We're living through an interesting juncture in history. On one hand, there's the amazing bottom-up Occupy Movement, and no one knows quite where and how far it will go. Then, there's the field of Republican neo-Know-Nothing [1], nativist candidates with each one tripping over the other to be more divorced from facts, history and reality. The strutting, co*k-of-the-walk Herman Cain is currently the most interesting of this pack.
For a week now, Cain has been denying the obvious, that as leader of the National Restaurant Association he "sexually harassed" -- ie, hit on -- three women who worked under him who were offended by the attention and wanted nothing to do with him. Now, a fourth woman [2] has gone public with a story of Cain's intimate groping in a car. Despite all his vague and contradictory dismissals, his prurient assertiveness was persistent and obnoxious enough that the Restaurant Association felt it had to pay a total of $80,000 to two women -- who are now legally silenced from telling their side of the story.
Instead of adhering to what seems his usual instinct of waving off questions as politically-correct, liberal nonsense, in this case Cain has followed the more traditional route of denial and cover-up, which as we've all learned only makes the press hungrier.
At this point, Cain and his Campaign Manager Mark Block -- he of the bizarre You Tube smoke-break commercial [3] -- have decided to drop the cover-up and, instead, have declared it's time to move on "to the real issues impacting this country." That is, issues like Cain's famous "9-9-9 plan," which has been shown to be corporate-friendly and to increase taxes for the poor, and his lethally-electrified fence along the Mexican border, a program that was serious, then a joke, then serious again.
As far as any pain and suffering he may have caused his three silenced women accusers, at least one of whom is married, his new tack is: Never look back. The past is what it is, and it's more important for the nation that he look to the future.
Cain knows the polls suggest his right-wing, Tea-Party base doesn't give a damn about sexual harassment charges, or at least they don't give the charges much credence and see them as a liberal conspiracy to smear the man -- a "high tech lynching," to slip Clarence Thomas' famous race card from the bottom of the deck.
The more interesting reason for his never-look-back approach is the character quality he exhibits that makes the tactic workable, and that is the very palpable and insouciant sense of imperiousness he exhibits. He's a guy used to giving orders, very unlike President Obama, who may be smart as a whip and a good speech-maker, but who is personally short in radiating an aura of dictatorial power. With Cain, you feel he'd be quite comfortable giving a strong-man speech from an ornate palace balcony -- a speech absent of any truth or facts, but heavy on what the great leader has decided for his people.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
