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.
