Liberal Media’s Poisonous Darts Are Aimed at Herman Cain & His Alleged Sexual Harassment Scandal, MSM Is Silent on Growing Team Obama Scandals
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on November 4, 2011
Guilty until proven innocent: GOP presidential contender Herman Cain is being assaulted by the liberal media
It took TWO YEARS for the leftwing media to finally report on Democrat Sen. John Edwards’ extramarital affair with his mistress Rielle Hunter while his wife Elizabeth was dying of cancer, his out-of-wedlock baby, and his illegal shenanigans with federal funds.
It took about TWO MINUTES for the leftwing media to report on the sexual harassment allegations against presidential candidate Herman Cain that he allegedly made 20 years ago, making two unnamed women “uncomfortable.”
Here come the poisonous darts, hoping to kill Cain’s bid for the presidency…
I won’t trivialize sexual harassment in the work place. I’ve been sexually harassed a number of times during my career, and it can be horrific and demoralizing. Much of its effects on innocent women/men are in “the eye of the beholder,” and depend on the nature of the harassment, the frequency of the unwanted advances, the self-esteem of the victim, and the position level of the person doing the harassing. However, these charges made about Cain reportedly happened two decades ago.
TWO DECADES AGO.
The liberal media has jumped on this Herman Cain story like starving kittens on crickets, but have consistently ignored or downplayed breaking news of Team Obama scandals nearly every week that the Empty Suit Man-Child has been in the Oval Office.
Little if any mention has been made in the liberal media of the growing number of Obama administration scandals, like that of bankrupt, crony-driven solar panel company Solyndra and Fast and Furious/Project Gunrunner, nor of the DOJ’s sudden dropping of the New Black Panthers voter intimidation case, nor of the rampant cronyism in the granting of stimulus money and ObamaCare waivers to unions, Obama bundlers and buddies, and major corporations like McDonald’s. There has been little mention of Obama’s endorsement and ACORN’s secretive involvement in the violent thuggery and anarchy of the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Whatever protests and riots.
It took nearly two weeks for most liberal media to begin any reporting on Weinergate with the vile sexting and “bulging package” crotch shot photo sent to young women by married New York congressman Anthony Weiner. When the leftwing media finally got around to reporting on the exploding scandal, much of the earlier reporting attacked conservative blogger and author Andrew Breitbart, calling him a liar for publishing the initial story and compromising photos — Breitbart was vilified and crucified by the MSM. And when it was discovered that Brietbart was indeed correct, the photos were real, and that the shameless sexhound liar was Rep. Weiner (who finally resigned in disgrace), no apologies were issued by the media.
So here we are, it’s once again Déjà Vu Time: With little to no evidence, a vicious smear job against Cain has revved up like NASCAR engines by the Obama-adoring media jackals. And some of the smearing is coming from the camps of other GOP prez hopefuls Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.
Tsk, tsk, Mitt and Rick. I expected better of both of you. Did Herman jump on the “Smear Perry bandwagon” when the statist media tried to paint Perry a racist because of an N-word named rock on the property of where he and his father had hunted? No, he did not.
Did Cain do it? Do what? Have sex with either of these unnamed woman against their will? Doesn’t sound like it. Did he sexually harass them? That’s not clear at all, although they reportedly received financial compensation, but Cain apparently was never charged, never suspended or punished, nor was he fired.
Most of what I’m reading on this story that Politico launched is conveniently filled with anonymous accusations, conveniently spotty information, all conveniently peppered with strangely flowery, empty innuendo and no concrete evidence (including the identities of Cain’s accusers). As of today, this crapolla sounds far less convincing, far more vague, far more interested in sullying Cain’s name and reputation than getting to any “truth” — less so than the mounting evidence presented in essays and reports by the “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” folks at World Net Daily.
I’ll reserve judgment on Cain until some actual evidence surfaces, and even then, it would have to be pretty damning. As I said previously, sexual harassment is very much in “the eye of the beholder,” and therefore, not as cut and dry as getting one’s mistress pregnant (like John Edwards did), or breaking umpteen laws when a US Senate seat was open (like Democrat Gov. Rod Blagojevich did). I’m quite suspicious about the timing of these two women coming forward after 20 years. It’s Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill all over again.
As far as the liberal media is concerned, Democrats are innocent until proven guilty. Republicans are guilty until proven innocent.
Excellent piece summarizing the information on the Cain story to date, posted at Patriot Post, Leftmedia Welcomes Cain to Prime Time:
Leftmedia outfit Politico dropped a bomb on Herman Cain’s presidential campaign Sunday night with a story about two women accusing him of sexual harassment in the 1990s. Politico’s story was anonymously sourced, though they claimed to have spoken to both women, and reporters later hedged when pressed on the specifics of their information. Regardless, in a culture that gets so much of its news in 140-character Twitter soundbites, the damage was done.
“During Herman Cain’s tenure as the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, at least two female employees complained to colleagues and senior association officials about inappropriate behavior by Cain, ultimately leaving their jobs at the trade group,” Politico reported. “The women complained of sexually suggestive behavior by Cain that made them angry and uncomfortable, the sources said, and they signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave them financial payouts to leave the association. The agreements also included language that bars the women from talking about their departures.” Fifteen years later, that has come in handy.
Cain’s initial response was not a good one. Politico claimed that it had contacted his campaign before publishing the story, and yet he seemed woefully unprepared to offer a counterpoint. When first asked directly if he had ever been accused of sexual harassment, he threw the question right back at the reporter. He denied any wrongdoing and said he didn’t even remember a settlement, but later said that he did remember though it was a small one (there were two, of $35,000 and $45,000, respectively) and it didn’t go through him. The fact that the settlements were small and it was the women, not Cain, who left the NRA lends credence to Cain’s innocence (he certainly deserves that presumption), but it would help if he got his story straight.
As for the details, he described one incident, saying, “She was in my office one day, and I made a gesture saying — and I was standing close to her — and I made a gesture saying you are the same height as my wife. And I brought my hand up to my chin saying, ‘My wife comes up to my chin.’”
It wasn’t long before the blame game started. Cain’s campaign accused Curt Anderson, a former aide who now works for Rick Perry, of being the source of the story. To add confusion, the campaign later retracted that accusation before Cain himself reiterated it. The Perry camp denied any involvement, instead blaming the Romney campaign, thus completing the circular firing squad.
If this benefits anyone, it could be Newt Gingrich, who may well be the only candidate who understands Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment. We think he could be the next candidate to spike in the polls. Yet Cain’s poll numbers are higher now than they were last week, particularly in the all-important early states of Iowa and South Carolina, and his fundraising is up as well. Perhaps that’s indicative of conservatives rallying around one of their own who’s under assault by the media juggernaut.
As for the Republican candidates, they need to cut the crap, quit attacking each other, and focus on beating Barack Obama in the general election. Besides, “the real story here is the media — and Politico in particular,” as National Review’s Andrew McCarthy writes. “Politico’s initial story was woven out of insufficient evidence, anonymous sources, and vague allegations that — even if you construed every possible inference against Cain — would amount to an impropriety that outfits like Politico would find too trivial to cover like this if the culprit were a left-leaning Democrat.”
As if on cue, Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Alter wrote a column last Friday titled, The Obama Miracle, a White House Free of Scandal. No, Mr. Alter. Just because the media don’t report Obama’s scandals doesn’t mean there aren’t any, or that they aren’t far worse than a hand gesture that made a woman uncomfortable.
UPDATE: Info about Cain’s confidentiality agreement, from Protein Wisdom, What did Politico know and when did they know it?:
If the worry among the chattering classes is now focused on Herman Cain’s various awkward attempts to answer the questions the Politico story helped to raise — specifically, how the “evolution” of Cain’s answers in various interviews are affecting public perception and creating a cloud of suspicion over both his campaign and his character — it becomes important to know just how much of what has become the story was driven by the machinations of the Politico reporters themselves.
That is to say, if the reporters who worked on this story were aware in advance of publication that Herman Cain was constrained by a confidentiality agreement from answering the charges Politico was levying against him (and I’m quite sure they’ll respond by saying they were merely “reporting” earlier charges, not levying any charges against Mr Cain, but we all know better), should they not have disclosed this in the story itself — particularly if they were going to follow up the story’s publication by doing media appearances in which they explicitly told other members of the media to press Mr Cain for the specifics?
Or, to put it another way, how do the Politico reporters square their suggestion that Mr Cain be responsible for providing the specifics to a story they published, with their own knowledge of a confidentiality agreement that they knew would prevent Mr Cain from speaking.
Already, the new wrinkle to this story is that Cain may have violated the confidentiality agreement merely by attempting to answer questions from reporters demanding the specifics Politico reporters asserted it was incumbent upon Mr Cain to provide. In fact, Politico itself is now reporting, using one of the women’s attorneys as their proxy, that Cain broke his confidentiality agreement — even as the WaPo is complaining that Cain won’t answer questions.
So the question is, how much of what we’re now seeing play out is a result of Politico’s attempts to drive Cain into having to give answers to questions they’d raised — but knew he wasn’t legally permitted to answer? That is, how much of this story is a direct result of Politico’s cynical attempt to box Cain in?
Why would Politico reporters tell members of the media to approach Herman Cain for the specifics without disclosing that Cain was legally prevented from any such disclosures — including, possibly, the disclosure of any such legal agreement? Did they know of such an agreement and fail to alert readers and the media that Cain’s various “deflections” were not necessarily a component of any guilt, but rather a legal necessity about which these “reporters” were already aware?
Because if so, it is fair to conclude that the story itself — coupled with the media appearances immediately following it by Politico reporters pointing reporters to Cain for a detailing of any specifics — was designed as a Catch-22 for the candidate: to defend himself, he’d have to break his confidentiality agreement; conversely, to maintain his confidentiality agreement would be to allow the anonymously-sourced story, left intentionally vague by the Politico reporters, to hover over his campaign unanswered for the duration.
And then there is this, the alleged Barack-Vera affair. For a long while now, there have been consistent rumblings that Barack and a young campaign aide named Vera Baker had an affair behind Michelle’s back. Nothing has ever been printed by liberal sources as to whether the extramarital affair happened or not — there has been nothing about it, nothing except occasional pieces published in the National Enquirer and other tabloid news sources (just like John Edwards) and the conservative blogosphere.
So, did Obama have a steamy affair with his attractive campaign aide? We’ll never know if we have to rely on the partisan reporting of the mainstream media — if the news is unflattering or damaging for a Democrat, most JournoListers would rather eat broken glass than report it. We’ll likely have to wait for National Enquirer or Andrew Breitbart to uncover the truth.
And should that happen, it will only take between two weeks and two years for MSNBC and other leftwing hacks to report on it.
Campaign aide Vera Baker... did she and Barack Obama have an extramarital affair behind Michelle's back?
About the author
Comments