Before I get into the heart of this issue I have to ask a serious question: Is the lawyer we see on television claiming to have evidence of a sexual harassment charge against Herman Cain a transgender person?
Or alternatively, does this person have multiple personalities that manifest themselves in public settings?
The reason I ask this question is because television air heads keep saying that "three women have come forth” with allegations against Cain, but in a weeklong media onslaught that appears to be unprecedented in media onslaught history, only this lawyer showed up. And he keeps using the pronoun "We."
For instance, I tuned in FOX News last night and at 6:35 p.m. another of the damnable "panels" came on, in which a guy named Douglas Shoen claimed that "three women have now come forth" to allege sexual harassment by Herman Cain. Actually, no one has come forward, and that statement is false.
But instead of naming the women, or showing interviews with them, or anything that would prove they even exist, FOX switched to file footage of this lawyer. No client standing in the background, just another lawyer making allegations that would not stand the credibility test if Herman Cain was anyone other than a black, conservative Republican.
In file footage and newspaper accounts, this lawyer says on behalf of the Phantom Accuser, "She has decided not to relive the specifics of the incident," because it would be "extremely painful" for her to do so.
OK, so Herman Cain and his family aren’t going through an excruciatingly painful assault on him and his credibility with no one he can confront, and no specifics even about the supposed claims? The lawyer wouldn't disclose what was alleged either, saying only "We're not going to get more specific about what was physical, what was verbal. It qualified as sexual harassment in our opinion."
Now this guy was standing in front of a media crush ALONE! And he kept saying "WE" and "OUR" instead of "me, myself or I." So I ask again, is he the real person who made the allegations against Herman Cain more than a decade ago? Was this lawyer a woman then, and has he since had sex change surgery? Or is he a Sybil type character who pops up in a different incarnations?
If not why is he the only person we have ever seen making claims against Cain?
It seems, based on the comments I see from the public at the ends of many of print stories on this issue, that the only people who are being fooled here are the air heads who keep saying that anyone has come forth.
So, to Douglas Shoen, Shepherd Smith and anyone else on any other network, electronic or print outlet who has repeated this claim, could you people name one of these accusers? Just one?
You say she exists, so that means you know who she is, and you know who the others are. Why don't your viewers know who she is? Her name, please.
Silence. Just as I suspected.
Remember the movie Harvey with James Stewart playing an alcoholic who said he was accompanied by a six-foot invisible rabbit? How about Julia Roberts and Robin Williams in Hook – "If you can't imagine yourself being Peter Pan, you won't be Peter Pan"?
It took a lot of imagination to do these films, and it takes a lot of imagination to believe the media in its unsuccessful effort to crush Herman Cain. Maybe, ala Harvey, many in the D.C. beltway and Manhattan media "elite" are drunk on their own presumed power.
I found it interesting that the Real Clear Politics average of polls measuring Herman Cain's standing in the GOP field found him nearly three points ahead of everyone else even after nearly a week of an unspeakably vicious fusillade. In the Rasmussen poll, which was the only one that actually interviewed 1,000 respondents, the threshold for credibility in polling, Cain was up even further.
Now, here's why the GOP elitists, the Country Club Republicans, are so afraid of Cain. Unlike their self-anointed gurus of schlock, Cain deals with hard cold facts - numbers, and how they add up, or not. Inside-the-beltway types deal with appearances and they haven’t grasped that a huge segment of the American public is wise to them.
Republican operative Karl Rove can hold up his portable white board and scrawl on it all he wants, the public is done with him. Democrat operative James Carville can run savage attacks on individuals all he wants, he is irrelevant this time, which is the core reason these people hate Herman Cain and are so vehement in their desire to destroy him.
Rove was bashing Cain a couple of weeks ago for spending a lot time in Tennessee and far less time in New Hampshire prior to the 2012 primaries. Cain HAS to do well in Iowa and New Hampshire if he is going to go further in the primaries, Rove fumed.
Well, not really. Doing well there is about appearances, but it won't get you the nomination.
The GOP committees in these states jostle each other and try to outmaneuver each other over who gets to have the first primary or caucus, but in the end, they are all about appearances. Tennessee has as many delegates as Iowa and New Hampshire together, so why waste all that time and energy way out in front of the caucus or primary dates, when he can work much closer to home and pick up just as much support?
But the establishment elitists have always done it that way and if someone can do it another way successfully, it raises doubts about their omnipotence, doesn't it?
Also, Cain is leading the GOP race, but is way back in terms of money raised. He has earned his support through excellent debate performances and personal appearances, done in a bus tour, rather than skipping so much of the country by flying over it as the other candidates do.
Cain actually could benefit from some plane rides on occasion since bus rides are long and tedious and take a bigger physical toll than a couple hours in first class. But overall, his strategy is working very well, at a fraction of what the other candidates are spending.
And that really is the issue in Manhattan and D.C. These insider gurus make their bucks by lapping up the leftovers from the big media buys that all the other candidates believe they need to get their message across. Or by charging exorbitant fees for their services.
Cain is not spending big on media yet, and if he becomes the candidate these insiders are afraid they'll have to give up their cushy, bloated, self-important, egotistical lifestyles and work for a living.
They also are afraid that Cain will prove their mantra wrong – the one that says he who has the most money and spends the most money will be the winner. How many times have you heard these air heads regurgitating the same old theme, that money equates to donors and donors equate to votes?
Let me remind you of the US Senate race in Connecticut in 2010. Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, spent more than $50 million on her campaign to get elected senator, and lost miserably. How about Meg Whitman's $178.5 million spending spree to lose to Jerry Brown in the California governor's race?
The air heads talked all around those expensive failures, but they can't talk around Herman Cain holding onto first place while campaigning on a shoe string. And it worries them; you can tell that by their words and their deeds. Yet, even as the nation, including political junkies, has sickened of the attacks on Cain and is looking to move on, the media attacks continue.
Nonetheless, Cain, who has started a fund-raising drive to boost his presence in Iowa – he hopes to raise $999,000 by Wednesday – is already nearly two-thirds of the way there.
These are not the big bucks contributors either. A donor told me the other day that he sent Cain $10 because that is all he can afford in this economy. Yet he is outraged and sickened by what the media is attempting to do, and even though he was financially strapped, and has never given to a presidential campaign before, he sent ten bucks to Herman Cain.
It is obvious from this vantage point that the media is in the tank for anyone other than Cain. Nonetheless, Cain is holding on to his position, great numbers of GOP primary voters see through the media for what it is doing, and there is a growing backlash against the media, not Cain.
Bret Baier, who anchors the weeknight news broadcast on FOX at 6 p.m., noted late last week that the media has spent exponentially more time and done more stories on the unsubstantiated attacks on Cain than they did on the three of the biggest scandals of the scandal-ridden Clinton administration together.
But Cain is still standing, and the media has taken another black eye, as if that was necessary. Maybe the air heads should take a trip outside of Manhattan and DC and get a sense of how the rest of the country views them.
It should be an eye opener.
Sunday, November 06, 2011
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