NEW YORK (AP) - After Bill Cosby settled a civil lawsuit in 2006 alleging that he'd repeatedly sexually assaulted a woman, his image as America's dad may have been temporarily tarnished, but was far from destroyed.
But in recent weeks as allegations of other sexual assaults have taken hold in published reports and on social media, his rock-solid persona seems in danger of permanent erosion.
"It's not like, if you have goodwill, you can borrow against that," says Eric B. Dezenhall, a Washington-based crisis management consultant. "And if your goal is to get everybody to un-remember what they just heard - well, that's just not doable."
Cosby, 77, has never been charged with a crime and so far has steadfastly refused to address the uproar. He's granted few in-person interviews to media. And an attempt to put out the fire with a positive social media buzz backfired, generating criticism rather than praise.
There is no sign that his silent treatment - outside of a statement from his attorney Sunday characterizing the accusations as "discredited" - will placate the accusers or outlast their demands that he answer to their claims.
His staunchest fans have dismissed the assault accusations that have dogged him for years while they overlooked his admissions of marital infidelity. For them, his image remains snugly aligned with that of Cliff Huxtable, the gentle, all-knowing husband and father he played on "The Cosby Show" as a champion of family values who, 20 years earlier, broke TV's color barrier with his 1960s series "I Spy."
But that image could hurt now more than help, even placing his legacy at risk.
"We love the concept of hypocrisy, whether it's true or not," says Dezenhall, who recently published the book "Glass Jaw - A Manifesto for Defending Fragile Reputations in an Age of Instant Scandal."
"We love learning that somebody in reality may be the opposite of what they seem. ... The squeakier-clean your reputation, the more the public embraces these stories."
For older Cosby fans, Cosby undisputedly is "a venerated figure who stands for education and achievement and common sense," says NPR television critic Deggans, who has reported on the accusations. "But there's an entire generation for whom his projects are distant memories with distant impact. And in later years, he has gone around demanding that poor black people pull themselves up by their bootstraps, get their house in order."
Cosby's blunt call for personal responsibility has often stigmatized him in young eyes not as America's dad but as America's cranky granddad "taking aim at youth culture," Deggans says.
It was this sort of attitude that may have prompted standup comedian Hannibal Buress to take aim at Cosby last month in Philadelphia where, during a performance, Buress mocked him, chiding the audience to "pull your pants up, black people, I was on TV in the '80s," and labeling Cosby "a rapist."
The sequence was captured on video and may have served as a major flashpoint. Barbara Bowman, who since 2006 has publicly accused Cosby of sexually assaulting her, gave Buress credit for bringing her long-voiced words new urgency in a Nov. 13 WashingtonPost.com column, whose headline asked, "Why did it take 30 years for people to believe my story?"
Accusations from Cosby's past may also have been rekindled by their very absence from a new book, "Cosby: His Life and Times," an affirmative biography that makes no mention of those allegations. Author Mark Whitaker did not comment.
The firestorm against Cosby has flared as he was enjoying a revival that began a year ago when a standup TV special - his first in three decades - aired on Comedy Central.
"There's a gap," Cosby told the AP a few days before its Nov. 23 premiere, "between people knowing what I do and really believing that I still do that - and wondering what it is I really do."