"I spent parts of 2006 and 2007 following Bill Cosby around the country. He was then in the midst of giving a series of 'call-outs'..."

"... in which he upbraided the decline of morality in the black community.... I published a reported essay in 2008, in this magazine, on these call-outs. In that essay, there is a brief and limp mention of the accusations against Cosby..... And should I have decided to state what I believed about Cosby, I would have had to write a much different piece.... At the time I wrote the piece... I believed that Bill Cosby was a rapist.... The Bill Cosby piece was my first shot writing for a big national magazine. I had been writing for 12 financially insecure years.... A voice in my head was, indeed, pushing me to do something more expansive and broader in its implication, something that did not just question Cosby's moralizing, but weighed it against the acts which I believed he committed. But Cosby was such a big target that I thought it was only a matter of time before someone published a hard-hitting, investigative piece. And besides, I had in my hand the longest, best, and most personally challenging piece I'd ever written.... I have often thought about how those women would have felt had they read my piece.... I regret not saying what I thought of the accusations, and then pursuing those thoughts. I regret it because the lack of pursuit puts me in league with people who either looked away, or did not look hard enough...."

Writes Ta-Nehisi Coates in "The Cosby Show/Declining to seriously reckon with the rape allegations against him is reckless. And I was once reckless."

So... he did what was in his interest then, and he's doing what's in his interest now. Noted.