Last night, Politico broke the news that during Herman Cain’s tenure as director of the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s, two women left the trade association after settling sexual harassment claims against Cain. Cain has since denied the charges, accusing the media of leading a “witch hunt” against him and responding to one reporter by asking, “Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?”
Like clockwork, the Right’s major media critics are rallying to Cain’s defense.
Brent Bozell of the Media Research Council even tied the allegations against Cain to the discredited accusations that Bill Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick when he was attorney general of Arkansas. Bozell argues that while the Cain story is a “hit piece,” the media should have given more coverage to the Broaddrick allegations:
Sadly, Herman Cain’s predictions have come true. In May he stated that he was ‘ready for the same high-tech lynching that [Clarence Thomas] went through -- for the good of this country.’ That's what Politico is doing with its unsubstantiated and thoroughly hypocritical hit piece against him. Anyone in the press that gives this story oxygen is equally hypocritical.
In the eyes of the liberal media, Herman Cain is just another uppity black American who has had the audacity to leave the liberal plantation. So they must destroy him, just as they tried destroying Clarence Thomas. The richest irony here is that the same media that refused to cover evidence of an alleged rape by a state Attorney General who became President now are running stories based on unnamed sources, about offenses that aren’t a fraction as grave. But one was a liberal Democrat, the other a conservative Republican -- hence the double standard.
Rush Limbaugh is also using the Cain case to attack Clinton. Limbaugh said that coverage of the charges, which were originally made in the 1990s, amount to a racist media trying to bring down a black conservative:
You know, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, folks. After all of these years, none of us should be surprised, but I still am. Look at how quickly what is known as the mainstream media goes for the ugliest racial stereotypes they can to attack a black conservative. You know who's laughing himself silly today is Bill Clinton. (imitating Clinton) "Yeah, I really did it. Ha-ha. They praised me and they went as far out of their way as they could. Even my old buddy Carville is out there and he's saying, 'Look what happens when you drag a dollar bill through a trailer park, you get Paula Jones.' I have everybody defending me and they're going after this black guy, and they're going after him with some of the ugliest racial stereotypes I have ever seen. That's how our side does it; we get away with it. I just love it. I love watching it."
What's next, folks? A cartoon on MSNBC showing Herman Cain with huge lips eating a watermelon? What are they gonna do next? No, Snerdley, I'm not kidding. The racial stereotypes that these people are using to go after Herman Cain, what is the one thing that it tells us? It tells us who the real racists are, yeah, but it tells us that Herman Cain is somebody. Something's going on out there. Herman Cain obviously is making some people nervous for this kind of thing to happen.
Not to be outdone, Ann Coulter said on Fox News that the left is twisting civil rights laws that were meant “to protect blacks from Democrats from the South” to help “white women from Scarsdale”:
“It’s outrageous the way liberals treat a black conservative,” she told Geraldo. “This is another high-tech lynching.
…
Nothing liberals fear more than a black conservative. Ask Allen West. Ask Michael Steele. Ask Clarence Thomas. And even what the allegations are here, I mean, just shows you how the civil-rights juggernaut has gone off the rails. The idea of civil rights laws to begin with ironically was to protect blacks from Democrats from the South who won’t protect them. Now it’s you know, white women from Scarsdale who say, ‘Oh, I don’t like that he called me honey.’” Coulter also questioned some of the details of the report and if they merited the definition of harassment.
“It’s not groping, it’s not touching or demanding sex,” Coulter said. “It’s that he had remarks that they found inappropriate. One is he had inappropriate gestures that were not overtly sexual. Well, what were they then? This isn’t dropping your pants and saying ‘kiss it.’ This is an outrageous attack on a black conservative who is doing extremely well and will be our vice-presidential candidate.”
