Harassment and Herman Cain
America, let’s get a grip.
Look at our priorities. Our country is nearly $15 trillion in debt; our economy has been in a deep recession for 3 years; 9.1% of us are unemployed; we have men and women of our military in harm’s way in Afghanistan; foreclosures are up; the stock market is down; oil prices are up; middle income is down; fear is up; confidence in our future is down. Then we have a president who at best is incompetent and at worst has malevolent motivations based upon racial hatred for the oppression he believes was laid upon “his people” despite the fact that his mother was white and his father was from Kenya and had no ancestors who were themselves slaves.
Relative to all these circumstances, what dominates the news this week? It is whether Herman Cain more than one dozen years ago made some woman feel “uncomfortable.” What man didn’t make some woman feel uncomfortable a dozen years ago? Men were only just beginning to understand the boundaries that were just then being set. When does a compliment become a remark that makes a woman uncomfortable? What is the difference between sexual harassment and a man simply being flirtatious? Remarks that women laughed at in 1970 were cause for complaint in 1990 but this all depended upon the woman and her regard for the man making the remark. Talk about subjectivity! Men successfully able to navigate around the waters of the hostile work environment deserve medals. Either they were extremely good looking and women found them desirable, or they were able to leave all their previously taught behavior at home and kept their remarks and in some instances, their masculinity out of the workplace.
What it all came down to ultimately was whether one individual woman might be offended. It didn’t matter who she was. It didn’t matter if the same remark that offended her had not offended fifteen others on that same day. What mattered was that one woman was offended. This ended the careers of some males and had a sad effect on the camaraderie of the workforce.
We made a mistake when we allowed this to happen. No woman should have to endure a truly hostile work environment but neither should any woman have a right to define what this means all by herself. When any woman by a mere accusation can place a man’s career in jeopardy, we have gone too far.
Is this what is now happening to Herman Cain? The circumstances are old. There are no other previously documented situations where women cried harassment against Cain, regardless of where he worked. Oh, we can expect because of the political consequences that women will now step forward but these cries must be discounted as a matter of politics. It is Herman Cain who is likely being harassed.
I don’t know the facts in this situation and because of the lack of significance of these charges when compared to those matters listed earlier, I place the fact that some woman in the last century was made to feel uncomfortable on one occasion by a man who had not reportedly made any other woman uncomfortable in his lifetime holds little consequence in the overall scheme of things.
Unless some woman can come forward with others who can corroborate her story as a witness at the time of her alleged victimhood, I have to regard it as of no consequence. To Herman Cain’s detractors I say, prove it. Prove that some woman was groped; prove that Herman Cain dropped his pants and told his subordinate to “kiss it;” prove that some woman had been raped; find a woman with a stained blue dress who had been dragged through the mud by Herman Cain’s people. Then we’ll talk, and only then. Unless this occurs, I still regard Herman Cain as viable. I haven’t made a selection yet but Cain remains among those who I highly regard as a possible candidate.
Categories: 2012 Presidential Race
Tags: Herman Cain Harassment
Great article!
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You may be right to some degree, BUT, if wrong we do not need this man as a President. You ask for proof? Typical male is to put the burden on the woman or the victim. The blue dress? Disgusting reference, since our FBI held a woman hostage, ( not a criminal) made threats and refused her legal advice and a phone call. Is this how we should obtain truth? Now there are far too many women coming forward, all afraid to speak. I do not blame them. Politics is so corrupt and dirty that one has to look and think far above what the media prints. Is Cain guilty? Where there is smoke there is fire! However a womanizer or not a harasser or not is not what we should use to decide on a person to be President. What does he say on or about current important issues is what we should vote on. So far I do not see or hear anything that would make me vote for Cain. However I will try to keep an open mind.
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If I am wrong? I have not speculated on whether Herman Cain is guilty or innocent of what he was accused of twelve years ago. I have said that whatever he might have said to any of these two or three women does not rise to the level of the exclusion of Herman Cain as President of the United States. I will not elevate the opinion of one or even three women to a position of this much power in a presidential race.
I did imply that the charge of sexual harrassment means nothing to me unless there is some kind of corroboration and some kind of assault as was the case in the examples I cited. The charge means one thing to one woman and something else to another and it all depends upon whether the attention was accepted positively or negatively. No woman should have the power to define what this means all by herself. I did state that directly and I believe that firmly.
If a man makes a pass at a woman that is not wanted she is free to say no. If she is not free to say no then we have a problem but there is absolutely no indication of that in any of these reports. What appears to be true is that the women do not wish to be identified nor involved in the story and some competitor has pushed the story that there was a complaint on the media and now the media is hell-bent at finding out what happened. They are fishing and have no idea what the details are. This is why they want Mr. Cain to tell them. It is simply not a story.
Would I want a man in the presidency who propositioned women? Why not? I am placing the burden on the woman to show us something other than a misinterpreted compliment took place. Paula Jones, Kathleen Willy, Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky or some similar person would need to come forward and quite frankly I wouldn't care about Monica unless the candidate's involvement with the woman named Monica was the subject of perjured testimony before a grand jury. If a man twelve years ago made a pass at a woman so what? That's what men do. As long as the woman is free to say yes or no there should not be a problem. I expect men will continue to make passes at women and women simply need to learn to deal with it as all the women did before them. Say, "No," if they don't like the advance.
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