Bill Cosby's attorney Marty Singer says rape allegations against the comedian have "escalated past the point of absurdity" and the media is largely to blame for the furor.
Numerous women have come forward in recent weeks to accuse the 77-year-old entertainer of sexually abusing them.
Although Cosby has never been charged with a crime in connection with the allegations, he did settle a civil lawsuit stemming from them years ago. The accusations were revived last month in the act of stand-up comic Hannibal Buress, which sparked online outrage and prompted an op-ed penned for The Washington Post by one of his accusers. Several other women have since spoken out, alleging they, too, had been sexually assaulted by the celebrity.
The recent negative attention has prompted Netflix to cancel Cosby's scheduled standup special, while NBC has scrapped a sitcom it was developing with the comedian and TV Land dropped re-runs of his classic sitcom The Cosby Show. Numerous talk-show appearances and stage performances have also been canceled in the wake of the women's claims and the subsequent wrath expressed via social media.
Nonetheless, he received a standing ovation at a Florida stand-up gig Friday night, and shows in Las Vegas and Yakima, Wash., scheduled for next week have not been canceled.
"The new, never-before-heard claims from women who have come forward in the past two weeks with unsubstantiated, fantastical stories about things they say occurred 30, 40 or even 50 years ago have escalated past the point of absurdity," Singer said in a statement Friday.
"These brand new claims about alleged decades-old events are becoming increasingly ridiculous, and it is completely illogical that so many people would have said nothing, done nothing and made no reports to law enforcement or asserted civil claims if they thought they had been assaulted over a span of so many years."
"Lawsuits are filed against people in the public eye every day," Singer added.
"There has never been a shortage of lawyers willing to represent people with claims against rich, powerful men, so it makes no sense that not one of these new women who just came forward for the first time now ever asserted a legal claim back at the time they alleged they had been sexually assaulted. This situation is an unprecedented example of the media's breakneck rush to run stories without any corroboration or adherence to traditional journalistic standards ... It is long past time for this media villification of Mr. Cosby to stop."