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Hannibal Buress dismisses Bill Cosby jokes, calls fallout 'weird'

By Marilyn Malara

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 19 (UPI) -- Comedian Hannibal Buress didn't expect such extensive fallout following a joke he performed calling Bill Cosby a "rapist."

Speaking during the Television Critics Association press tour Sunday, Buress called the aftermath of the joke, and the public's response to Cosby as "weird."

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"I do a lot of other [expletive]," Buress, who was present to promote his upcoming Netflix special, said according to Variety. "It's weird that it happened like that. I was calling a bunch of other comedians rapists and that was the only one people took seriously...That's just one joke people took and really ran with it."

In October 2014, a mobile phone video showing Buress on stage discussing Cosby's contradictory message went viral. The joke is as follows:

"And it's even worse because Bill Cosby has the [expletive] smuggest old black man public persona that I hate. 'Pull your pants up, black people. I was on TV in the '80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom.' Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby...I've done this bit on stage, and people don't believe. People think I'm making it up...That [expletive] is upsetting. If you don't know about it, trust me. You leave here and Google 'Bill Cosby rape.' It's not funny. That [expletive] has more results than Hannibal Buress."

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During the interview with the press, Buress sat next to fellow comedians John Mulaney and Patton Oswalt, also preparing for special releases on Netflix.

"Hannibal was doing fine without [the Bill Cosby jokes]," Oswalt asserted. "He'd be sitting here now if that had not happened. He was on a trajectory (already) as far as being bulletproof as a comedian."

Buress had in the past said he hadn't meant his Cosby joke to have garnered so much attention. In November of last year, he described himself as an "accidental whistle-blower," on the matter of the multitude of rape allegations against Cosby.

"[The media] put me too much at the front of that [expletive]," he told Entertainment Weekly at the time. "I was just doing a show."

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