It looks like the man who wandered unprepared and unqualified into the GOP presidential field, Herman Cain, has stepped in some shit festering beneath his feet for years. And, predictably, insane Republican banshee Ann Coulter and bloated Prince of Privilege Rush Limbaugh have dived into the circus with their, ummmm, unique take on Mr. Cain’s problem.
Cain, whose GOP front-runner status attests to the stupefying Tea Party stink settling over the nation, not only denies that he’s ever, ever, ever sexually harrassed anyone, but insists that when he said the National Restaurant Association administered an “agreement” with the purported victims, he didn’t know it was a “settlement.” No, not at all.
That would be like missing the ID of a Ford and calling it a Lincoln, I guess, which is different from seeing a Ford and calling it a cantaloupe. Clearly, “settlements” in the aftermath of sexual harassment charges and “agreements” after same are kind of like the latter. Or at least to Cain, unless he thinks the electorate is too dumb to grasp his equivocation.
An “agreement” with a purported sexual-harrassment victim that results in the case not being pursued and at least one woman being asked to sign a confidentiality agreement in exchange for said “agreement” couldn’t possibly be a “settlement” involving payoff. Right? That’s ludicrous. I’m sure that when he heard “settlement,” he was asserting that in no way were the Pilgrims at the Jamestown community involved. Really, Republicans, ought you consider electing a man whose vocabulary evidently only includes understanding of one meaning of a word like “settlement”?
And now those dedicated denizens of the Civil Rights and social justice movements, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and, soon, a great many other Republicans, will flood the airwaves protesting the horrible, racist treatment of a Black man who insists that he hasn’t himself experienced discrimination based on his color since he rode a segregated bus in 1963. Funny. It was in the early 60s that Limbaugh and Coulter’s predecessors were expending tremendous energy to block the civil rights legislation that benefited not just Cain, but the entire nation. So I guess they have some perspective from which we can all gain insight.
Coulter, for example, who’s turned aggression, fabulous hair and great legs into a lucrative career in the GOP punditry, howls that the leak, the coverage, and the firestorm is evidence of a “lynching.” Coulter was too young and crazy only to her friends and family when the Clarence Thomas “high-tech lynching” over his sexual harrassment of Anita Hill was playing out, but she’s on board now, by golly, stirred to action by her firm commitment to racial justice and, not incidentally, her hatred of Democrats. And Limbaugh calls this a “liberal drive-by” attack on “a Black conservative,” evincing the same heartwarming care to engage in racial healing that he did a decade or so ago when he doubted that a Black football quarterback like Donovan McNabb would be smart enough to call the plays.
Coulter’s and Limbaugh’s feigned concern about racial equality is transparently hypocritical, vicious, and ill-conceived. By insisting that any rough media treatment of a Black candidate is a priori racist, they confirm the very racism within that Cain insists has never been used against him. I don’t know if Cain committed any acts of sexual harrassment; Southern and Midwest conservative have long clung to the fear of the sexually rapacious Black man nurtured by conservatives and bigots for centuries, and it’s possible that he’s been falsely accused. If so, that’s wrong. A settlement would seem to argue against that idea, but I’ll give Cain the benefit of the doubt until more comes forward — regarding sexual misconduct, that is.
As far as his integrity in responding to honest questions about his past, he appears to have none, and no game of Race Cards on the part of his supporters can change that.
Methinks Cain