Old people organization AARP has a print magazine and just released its special October/November Health Issue that boasts an article with comedian and alleged rapist Bill Cosby. The cover lines read: “Bill Cosby – Still making us laugh.” Inside, there’s a fluff piece on him with a collage of vintage Cosby photos.
UPDATE: According to AARP, the magazine didn’t scrub the Bill Cosby article — it added the piece after the organization “sold a little bit more advertising, so we had more pages that we then had to fill with editorial,” said Robert Love, the Editor in Chief of AARP’s magazine.
Love explained to ANIMAL over the phone that the AARP prints three versions of the magazine: A, B, and C. The C version, which has the Cosby article, went to the printer on October 8 — seven days before the comments of Hannibal Buress renewed decades-old allegations of sexual abuse against Cosby. The AARP piece, which included an excerpt of Mark Whitaker’s Cosby biography and a Q&A, was published “in good faith,” says Love.
As to why the article never made it to the web, Love says that content from its C version — which skews to its oldest members — “never goes online.” He later said that content exclusive to version C “hardly ever” goes online. However, he says the magazine versions are not “substantially different.”
“We don’t have any plans to feature Bill Cosby in further issues, no,” said Love. “We printed something and then a scandal happened in the weeks following the printing of it.”
But just like the universities that have begun cutting their association with Cosby, AARP appears be doing the same. Another version of the same cover makes no mention of him and the online issue has no trace of Cosby at all, as if it never even happened.
