Cosby 'Ruined' 'Baby, It's Cold Outside': Songwriter's Daughter

A new person is weighing in on the controversy over a Christmas classic: the daughter of the man who wrote the song. Susan Loesser, 74, tells NBC News that songwriter Frank Loesser would've been "furious" at his tune being pulled from the radio, noting that it was a "different time" when her dad penned the song and that "flirting was a whole different thing back then." She turns her attention especially to the line "What's in this drink?," insisting that it wasn't meant to be an allusion to date rape, but simply a "joke" about a drink "going straight to my head."

So what led to the song's more nefarious alleged undertones, per Susan Loesser? "Bill Cosby ruined it for everybody," she says, noting that while she'd heard people whisper that the song touched on date rape "from time to time" before the #MeToo era, it was only after the Cosby scandal that she hears that "all the time." USA Today notes Saturday Night Live made just that connection in a 2015 sketch, showing actor Kenan Thompson playing Cosby, singing the song with a woman next to him and joking about the famous lyric. The paper notes that just days after that episode aired, Cosby was charged with sexual assault. (A Cleveland radio station is refusing to play the song.)