I haven't written about the sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain because I don't have much to say, and what little I do have to say will probably annoy many readers.
I see no hard evidence that the man has done anything wrong. I do not like and do not trust allegations made by invisible, nameless accusers. Even if the accuser were to come forward, "sexual harassment" has become such a ridiculously ill-defined category that I would become perturbed only if the alleged infraction were genuinely outrageous.
Since money apparently changed hands in the Cain case, we have every reason to believe that money motivated the accusation in the first place. As long-time readers know, I am not among those people who view women as holy beings who are incapable of telling fibs for cash. And I can understand why a successful CEO might write a check just to make a problem go away quickly.
Above and beyond all other considerations: I hate seeing elections turn on below-the-waist issues. We cannot expect politicians to be free of human frailty. Allegations of sexual impropriety simply don't matter to me, at least not as much as they matter to many others.
True, such allegations often amuse me, especially when large doses of hypocrisy are involved. And who can resist the opportunity to make a good dirty joke? I sure can't.
But fun is fun, and serious is serious. Political careers -- even the careers of people I don't like -- should not end as a result of this sort of nonsense.
9 comments:
It's chew toy for the print and broadcast media.
I didn't read past not seeing any "hard evidence." Gee, if they hand out $35,000 for gratuitous accusations, who needs a job except to get one of those?
Nice try, tho!
The wingnuts didn't believe Anita Hill so we got Thomas, the worst guy to sit on the bench, ever. The wingnuts believe Cain...it can't be good. I look forward to cheering every woman who crawls out of the woodwork to expose him as a man of low character.
Sexual harassment may a set up for a punchline but believe me, it isn't funny if you're on the receiving end of it.
Ania Hill signed her name to it (so to speak), told what I consider a convincing story, and didn't take a pay-off. So in my view, she was credible. I'm less inclined to believe someone who asks for money or who accepts money.
Also, what Anita Hill described was pretty outrageous. Credible, but outrageous.
So, I place her in a different category than I would the Cain accusers. But we may have to revise the view as more facts come out.
If the ladies don't tank Herman's campaign, funny business will. Cain was put in charge of Godfather's Pizza when it was worth $396 million. Thirty months later he bought it for $30 million. How did a company worth $306 million, before Herman Cain was put in charge, come to be worth $30 million, 29 months after he was put in charge? Inquiring minds want to know. http://tinyurl.com/43ploke
You wouldn't believe how many civil cases out there are bogus, but the plaintiff gets cash so that the "problem" goes away instead of going to trial. Insurance companies, not defendants, call the shots. Lawyers will risk their licenses taking fake cases because they know how to twist nonexistent "facts" to fit legal technicalities. In other words, they exploit the settlement system for their own benefit. Innocent people have their reputations trashed because most people think a settlement automatically equals guilt. It's impossible to get a reputation back once it is trashed by the plaintiffs and publicized by the media. There needs to be serious sanctions against lawyers who take fraudulent cases, including disbarment--I am named in one such fraudulent case and will likely never be able to defend myself in court as my former employer and its insurance company will give the plaintiffs the money. (The plaintiff in my case is already searching around for another place to live--she already has the yet unpaid money already spent--and is picking areas that have a lot higher unemployment rate than in northern Nevada. This pretty much tells me her suit is a total scam operation although I knew it all the time.) Right now sanctions are completely ineffective against scumbag attorneys who commit fraud on a court.
Of course the payoffs in the Cain case were outside of a court, but again, settlements have nothing to do with guilt or innocence of the accused party.
It's not inconceivable, but it's hard to posit a conspiracy involving three different money-grubbing women. And (male) staffers at the National Restaurant Association are saying it was well known that Cain was a horn dog and that the accusations were based on incidents that the staffers witnessed.
I'm almost always on the side of red-blooded suckers who are dragged in front of the Star(r) Chamber, but in this case, I'm inclined to believe the multiple women.
Are some charges of sexual harrassment, or even racial discrimination in employment, made in bad faith, seeking unwarranted monetary damages out of greed? Of course. Equally true, though, is the fact that many men in positions of authority flirt, come on to, and try to arrange dates with those they supervise.
I doubt deciding these things a priori, on such general principles, without regard to the evidence in a given case, is a sound method.
We now have on record that Christian right talk radio guy in Iowa, formerly a kind of king maker for previous Iowa caucuses, stating HE WAS THERE in a restaurant RECENTLY when Cain's interaction with the waitress was over the line enough that everyone was made uncomfortable, to where some even asked that he stop. As that man has been attacking both Romney and Perry, I have read, he wouldn't appear to have a motive of helping the major rivals of Cain's in volunteering this information to add to this complaint.
Worse for Cain, I think, is looking at this process he's overseen. He had a 10 day heads up that this was coming, and still handled it like a deer caught in the headlights.
Further proof of his unreadiness for prime time, as fielding false charges (if these are that) is a frequent part of the job he seeks.
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Like you I am not very interested in these kinds of things; however, Cain seems to be pretty much a slime bag. I can't take him serious as a politician. I don't think he is credible or serious about helping the people of this country. I don't know about the allegations but he seems to be starting to rack them up a bit.
Could they be contrived? Certainly. Lots of people in this country lie all the time even when they have little to gain from it. Of course, from the looks of things Cain is no different because he has continually lied through his teeth since becoming a candidate.
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