( Breaking story in W Times, a 5th woman has made accusations... )
(http://www.politico.com/)
Herman Cain's next move
By: Roger Simon
November 8, 2011 04:49 AM EST
The woman stands in front of the artillery snouts of the TV cameras and
nervously reads her statement. She is dressed and groomed carefully. She has
put on black-rimmed glasses, which give her a slightly professorial air.
“He put his hands on my legs, under my skirt and reached for my genitals,”
she says. “He also grabbed my head and brought it toward his crotch.”
This is Sharon Bialek speaking of Herman Cain.
Cain is running for the Republican nomination for president of the United
States. He has previously been accused by three unnamed women of sexual
harassment.
Bialek’s accusation is different, however. If true, the allegations would
appear to be sexual assault, usually defined as “when someone touches any
part of another person’s body in a sexual way, even through clothes, without
that person’s consent.”
Cain’s encounter with Bialek in the front seat of his car allegedly took
place 14 years ago. And while Bialek says she told two people about the
event shortly after it occurred, she never went to the police or filed a civil
suit.
Which is not all that surprising. Many women are filled with a deep sense
of embarrassment or shame after such incidents and often end up at least
partly blaming themselves.
Today, however, Bialek blames Herman Cain.
“Come clean,” Bialek says to Cain via the TV cameras.
She says she is speaking out now in order to become a “face and voice …
to all women who don’t come forward out of fear.”
The Cain campaign issues a statement denying Bialek’s accusations moments
after she is done making them on TV. “All allegations of harassment against
Mr. Cain are completely false; Mr. Cain has never harassed anyone,” the
statement says.
It then goes on to champion Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan, as if that will get
things back on track.
Of Bialek, little is known — though much probably will be as the press
burrows deep into her past. She has been identified to America by her
high-profile lawyer, Gloria Allred.
Allred says Bialek is a “registered Republican” and “a college graduate.”
She is the “mother of a 13-year-old son” and was the “co-host of a
cooking show” on television. She also worked for Revlon, WGN radio and CBS
radio, all in Chicago, and the National Restaurant Association’s Educational
Foundation. She had been fired from that last job and went to Washington,
D.C., to seek Cain’s help in getting a new job.
Allred does not say it, because she does not need to, but Bialek is white
and Herman Cain is black.
How or if that will matter to people is not known.Cain recently said of
the attacks on him that “relative to the left, I believe that race is a
bigger driving factor. I don’t think it’s a driving factor on the right.”
Toure, a black author who recently published the book “Who’s Afraid of
Post-Blackness?” said recently on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” with Lawrence O’
Donnell that Cain has indulged in “moments of minstrelsy” to appease white
conservatives.
Race was not mentioned during Bialek’s news conference. Indignation was.
“I want you, Mr. Cain, to come clean,” Bialek said. “Just admit what you
did. Admit you were inappropriate to people, and then move forward.”
But just what direction Cain will now move in is not obvious. The most
recent RealClearPolitics average of leading polls shows him still at the front
of the Republican field, leading Mitt Romney 24.8 percent to 22.4 percent.
Cain certainly looks to be in a tough spot, but allegations of sexual
impropriety — even when admitted — do not automatically end the career of a
popular politician.
In 2003, less than a week before a special election for governor,
first-time candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger was accused in the Los Angeles
Times in
chilling detail by women who said he had groped and touched them.
The number of accusers eventually rose to 15 and Schwarzenegger was forced
to say, “Yes, I have behaved badly sometimes, … and I have done things
that were not right, which I thought then was playful. But I now recognize
that I have offended people.”
And Arnold Schwarzenegger won the election and became governor of the
largest state in the land.
In January 1992, Bill Clinton was accused by Gennifer Flowers of having
had a 12-year affair with her. Clinton denied it and his campaign viciously
attacked Flowers, though after his reelection he was forced to admit having
had a sexual encounter with her.
The other sexual accusations against Clinton came after he was safely in
his second term, though the Monica Lewinsky affair led to his impeachment by
the House and acquittal by the Senate.
While the scandal was raging, I asked Clinton’s press secretary, Mike
McCurry, what the image of the presidency had become in such sexually explicit
times.
“It has been a result of TV,” McCurry said, “which brings you [to]
people, warts and all. The president is now in your living room. Sports heroes
used to be larger than life, but in the TV era they have been reduced to
human beings. Everyone is stripped down to their skivvies pretty quickly these
days.”
Some survive these moments, and some do not. Being a celebrity helps. We
have grown used to being forced to imagine our celebrities in their
skivvies. (“Usually briefs,” Clinton said in 1994 when asked at a town hall
whether he wore boxers or briefs.)
But Herman Cain is no Bill Clinton and no Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is
just Herman Cain. That has been enough to get him to the front of a very weak
field. Where he goes from here may not be forward.
--
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