I haven’t follow the allegations of sexual misconduct leveled at Herman Cain closely, but from what I’ve read thus far, it amounts to anonymous sources quoting unnamed women making vague allegations. For now I’ll make the following points:
i) I don’t think Cain is the best candidate for other reasons. It may be that he will be knocked out of the running for the wrong reasons. I’d prefer another candidate, although it would be unfortunate if he’s unjustly ousted.
ii) There’s a larger issue. The accusations I’ve read thus far are politically correct accusations of the sort that endanger all normal men. It’s fostering a witch-hunt climate for men who are harmlessly flirtatious, or simply take pleasure in gazing at a pretty woman. That shouldn't be a prosecutable or a fireable offense.
iii) A witch-hunt creates a dilemma. On the one hand, it threatens many innocent bystanders. You never know who the accusers will come for next.
On the other hand, it’s also dangerous to oppose the witch-hunt. To be the first person to take a public stand against it. For the instant you do so, suspicion falls on you. What would motivate you to defend an accused witch unless you yourself were a secret sympathizer?
So even though many men privately disapprove of what’s happening to Cain (assuming he’s innocent of genuine wrongdoing), there’s still a temptation to distance yourself from him for your own protection. If you defend him, you’re inviting unwanted attention.
iv) This also reflects a new, reverse double standard. According to the old double standard, boys could be boys, but girls were shamed.
Now, however, it doesn’t seem as if a woman will get in trouble for flirting with a male coworker, or casting admiring glances at a male coworker. Same thing in public school.
v) A related problem is the way this illicitly expands the roster of registered sexual offenders. It doesn’t discriminate between genuine sexual predators and politically incorrect offenders.
And, ironically, this is more likely to fuel pornography and prostitution, if men feel that’s safer than flirting or dating.
A witch-hunt feeds on its own momentum. It only stops when it implicates the power brokers. If the power brokers feel threatened, then they will shut it down. But it does untold damage before reaching that point.
Like Stalinism, the liberal establishment is creating a class of political prisoners.
Who thought we'd see the day when Cuba was gaining sense (allowing private property)and America continuing to lose it.
ReplyDeleteI think it's likely that Cain sexually harassed some women. To be accused of sexual harassment is unusual. To be accused by multiple women is even more unusual. And it's even more unusual still for multiple other individuals to corroborate the charge. It's possible that all of these people are lying or somehow honestly mistaken. But it's unlikely. There's a lot of information we don't have, and the silence of these witnesses doesn't seem to make sense in some cases. But Cain's silence on some of the issues involved hasn't made sense either. Regardless, we have enough details to warrant a conclusion that misconduct on Cain's part is probable. Asking for more details or the names of the witnesses, for example, doesn't address the other details we have.
ReplyDeleteChris Wilson, a named source, claims to have witnessed Cain's behavior during some of the incidents in question. He could be lying or honestly misjudging the situation. But other sources have been making similar claims about Cain for years, and you have to wonder why Wilson would make up an incident that took place in such a public setting, with multiple other individuals involved and Cain being confronted about it ("other individuals present asked Cain to stop"). If Wilson was making up a story, he should have put it in a more private and less falsifiable setting. The Los Angeles Times reports that other employees of the National Restaurant Association have corroborated Wilson's assessment:
"Interviews with half a dozen people who worked at the restaurant association at the time paint a mixed picture. Some said it was 'an open secret' that Cain had made inappropriate comments — and sometimes invited female employees to his Washington hotel or apartment. The sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter and worried about possible repercussions. Others, like Steve Caldeira, who worked for Cain as the association's vice president for communications and marketing, defended him as a model boss and said that the accusations sounded completely out of character....A second association employee concurred [with Chris Wilson], saying Cain's actions were widely known among the staff."
It's also worth noting that Politico and other media sources know the name of at least one of the women allegedly harassed by Cain. The name of the woman was given to the Cain campaign. She isn't an anonymous source to those media outlets, and she isn't anonymous to Cain.
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ReplyDeleteI'd like to see these witnesses come out with more details. (For some examples of the details that have been provided so far, see here and here.) But Cain should be going into more detail as well. If he wanted, he could describe more of the accusations that were brought against him instead of being so selective in describing what happened. It's not as though Cain's accusers are the only ones who are being too selective about releasing details. So is Cain.
But that doesn't mean the credibility of the two sides is equal. To believe Cain, you have to believe that a large number of people who claim to be eyewitnesses of misconduct or to be corroborating eyewitnesses are either lying or mistaken. That's possible. And some unreasonable Cain defenders keep acting as if the possibility of Cain's innocence is sufficient reason to suspend judgment or dismiss the charges. If we applied that sort of reasoning consistently, the results would be disastrous. How many of these conservative defenders of Cain applied that sort of reasoning to Bill Clinton? He might be innocent, so we should suspend judgment or dismiss the charges. I don't find that kind of reasoning convincing.
The accusations against Cain have been detailed to some extent, though not as much as I'd like. Most of the witnesses are anonymous to some extent, but not all of them are, and there are good reasons for some of them to want to retain some anonymity. Cain's defenders need to stop complaining about things like lack of detail and anonymity and do more to address the details, including names, that are already known. And it's not enough to dismiss media sources just because they're liberal or dismiss conservative critics of Cain just because Cain isn't their candidate.
Assume, for the sake of argument, that all of the charges are false. Still, do we want a candidate with this kind of controversy surrounding him, a candidate who's also made so many other significant mistakes in so many contexts?
@Brian: It's less and less surprising by the day:
ReplyDeleteObama Administration Opposes FDR Prayer at WWII Memorial
While I hate political correctness, this has little to do with that. You can't file a sexual harassment claim just because someone was being innocently "flirtatious".
ReplyDeleteAccording to a fellow at the National Institute of Justice, several criteria must be met depending on whether the harassment was of the "quid pro quo" variety or a "hostile work environment" one:
- The conduct was unwelcome.
- The conduct was severe, pervasive, and regarded by the claimant as so hostile or offensive as to
alter his or her conditions of employment.
- The conduct was such that a reasonable person would find it hostile or offensive.
- A tangible economic benefit of the job was conditional on the claimant's submission to the
unwelcome sexual advances (for quid pro qro type cases).
- Typically involves a series of incidents rather than one incident (although a single offensive
incident may constitute this type of harassment).
JASON ENGWER SAID:
ReplyDelete“I think it's likely that Cain sexually harassed some women. To be accused of sexual harassment is unusual.”
I don’t that’s unusual for CEOs of Fortune 500 type companies. Some women are golddiggers, and that’s a gold mine. Sexual harassment suits are a lucrative cottage industry for lawyers and complainants alike.
(Of course, it’s also true that men in positions of power are also more likely to abuse their power.)
“To be accused by multiple women is even more unusual. And it's even more unusual still for multiple other individuals to corroborate the charge. It's possible that all of these people are lying or somehow honestly mistaken. But it's unlikely.”
But that makes assumptions about the state of the evidence. Yet that’s one of the problems in this case. At least when I did my post.
“But Cain's silence on some of the issues involved hasn't made sense either.”
I don’t know that his silence is suspicious. He may be bound by confidentiality agreements. Trying to avoid legal liability by speaking out of turn.
“Regardless, we have enough details to warrant a conclusion that misconduct on Cain's part is probable.”
At this point I don’t see it that way. I agree with James Taranto:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203716204577015981404125366-lMyQjAxMTAxMDAwMzEwNDMyWj.html#printMode
http://online.wsj.com/article/best_of_the_web_today.html#printMode
“Interviews with half a dozen people who worked at the restaurant association at the time paint a mixed picture. Some said it was 'an open secret' that Cain had made inappropriate comments — and sometimes invited female employees to his Washington hotel or apartment.”
But what’s “inappropriate”? Are we talking about genuine impropriety? Or is this a feminist definition that scapegoats normal men for simply being normal men?
We need to resist a legal and political culture that’s trying to reshape the social landscape by prosecuting men for being normal. That’s part of a larger social engineering agenda:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2000/05/the-war-against-boys/4659/
I’m not saying that’s necessarily the case where Herman Cain is concerned. But we need to be alert to ulterior motives which may be driving sexual harassment laws (i.e. “a hostile work environment”):
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/281891
Steve Hays wrote:
ReplyDelete"I don’t that’s unusual for CEOs of Fortune 500 type companies."
I'm not aware of any reason to think that a majority of individuals in the category you're referring to get accused of sexual harassment. And I wouldn't single out that category. Women can also get money by accusing people at lower levels of management, politicians, athletes, etc. I don't have any polling data on the subject, but I don't get the sense that most people in such contexts get accused of sexual harassment. When men like Steve Forbes and Mitt Romney run for office, I don't think they usually have a charge of sexual harassment in their background. That's one of the reasons why the Cain story has gotten so much attention. You wouldn't expect somebody to have been accused of harassment just because he's been wealthy or comes from a business background like Cain's.
You wrote:
"Some women are golddiggers, and that’s a gold mine."
Yes, but I believe that only two of the women involved in the Cain case reached settlements for money. I'm aware of two other women who are alleged victims of Cain's harassment, and I don't think either of them received money. The two who have received money might be able to get more money from a book deal, a paid interview, or some other such source. Or maybe there are legal reasons why they wouldn't be able to. I don't know. But so far, they don't seem to be going after more money. That could change. We'll see. Some of the women involved have had their claims corroborated by other sources, so any theory that they're lying for money would have to assume that the other witnesses are lying as well, that the women planned things so as to deceive these other witnesses, or some other such thing. That's possible, but it makes a deception theory more problematic.
And the gold-digging woman scenario doesn't cover people like Chris Wilson and the individuals who corroborated his assessment for the Los Angeles Times story I linked.
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ReplyDeleteYou wrote:
"But that makes assumptions about the state of the evidence."
I don't think any of my comments you quoted assumed anything that's disputed. Nobody's denying that there are multiple women involved who allegedly were harassed by Cain and multiple individuals corroborating those women's experiences in some way. What's disputed is whether these witnesses are trustworthy.
You wrote:
"I don’t know that his silence is suspicious. He may be bound by confidentiality agreements."
He's not part of the agreements with the two women who reached settlements. That's why the woman who spoke, through her lawyer, this past Friday only had to reach an agreement with the National Restaurant Association before her lawyer issued that statement. She didn't need to negotiate anything with Cain. Remember, Cain himself commented on these incidents early on. He described how he put his hand up to his chin and commented on a woman's height. He didn't seem to think any legal requirement prevented him from going into such details. He presumably could say more if he wanted to. And it appears that only two of the women were even involved in settlements. That sort of legal consideration seems to be irrelevant with regard to somebody like Chris Wilson as well.
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ReplyDeleteYou wrote:
"I agree with James Taranto"
I've read both pieces. I didn't notice any significant point he makes, against my position, that I haven't already addressed. I agree, for example, that Cain's accusers have been too vague, as I said earlier. But they have provided some details, like the ones described in the articles I linked earlier. I don't see how the anonymity of some sources, their vagueness at times, or the political associations of somebody like Chris Wilson, for example, overturn my argument.
As I said before, how many people have to be lying or honestly mistaken in order for us to believe Cain? And this is the same Cain who seems to have handled the initial stages of this controversy dishonestly. See here and here. I also think he's been dishonest in other contexts, namely his attempts to explain controversial comments he's made about political issues. Quin Hillyer gave some examples in his post I linked earlier. Not only is Cain outnumbered by so many witnesses who are contradicting him on the sexual harassment matter, but he also has a credibility problem that would make it difficult to trust him even if it was just his word against the word of one other person. When he's so outnumbered, and the witnesses testifying against him don't yet seem to have credibility problems equal to or worse than Cain's, I don't see how you avoid concluding that Cain's guilt looks more likely than his innocence at this point.
You wrote:
"Are we talking about genuine impropriety? Or is this a feminist definition that scapegoats normal men for simply being normal men?"
You're singling out one sentence from the Los Angeles Times story I quoted. The same story refers to other incidents that don't likely involve "a feminist definition that scapegoats normal men for simply being normal men". But even if we single out the one sentence in question, I wouldn't expect the average person to define his terms as an unreasonable feminist would. It's possible that all of the people the Los Angeles Times spoke with are part of the minority who would accept such an unreasonable feminist definition of terms, but that's unlikely.