Some of my conservative friends (or, even conservatives who hate me and wouldn’t mind seeing someone punch me in the sack with a roll of quarters or a frozen game hen) are starting to accept and repeat by rote this idea that the sheer number of women who’ve come out to accuse Herman Cain of sexual harassment is “troubling” and suggestive — though many of them allow that this number is not in and of itself proof of guilt. Most recently, for example, I heard Michele Malkin use just such a formulation on Hannity’s radio program.
But what is it in fact that they are accepting and repeating? Let’s look at the players specifically:
1) anonymous woman #1, later identified as Karen Kraushaar, a DNC donor and civil servant who lodged an harassment claim at her follow-up job. The NRA looked into the matter, an agreement was reached between the NRA and Ms Kraushaar, a severance package was offered and signed by her and her lawyer acknowledging no liability on Mr Cain’s part. Attached to that was a confidentiality clause, later lifted by the NRA.
2) a second anonymous woman — Cain has said this is the woman, not Kraushaar (I’ll have to double check the video), whom he may have compared his wife’s height with [UPDATE: nope, the height thing was Kraushaar. Thanks to Pablo] Anonymous woman #2 has not come forward. She, too, reached an agreement with the NRA. Judging from the way the Kraushaar case was resolved, we can assume a similar type of agreement was reached.
3) a third anonymous woman who never filed a complaint. Which to me means she’s not an accuser, as there’s no record at all of any harassment or even charges of harassment, save for those she now has intimated, and without attaching a name.
4) Sharon Bialek, whose story is inconsistent, whose past, according to those in Chicago who’ve commented publicly, is chequered, and whose financial motivations — along with the possibility that she herself was fired from the NRA for filing false sexual harassment claims — create credibility issues, is the fourth accuser, but only the second who has gone on record by name, and the only one so far who has alleged anything specific. Cain has flatly denied not only what she alleged, but he says he doesn’t even know her.
5) A woman who says that Cain wanted her to arrange a dinner with another woman who’d asked him a question during a speech he gave. This woman claims she was suspicious of Cain’s motives so she didn’t arrange the dinner. Instead, she wound up going to dinner with Cain and some other women. They say Cain made no sexual advances. So this, too, is not an accusation of anything; it is a narrative of how some woman felt suspicious, for reasons that are for her to figure out and reconcile.
So. Really, what we have are the two agreements we knew about on day one; and now Ms Bialek, who Cain denies knowing.
If Bialek’s story doesn’t hold up — and I suspect it will not — then we are really no further down the road than we were on day one, with the caveat that, thanks to the NRA statement, we know that Ms Kraushaar signed an agreement and accepted a severance settlement that declared Cain not liable.
Which I would argue means if anything, while the story is that the number of woman Cain supposedly harassed has grown, the real pattern developing here is that both of the woman who have lent their names to the story have other instances of filing claims.
Meaning that what’s “troubling” is not the number of Cain accusers; but rather that we’ve allowed very scant information and a pair of settlements to be turned into a trope that Cain is being deluged with harassment claims.
“Attached to that was a confidentiality clause, later lifted by the NRA.”
Remind me not to bother with the undercoating next time, it’s a ripoff.
I got to say — are we even sure that AnonWoman#2 and AnonWoman#3 even exist? Couldn’t they both end up being this Kraushaar chick? Or not real at all? Honestly, that’s where I would put my money right now. #2 and #3 don’t exist and were used to pad the story.
There is still a sorting going on. The meme spread proves useful.
“A woman who says that Cain wanted her to arrange a dinner with another woman who’d asked him a question during a speech he gave. This woman claims she was suspicious of Cain’s motives so she didn’t arrange the dinner. Instead, she wound up going to dinner with Cain and some other women. They say Cain made no sexual advances. So this, too, is not an accusation of anything; it is a narrative of how some woman felt suspicious, for reasons that are for her to figure out and reconcile.”
i want in on this. i saw herman cain at a tea party in april where he threaten my armadillo with his hermanator.
Meaning that what’s “troubling” is not the number of Cain accusers; but rather that we’ve allowed very scant information and a pair of settlements to be turned into a trope that Cain is being deluged with harassment claims.
Further, that making these allegations and getting them on the record is way too easy. No evidence is required, no punishment is meted out for lying, and the accusers are often rewarded with a tidy sum of money for being pains in the anatomy.
And the accused have no way whatsoever to defend themselves or to clear their names.
It’s a shake-down racket of the worst order, worse even than the public-sector unions or ACORN or similar garbage that we put up with.
Ladies, here’s the thing: if he’s a slimebag, and he comes at you once, he’ll do it again to you or to someone else. You and your fellow employees can lure him into a private situation with a camera or recorder and bust his sorry carcass with solid evidence.
Otherwise, knock it the hell off.
3,4, and 5 aren’t sexual harassment and whatever they say means shit and fuck all. 1 and 2 got cash and paperwork to sign that their lawyers ignored. If I was the NRA, I would have gone back to court and gone for the cash.
But the only stories that can hurt Cain are 1 and 2. We learned this in the 90’s when Clinton was accused of RAPE! and got away with it because of inconsistent story telling, assumed political motivations, and the amount of time between the act and the reports.
1 and 2 are the only stories he has to even mention, and he can get past it by simply telling the “truth”. ie, “I was not a party to the suit”. He was worth a lot of money, why didn’t they sue him? It was all the rage back then.
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Terrifying, isn’t it? Meanwhile the Congress, operated by a gang vastly more criminal than the average, is composed to a disproportionate degree of lawyers, who have vastly higher dysfunction than average in things like substance abuse and family problems.
In other words dirty laundry and shit behavior absolutely abound in official circles yet we cannonize the Kennedys and Dodds and innumerable other left wing clowns down through the decades.
It’s almost like somebody found some low level garden-variety crap on Cain and blew it out of proportion in an election cycle.
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coulter
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I was at a work function in Vegas once and the woman who was head of my group licked the back of my neck while I was standing at the bar. Said she had, “Always wanted to do that.” I ignored it, figured she was drunk. She left the company several months later. A couple of months after that, everyone who had anything to do with organizing the meeting in Vegas got the axe, my group was broken up and reassigned and any inquiries about said woman or said meeting were to be referred to a specific person who makes more money than me. She had sued for hostile work environment.
I later found out through the grapevine that she had been canned for a little bit of “Girls Gone Wild” at another after hours work function and the rumor was that she had more pipe laid in Vegas than the Bellagio fountains.
There’s my harassment story. Should I try and get her fired? I know she’s been up for some pretty heavy hitting jobs. Jobs I’d like to have…
Anyone?
punch me in the sack with.. a frozen game hen is just a little too specific not to be from some real life example.
I thought #3 was the woman at the radio station that he asked to add some sugar to his ice tea and used the offensive term “Darling” which as we know is just this side of a rape.
Let’s ask if we would care if this was happening to someone in the Dem field during a POTUS run?
I get to “no” pretty quickly.
Where I get to “Screw Cain” is when he starts linking sex with advancement or used his power to force himself on women. That’s not on the table.
As it is, I’m willing to believe HC did or said something awkward; I’m not getting to harassment or even a moral question.
So I don’t care.
Also, and this is important, we could use someone willing to go at the budget like a serial killer. I’m willing to overlook a lot to get that. The age of moral warrior kings died and Aragorn existed only in Tolkien’s imagination.
Look for the real pain and dishonesty. Not there? Move on (to lift a phrase.)
In some sense Roddy, we don’t have to overlook anything. We merely note trivialities as trivialities and move on. So, take Mark Block’s stupidity with the Kraushaar name. I note it. It’s a dumb mistake. Does it matter with regard to what’s important? Does it change my understanding of Block’s understanding of the genuine troubles facing the nation? (nevermind change my understanding of Cain’s understanding — I don’t even have to reach that far) No, it doesn’t. And etc.
“A woman who says that Cain wanted her to arrange a dinner with another woman who’d asked him a question during a speech he gave. This woman claims she was suspicious of Cain’s motives so she didn’t arrange the dinner. Instead, she wound up going to dinner with Cain and some other women”
Wait… Wait… Herman Cain was played by Wil Smith and the woman was J Lo, right? I saw this on Dinner and a Movie. She thought he was hot for the Cameron Diaz character but he really only wanted her to finance his dream restaurant. J Lo was the beautiful but down to earth, single mother events coordinator who spends the movie running interference between Smith and Diaz in charmingly wacky ways. Of course, because of one of her schemes, J Lo and Smith end up alone together, stuck between floors in an elevator. And after a heartfelt soliloquy by Smith about his dreams of finding the right girl and raising a family in the apartment above his own Italian restaurant, that she realizes that in order to make him happy, she should have let him make his pitch to Diaz, who was leaving for the airport, right at that moment. He resigns himself to the loss of his dream, and J lo and Smith hook up and all is wonderful and dreamy until, by accident one of J Lo’s crazy friends lets the cat out of the bag. Smith, incensed by the deception storms away, moving to New Jersey to work as executive chef for his brother-in-law’s Olive Garden type chain. Montage of sad people moving on with their lives through fall and winter… then suddenly, as she leaves work after an exhausting day surrounded by her well meaning and concerned friends, she spots Wil Smith in the lobby, shaking hands with a well respected character actor we first saw at the very beginning of the movie in a small but significant cameo. Turns out an appetizer Wil had invented, the Flaming fried Bloomin’ Squid Penis, has become a pop culture sensation. His brother-in-law has reluctantly bought him out for millions, and the respected character actor (who’s favorite restaurant is known to be Wil Smith’s brother in law’s chain thanks to some well placed foreshadowing in the first minutes of the movie) has decided to go halfsies with Smith on a high-class Italian joint in the building RIGHT NEXT to where J Lo works! Imagine. Respected character actor mentions that he was glad Smith never got his financing from the Cameron Diaz character, since she’d ended up selling every restaraunt she’d ever help start to mindless, soulless corporations who only care about the stock price and who’s food is made out of Mexican babies. Smith, of course, is grateful to J Lo beyond words, they smootch, everything is implicitly happily ever after. Fade to credits, run gag reel, Katy Perry type instant chick movie soundtrack song plays too long and too loud.
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Once someone starts down the road that the seriousness of the charge is all that matters and is pushed out ahead of the nature of the evidence then we are into a whole different “system of justice” or I should say a “system of injustice”. Verdict first then the trial.
Think how streamlined our entire police-court-prison system could be made with that change. Fast, cheap and corrupt is not a standard to seek out and cling to. It is a system that rewards the worst and creates a race to the bottom. The progressives of course love it.
Prudence. Sniff – sniff. Did Carney missed his calling as a priest?
Let’s ask if we would care if this was happening to someone in the Dem field during a POTUS run?
If a Dem candididate were being railroaded by a gaggle of liars?
Hell yes, I’d care.
I’d make exactly the same arguments I’ve made in this particular kerfuffle: unless Truth matters more than Power, you’re corrupt or nearly so.
Meanwhile fast and furious is gaining no traction, acorn continues to subvert, and nobody ever gave a fuck about Obama’s blatently illegal fundraising.
It’s over folks.
Yeah. That’s another interesting one. We’ve got all the same “smart” people demanding that Cain fire the guy lest his presidential bid be deemed more unserious than they already deem it. If Cain does what they advise, they’ll ding him for keeping the “Cain campaign in disarray” angle alive for several more news cycles. If he doesn’t make any changes, proof that he’s not a serious contender.
Nice Hobson’s choice, bastards.
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2011-11-09.html
Sorry newrouter, you had it already.
Did Carney missed his calling as a priest?
Presbyter is more like it.
Herman Cain is a Cavalier surrounded by Roundheads.
More golf then, Herman, pronto.
I believe that Cain said yesterday that Kraushaar is the woman he made the height comment about.
Ok. Can you find that? I remember differently, but it’s been a lot of footage I’ve been through.
I remember it that way, too. Which with her scoliosis probably did send her over the top. Like Herman would have a clue that she had it, but he ‘offended’ her.
You may be more right than you know, B. Moe.
The epitaph for the Republic has already been written:
All
animalsAmericans are equalsome
animalsCongressional Americans are MORE equal.Embrace the chains of Big Brother’s love. Freedom IS Slavery, folks.
Actually Hillary got treated pretty rough by Team Obama/Alexrod
Cain is doing well with this 999 tie in with the China question. Cain is right, the tax code is causing harm.
Here.
Thanks, Pablo.
The story far outgrew the proof, which is the case in a lot of instances. Penn State just cleared the decks by firing the University President and Coach Joe Paterno, even though there are no allegations that either man broke the law; it’s just that the story outgrew any defense. The same will be true of Herman Cain.
Naw. The accusers are already starting to take a hit. Cain is going to come out looking like he was persecuted. And then his “handling” of the situation will look both genuine and non-DC.
Is my guess.
But there is evidence that no one at the University bothered to call the police to report child rape AS REQUIRED BY LAW. Plus the whole moral aspect of dealing with a guy caught in the act being treated as a personnel matter and simply banning him from bringing kids onto the campus and not putting a stop to the activities by having him jailed. Other than those things, yea exactly the same. :eyeroll:
Dana, it’s pretty clear that Sandusky diddled quite a few boys and that it wasn’t a very well kept secret. There’s quite a bit of there there. Not so much with the Cain situation.
Just finished watching. Cain again finished strong.
It’s clear he thinks differently than politicians in the way he sees problems and their solutions. I don’t think that’s simplistic, as some people like to argue. I think that’s rather based on an ability to prune rather quickly.
By the time I was done grad school, I could read upside down the first paragraph of an essay by some theorist working in interpretation theory and tell you within 30 seconds what they thought, why they thought it, and why they were wrong or right in their kernel assumptions and assertions.
I get the feeling Cain is like that with questions of solving economic problems through growth. He simply knows it, and he’s been telling us he understands the place to begin making the fix. It doesn’t HAVE to be terribly complicated.
If it’s not complicated, you don’t have to trust us. Can’t have that.
The Alinskyite “perception is reality” tactic is the campaign issue, which needs to be squashed, like right now. Cain’s in a perfect position to do it. I just gave him $100.
Obviously, it’s also Obama’s whole “policy”, while of course looting and destroying merrily along the way.
The Commies always oppose reality simply because at some time they finally want to be able to always say what it is without opposition.
I’ve heard the meme from Tucker Carlson and Krauthammer that “Cain is not fit for the Presidency”. That’s not the issue.
Cain’s lawyer gave a brilliant closing argument to the “Jury” during his introduction of Cain, highlighting the issue, trial by vacuous smear, “perception is reality.”
The moronic Republicans don’t seem to recognize the tactic and that it can be used against anybody, especially if they don’t stop it here. But it’s about all the campaign “argument” that Obama has. I say squash it down now.
[…] Goldstein sums up what we know about the stream of emerging Cain accusers: 1) anonymous woman #1, later identified as Karen Kraushaar, a DNC donor and civil servant who […]
#39 – It is not only the kind of facility that comes from familiarity, in the case of many business executives it is things that are more an essential element of their character and psychology. The stereotype is widely recognized because it is broadly true, they are the types who tend to be assertive, decisive, and concise. They are not the types who are willing (or sometimes even able) to paint a detailed picture, or cajole people into seeing things their way – they know what the problem is, they know the solution, and they just want it done.
Cain is someone who worked his way up the corporate executive ladder, which tends to select for these very traits. The interesting thing is that most of these types do not transition into the political field, being quite unsuited for the role by both experience and temperament. So we gotta wonder what else is it about Cain that led him to pursue this challenge? Clearly he is not looking to transition into another career path ala Mitt Romney.
“The optics”
What a horrid construction, and abused so easily.
Speaking of memes, I’m guessing most of you have seen the complete embarrassment that the aptly-named Crooks & Liars has made of itself?
Thanks for that, Slart. Made my day.
Always glad to help in some small way ;)
I have long been an anti-fan of Niewert’s particular brand of self-aggrandizing cherrypicking disguised as analysis; this particular episode should be screenshot before it “accidentally” falls into the bit-bucket.
I Tweeted it. It’s going out over the whole entire WORLD!
[…] sums it all up: Let’s look at the players […]
Or at least that small fraction of the world that actually cares about sub-140 character blurts.