s knowledge that he must be a man.” Decades later, the representation of women in science is still low.

1 million: One more reason to be jealous of the super cool and witty “it girl” Lena Dunham: an advice book based on anecdotes from her life is being shopped around to publishers with a price tag of $1,000,000.

33%: Percentage of 2000 polled Brits who think it’s socially acceptable to pick up a phone call during sex. Um, no.

50%: A study widely criticized for being an oversimplification (and a “slap in the face for gender equality”) found that the divorce rate for couples that shared housework was 50% higher than couples where the woman does the majority of the work.

Double take: It’s never a good thing for a celebrity when an old sex tape gets released. For Kanye West, it’s proved particularly bad, considering his on camera co-star is a dead ringer for his current real-life girlfriend, Kim Kardashian. One can only hope she won’t notice.

20 Weeks: UK Women’s Minister has said that it’s “common sense” for the legal abortion limit to be lowered to 20 weeks.

50: Think single ladies over 50 have lost their spark. Don’t be so rude. An Australian study found that these women “are more likely to have a one night stand than their Gen X or Gen Y daughters.”

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