1. The settlement looks bad, but is in no way an admission of either guilt, or conclusive evidence that anything happened…..Corporations often make the calculation that it’s infinitely less expensive in terms of energy, reputation and money for a company to make something go away.
2. The problem for Cain is that he’s “winging it”…..He’s trying to handle everything as he remembers it. We saw him contradict himself on whether he knew about the settlement. He said at the beginning, no, then on the Greta Show he talks about details of it.
3.What he needs to do – (it’s not as if he’s lying) – I can’t remember what I had at lunch, yesterday, let alone what happened 15 years ago….He needs to retire with his staff, to make sure he knows the facts, call people who might remember it, and get the story in his own head straight, otherwise he’s in deep trouble.
I agree 100% – That’s actually good advice for Cain on any number of issues in which he’s been less than stellar.
In an interview with Greta Van Susteren that will air on Fox, tonight, Cain offered a detailed recollection of what led one of the sexual harassment charges against him from when he was CEO of the organization The National Restaurant Association.
Cain said the woman was “younger than I was,” but he could not recall her age. Pressed, he said, “It would have had to have been late 30s, early 40s.”
Van Susteren asked what Cain did that led to the accusation. There were reportedly more than one accusations in the complaint, but Cain said he recalled just one incident. “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.'” At that point, Cain gestured with his flattened palm near his chin. “And that was put in there [the complaint] as something that made her uncomfortable,” Cain said, “something that was in the sexual harassment charge.”
Van Susteren asked whether the woman complained at the time. “I can’t recall any comment that she made, positive or negative.”
Cain also offered new information about the settlement of the case. Politico, which broke the sexual harassment allegation story, said that the woman received a money settlement “in the five-figure range.” When van Susteren asked about that, Cain said, “My general counsel said this started out where she and her lawyer were demanding a huge financial settlement…I don’t remember a number…But then he said because there was no basis for this, we ended up settling for what would have been a termination settlement.” When van Susteren asked how much money was involved, Cain said. “Maybe three months’ salary. I don’t remember. It might have been two months. I do remember my general counsel saying we didn’t pay all of the money they demanded.”
Herman Cain said in another Fox News interview, earlier today, that he didn’t know of any settlements.
“If the Restaurant Association did a settlement, I wasn’t even aware of it, and I’m hoping it wasn’t for much – because nothing happened! If there was a settlement, it was handled by some of the other officers who worked for me at the time.”
Now I’m confused.
Perhaps he got more information from his general counsel about the case, since he made that statement?
Four Politico reporters,*including Journolister, Ben Smith, have run a story alleging that Herman Cain engaged in “inappropriate behavior” with two female employees while head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s. They have confirmed the identities of the two female restaurant association employees who complained about Cain but, for privacy concerns, are not publishing their names. Very sweet of them. As we know, private citizens deemed a threat to a presidential candidate *cough* “Joe the Plumber” *cough* can be savaged by the MSM in an effort to discredit them. So those privacy concerns are well founded. The MSM would totally leave no stone unturned in their efforts to smear these courageous whistleblowers whose stories could torpedo the campaign of the candidate most likely to beat Obama in the 2012 election.
Not.
John Hayward ofHuman events notes that not only has “sexual harassment” returned with a vengeance since its heyday in the nineties, it now doesn’t even have to be “overtly sexual.”
The sources — which include the recollections of close associates and other documentation — describe episodes that left the women upset and offended. These incidents include conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature, taking place at hotels during conferences, at other officially sanctioned restaurant association events and at the association’s offices. There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship.
Remember the Praetorian Guard behavior of the media ranks that closed around Bill Clinton – to the point of aggressively suppressing credible accusations of rape against him, and thereby launching the career of Matt Drudge – when you watch the swarms of reporters tearing into Herman Cain over this. I wonder how many innuendo-laden conversations Clinton had with women who were not Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office. Heck, I wonder how many he had last week.
All of Politico’s sources are perfectly anonymous. Anonymous sources confirm the reports of anonymous sources, and anonymously relate things Herman Cain allegedly said to them years ago. Everyone willing to go on the record either had no comment, or spoke well of Cain.
Read on.
RS McCainupdates his post on the Politico Hit piece:
UPDATE II: A female Republican operative who worked on Herman Cain’s 2004 Georgia Senate campaign scoffs at the accusations against him. “I don’t believe story that Cain behaved inappropriately,” wrote the woman, who uses the Twitter handle @KarolNYC. “He never even bordered on inappropriate in the slightest,” she Tweeted, and added that she ”just can’t believe there’s anything to the charges.”
Time will tell if there is any substance to this story. As Hayward notes:
Cain is supposed to make a Fox News appearance at 11:15 this morning, and will also speak at the American Enterprise Institute today. He should throw every card he has on the table, and relate every scrap of knowledge he personally possesses about whatever took place, subject to any legal obligations he might have to the National Restaurant Association. If this story has even the tiniest bit of meat on its bones, a misleading report will become the story by the end of the week, and nobody in the press will care about how shoddy Politico’s rollout was.
Now, a word about the Politico and their shoddy use or disuse of anonymous sources however it suits them.
In 2008, the Politico was given a tip that would have shed light on the Obama/Ayers relationship, but was never followed up on in the fall of 2008 – the Ayers babysitting story. It was quashed because, according to the rumors circulating at the time, there was only one nervous, anonymous source, and Ben Smith needed at least two anonymous sources to run the story.
The McCain campaign approached us with a story they had on Obama, which needed a second source to confirm. They had found a young woman in Hyde Park who had played with the older Obama girl on occasion, and knew about babysitting William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn did for the Obama girls. The young woman was the daughter of a McCain supporter in Hyde Park (probably the only McCain supporter in Hyde Park), and was barely a teenager. The McCain camp went to Ben Smith with this story, but he refused to look into it because the only witness to the Ayers/Dohrn babysitting operation was a teenaged girl who happened to be the daughter of a McCain supporter.
We were charged with finding someone else who could verify that Ayers/Dohrn babysat the Obama girls. We brought their old swimming instructor up, and Ben Smith shot that person (now a respected advertising executive) down because she, too, was a Republican and a McCain supporter. So, Ben Smith refused to do a write-up on the Ayers/Dorhn babysitting…despite getting two different people who didn’t know each other to verify that this happened on more than one occasion.
When you look at a map of the Hyde Park area, you see Louis Farrakhan, the Obama/Rezko Mansion, and the William Ayers residence in very close proximity to one another…about as close to each other as The Gap, Banana Republic, and Express are to each other in a typical suburban mall. Walking distance. So close, young children could easily walk between the houses without parents worrying about them.
That story was one of many that could have deep-sixed the Obama campaign, but thanks to Journolister, Ben Smith, it was the story that was deep sixed.
When it comes to “Praetorian Guard behavior from the media ranks”, none hold a candle to The Politico.
Cain stressed, “I have never sexually harassed anyone.” He did admit that he was accused of harassment while at the National Restaurant Association, saying, “Yes, I was falsely accused while I was at the National Restaurant Association. And, I say falsely because it turned out, after the investigation, to be baseless.”
Past employees of Cain, including his long-time female executive assistant, have told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that the charges are unbelievable.
“It’s just not Herman,” says Sibby Wolfson, who was Cain’s executive assistant from 1997 through his first campaign for office in 2004, in a phone interview. “He’s got a lovely wife, a lovely family.”
Did Wolfson ever see Cain act in a way that could be construed as sexual harassment? “No, God, no,” she says. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. In fact, I think Herman was careful to act in the opposite way.”
If Herman Cain was a sexual harasser, (a la Bill Clinton), more women will be coming out of the woodwork in the coming weeks. But, somehow, I doubt it. Just like Anita Hill was the only woman Clarence Thomas was ever known to allegedly harass, these two anonymous victims of harassment will probably turn out to be isolated incidents, as well.
UPDATE:
Ace (who’s a Perry supporter) says he’s been hearing rumors:
Here’s a big question: “Are we going to hear about other allegations in the future?”
He says, “Absolutely not.” But immediately says: “If more allegations come, people will [sic] simply make them up.”
I say this is a big question because I heard about this stuff a month ago, and I didn’t hear about two incidences. I heard about many more.
I did not have detailed information, certainly nothing publishable. But I heard there was a long and numerous history here.
If he has this flaw in his character, there will be other instances of harassment, and those stories will come out eventually. Better now, then in the general election.
But it’s hard to believe it’s true when so many women who have worked for him are willing to go on the record saying they have never seen that in his character.
The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution says explicitly that the accused has a right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”
True, the court of public opinion is not the same as a court of law. Still, the same basic principles of fairness and decency ought to apply in both venues. The media must not character assassinate people with anonymous accusations which, if true, could destroy reputations and end careers.
In short, name names or shut the hell up.
*Correction: My report originally listed Ben Smith as one of the writers of the Politico hit piece. I was confusing him with Jonathan Martin.
On September 27, I wrote a post called Obama Fantasiesto ridicule the MSM’s latest attempt to push a narrative they deem helpful to their chosen one – the risible, snort-inducing, “scandal-free Obama administration” meme.
Mark it on your calendars: if President Obama has just 20 days to go — October 6! — in order to claim the record as the most scandal-free president since 1977.
Then the Solyndra scandal broke in a big way, smashing the meme to smithereens. But the idea that the Obama administration was “scandal free” was a complete fantasy before Solyndra.
Here’s an incomplete list of Obama scandals to date:
Now, a month later, we have Jonathan Alter reviving the narrative in a piece that reads like The Onion at Bloomberg News:
President Barack Obama goes into the 2012 with a weak economy that may doom his reelection. But he has one asset that hasn’t received much attention: He’s honest. (emphasis mine.)
Stop laughing – it gets better:
…the president’s Teflon is intriguing. How did we end up in such a scandal-less state? After investigating the question for a recent Washington Monthly article, I’ve been developing some theories. For starters, the tone is always set at the top. Obama puts a premium on personal integrity, and with a few exceptions…
I’ll tell you how he got into such a -uh – “scandal-less state”. Most of the idiots in the MSM aren’t reporting on the scandals as they should be, (in some cases they’re actively running interference for the administration – *cough* NYTs*cough* . So those who don’t watch Fox News, read conservative media, or page 23 D of the newspaper the one and only time the scandal’s mentioned, don’t get to find out what is really going on.
But the White House’s intense focus on scandal prevention has had mixed results. The almost proctological vetting process has ended up wounding Obama as much as prospective nominees. He gets cleaner but often less imaginative officials.
There’s been a culture of corruptionin the Obama administration since day one, as should be obvious by now to anyone with working brain cells. It was so blatant and egregious, Michelle Malkin was able to write a bookabout his “team of tax cheats, crooks, and cronies” only six months into his Presidency.
The vigilance about wrongdoing has worked better when it comes to oversight of the $787 billion stimulus program. The money might not always have been spent on the right things. But a rigorous process supervised by Vice President Joe Biden, and made transparent with the help of recovery.gov, has prevented widespread fraud and abuse.
He really had to bring “Sheriff Joe’s” stellar work fighting waste and fraud, into it, didn’t he? Because we haven’t laughed enough, already.
A few months ago, Doug Ross listedwhat he considered to be the top 10 boondoggles funded by the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, selected from the Coburn report“American Recovery and Reinvestment Act“.
Here’s a few – You’ll love these:
1. Restoring a ‘national park’ that’s almost 100% underwater (FL) – $13 million
Visitors to Key West, Florida with enough time and money can explore one of the National Park Service’s less convenient destinations: Dry Tortugas National Park. Located 70 miles offshore, the park is almost entirely underwater and accessible only by airplane or private boat. Despite its relative inaccessibility, the park will get $13,304,484 in repairs for its barely above-water attraction, Fort Jefferson. Those willing to take the 4 1/2 hour round-trip ferry ride aboard the Yankee Freedom II have to pay as much as $165 per person, but will discover that only 40 of the park’s 65,000 acres are dry land.
4. Commerce Dept. Makeover and Door Shift (Washington, DC) – $183 million
The Hoover building in Washington has been rehabbed at a cost of nearly $1 billion over the last decade. It houses approximately 3,500 federal employees at the Department of Commerce, the White House Visitor Center, and the National Aquarium. The money will be used renovating unused office space for temporarily rotating groups of up to 400 Commerce employees at a time and ripping out
walls to install 16 miles of insulation. And moving a door to the aquarium.
3. Snow-making equipment and chair lifts (Mt. Snow, Vermont) – $25 million
Mt. Snow will use the stimulus dollars to replace two chairlifts, construct a 120-million-gallon storage pond for snowmaking, and install additional snowmaking fan guns. “Mount Snow was pursuing the chairlift renovations when they learned that government stimulus funds were available for ski area capital improvements.”
2. Fake News Videos Pitching ObamaCare (NYC, New York) – $25 million
What do you do when a key government program is unpopular with the general public? In the case of the stimulus, you sign a multi-million dollar contract with a public relations firm previously embroiled in controversy. For some time, the administration’s push for health information technology systems has faced significant public resistance because of privacy concerns. In response, the Department of Health and Human Services spent $25.8 million on a contract with Ketchum Inc. to help win over public opinion. Ketchum was criticized before, however, on other governmental work. The reason? Producing fake TV news stories for government agencies.
It turns out that waste and fraudare features, not bugs in the unwanted stimulus – the inspiration for the Tea Party.
I realize Alter’s target audience are the drones – he means to keep them in a continued state of unawareness – but judging from the comments at Bloomberg, it ain’t flying with most if not everyone at that site. If the first page of comments are an indication of the rest of the 1338 Comments, Alter has safely cleared the shark in a clown-suit as far as most people are concerned.
Miracle? How? The media consistantly gives the false messiah, Soros’ pet a pass. What is the big surprise? If this was GW Bush, he would have been impeached 16 times already.
Oh brother…keep grabbing at straws Mr. Alter…I’m enjoying the show! This President isn’t and wasn’t qualified to be dog catcher just as you are not qualified to be an objective, fair and honest journalist. You didn’t do your job in the last election cycle so I’m certainly not going to put any stock in what you write or say now. There is no way in hell I would vote to re-elect this man. He’s done enough damage and needs to find a career he’s actually qualified to do and I have no idea what that is.
What a buffoon. In the fantasy, make-believe world of Leftists, where all they do is read each other’s swill, Obama is “free of scandal”. In the real world, everyone knows otherwise. Whatever brains or standards these Leftists may have once had has been converted into mush in their demented, suicidal quest to prop up this President, the worst of all time.
This is the most ridiculous article I have ever read. It is filled with lies and distortions and is your typical liberal spin. What’s “unethical” is that you people call yourselves journalists. Whoever wrote this is a mindless Obama drone.
Only thing I can add that hasn’t already been mentioned regarding Alter is that I keep thinking back to that old BeeGees song, written especially for JA’s parents: “I started a joke.”
Keep ’em coming, Jonny…keep ’em coming. Like Joe Pesci, you amuse me.
I haven’t read a single comment in defense of the article. Granted, I only read the first page of comments, but still….
Pretty brutal stuff – especially when you consider that the vast majority of the over 1,300 comments are in the same vein.
PJTV: Afterburner with Bill Whittle: How to Steal Power:
This comes highly recommended by my daughter who is playing it in her orchestra class: Prelude For Strings/Gerald Finzi Boston String Players Conducted by Motoki Tanaka:
Nice Deb 
Only thing I can add that hasn’t already been mentioned regarding Alter is that I keep thinking back to that old BeeGees song, written especially for JA’s parents: “I started a joke.”
Keep ’em coming, Jonny…keep ’em coming. Like Joe Pesci, you amuse me.