One of Cain’s accusers won’t talk

The New Neo Posted on by

Hmmm, very interesting.

What does it mean? It could certainly mean, as Ace suspects, that it was a bogus accusation in the first place.

Or it could mean that the accuser knows her name would be dragged through the mud, her life the target of countless attacks and the butt of a million nasty jokes, as soon as she comes forward.

We really don’t know which. Maybe both.

[Hat tip: commenter “Baklava.”]

[ADDENDUM: Ace notes this, from the NRA statement on the settlement agreement (emphasis mine):

“Based upon the information currently available, we can confirm that more than a decade ago, in July 1999, Mr. Bennett’s client filed a formal internal complaint, in accordance with the Association’s existing policies prohibiting discrimination and harassment. Mr. Herman Cain disputed the allegations in the complaint. The Association and Mr. Bennett’s client subsequently entered into an agreement to resolve the matter, without any admission of liability. Mr. Cain was not a party to that agreement.]

Short rumination on sexual harassment laws

The New Neo Posted on by

The most interesting thing about Herman Cain’s predicament may be the spotlight it throws on the state of sexual harassment laws: awful. Sexual harassment is one of those causes of action, initially designed to tackle a real problem, that fast degenerated into a morass of medacity and “he said she said” disgreements about charges that are unprovable either way much of the time.

That’s no accident. Like most attempts to adjudicate the murkier aspects of human behavior (divorce, for example), the law is inherently incompetent at getting to fairness or clarity or truth. In addition, changes in these laws have come at the behest of political movements that are hardly unbiased, such as (obviously) feminism . In sexual harassment, the pendulum that once was parked firmly in the camp of the perpetrator is now lodged equally steadfastly (if not more so) in the domain of the accuser.

After several decades of this, I think it might be refreshing to decide, at the very least, that (a) jokes and innuendos are not actionable; (b) there should be some objective standards for what is an offense rather than mere discomfort of the accuser; and (c) the victim is not automatically always right, or even always a victim.

Speaking of which: whatever happened to personal responsibility? In other words, is the threat (or the imagined threat) of losing a job really so great that a person has no power to just say “no” to unwanted advances? That’s not a legal question, but rather a moral one.

American Digest clarifies the Cain Perplex

The New Neo Posted on by

Perplexed about the Cain sexual harassment charges? Well, be perplexed no more; clarity is here:

Something or someone got into some cab somewhere at some time in the late 1990s and went back to Herman Cains’ home, apartment, condo, mansion, pizza parlor, Airstream trailer, neighborhood, city, state or region. He, she or it stayed there for a minute, an hour, overnight and was seen at work the next day looking like he, she or it was at work. Of all this our reporters are absolutely sure except when we are not and need to issue a correction. And another correction. And another. Stay tuned. This just in…

The disorganized Cain campaign

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m in agreement with the following observations by Pejman Yousefzadeh about Cain and how he’s handled the sexual harassment controversy:

Can we agree that the Herman Cain sexual harassment fiasco is exactly the kind of catastrophe that is bound to visit a campaign that is ridiculously disorganized, and a candidate that is clearly not savvy about running for political office?…

[The reaction to the charges] show the Cain campaign in a very bad light…No one should have any confidence whatsoever in Cain’s ability to survive a fall election campaign against a battle-hardened Obama team (and incidentally, let there be no doubt whatsoever that the Obama people are loving what is happening to Cain, and the havoc it is wreaking on the Republican field in general, as the Perry and the Romney campaigns are now getting caught up in this story)…

Cain has never proven himself to be a disciplined speaker during his run for the Presidency. His tendency to make ridiculous statements, and then to claim that he was just joking, and his fondness for misstating facts when it comes to addressing policy are all of a piece with his varying explanations and responses to the charges against him. He has shown little to no ability to drive a message, and to show voters that he possesses a command of the issues.

However, I do not agree with Yousefzadeh’s failure to care at this point whether the charges against Cain are accurate. I care, not only because of what it might say about Cain but because of what it might say about how despicable the press has been in its coverage, and the precedent that would set for the future destruction of nearly any candidate. I also care because of what it would mean about the entire field of sexual harassment litigation, which I already regard with a tremendous amount of suspicion.

So far this has been one of the most tawdy (Andrew McCarthy’s word) episodes in recent political reporting, although it’s got a lot of competition. If the allegations are false it becomes not only tawdry but outrageous and dangerous.

The press and the non-politician candidate

The New Neo Posted on by

For the moment the issue in the Cain sexual harassment case has become “Cain should have been ready to answer these charges. So this shows he’s not ready for prime time.”

It’s a good point, but not a great one. A fair part of Cain’s appeal is that he’s neither slick nor a politician. So it’s not so surprising he wasn’t ready for something he thought was a minor nuisance suit. This shows naivete about the press and politics more than anything, and he probably has learned a lesson on this already.

Of course, we don’t know how minor and nuisance-y the sexual harassment claims actually were, or how strong the evidence backing them up. New allegations have surfaced today that are as thinly sourced as the rest and almost as vague (the woman in question had told people that she’d gone with Cain to his home and stayed overnight, according to two more nameless faceless protected anonymous sources). If any of that is true, Cain’s shown even worse judgment than originally indicated.

So it may be that you can’t have it both ways. If you want a candidate who’s not been exposed much to politics in the big leagues, you’ll get someone less adept at the gotcha game and less fully vetted for this sort of thing. For a Democrat that might be okay, because the press would be inclined to be less hostile and far less interested in digging this stuff up. For a conservative—especially a black conservative like Cain—it could be politically fatal.

Who was behind the leak of the original story? There’s no dearth of candidates, but we really don’t know; almost all the candidates are candidates for the honor.

That’s politics.

But you should see the photos

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember the old joke about the grandmother proudly wheeling her infant grandchild in the carriage? She stops in front of a friend to show the child off, and when the friend offers the requisite oohs and ahhs on how adorable the kid is, the grandma answers, “That’s nothing—you should see the pictures!”

Well, that story’s nothing compared to this lawsuit:

…[O]ne groom, disappointed with his wedding photos, decided to sue. The photographers had missed the last dance and the bouquet toss, the groom, Todd J. Remis of Manhattan, said.

But what is striking, said the studio that took the pictures, is that Mr. Remis’s wedding took place in 2003 and he waited six years to sue. And not only has Mr. Remis demanded to be repaid the $4,100 cost of the photography, he also wants $48,000 to recreate the entire wedding and fly the principals to New York so the celebration can be re-shot by another photographer.

Re-enacting the wedding may pose a particular challenge, the studio pointed out, because the couple divorced and the bride is believed to have moved back to her native Latvia.

Got that, folks? Gives new meaning to the term “frivolous lawsuit.”

There doesn’t seem to be any chance Remis will be awarded the money for the re-enactment. The judge, however, is allowing “the case to proceed to determine whether there was indeed a breach of contract.” He may get a smallish sum, but IMHO it will be a great deal more than he deserves.

The Cain chronicles

The New Neo Posted on by

I am heartily sick of the story and it’s hardly begun.

Just take a look at the amount of coverage on memeorandum today, for example, and you’ll see what I mean. All those articles for something that shouldn’t have seen print until (a) the sources were identified; (b) the allegations were specified, including whether there were witnesses to the alleged acts; and (c) the details of what a settlement might mean in terms of a person’s actual guilt or innocence were fully explained.

We don’t know many specifics of the Cain settlement, but here’s a look at the subject in general, from a lawyer who knows something about that sort of thing:

TV and movies would have you believe that most lawsuits end up with a jury hearing the evidence and rendering a verdict. That almost never happens. Close to 97 percent of civil cases never see a courtroom. The vast majority settle, with the business paying good money to end the nightmare…

And, as Herman Cain has learned, you never really can buy your peace. The accusers apparently signed nondisclosure agreements so that Cain and his company could put the accusations behind them. A lot of good that did. Whether it was the accusers or others who revealed the claims, the effort to buy peace now looks like wasted money.

In the world of sexual-harassment law, the accusations are bad enough. You’re guilty until proven innocent. The law is skewed toward the plaintiffs — it’s hard to get even the silliest charges tossed out, and even then it often costs upward of six figures to do so…

Even what constitutes “sexual harassment” has crossed from common sense into farce. In the 1970s, my mother was a lawyer who faced the real thing as one of the very few women in a testosterone-fueled district attorney’s office. Today, women are at or near parity with men in most every field, and are even ahead of them among entrants to the professions.

Yet where sexual-harassment law once protected women from being forced to be the playthings of crude lechers, it’s been transformed to enforcing a prim puritanism that drains the humor and humanity from the workplace. People are afraid to make an innocent joke or compliment a co-worker’s appearance for fear of crossing some unspoken line that will bring down the wrath of the human-resources department.

And then there’s this guy, who says (paraphrasing), “I witnessed the harassment! And it was terrible, horrible! But I can’t say any more for legal reasons.”

How convenient. He can’t say what it was, but he can nevertheless allege that it was bad and would finish Cain’s political career—and that statement is legally okay? And why can’t he talk about it; was he a party to the lawsuit bound by the confidentiality agreement? Or is he afraid of being sued for defamation?

It hardly matters anymore what happened; the sides are probably set in stone. Those who already considered Cain a buffoon and idiot (and it is amazing how much vitriol of that sort was directed against him on left-wing blogs even before these revelations) will continue their condescension and hatred. Those who like him will probably like him more because they will feel he is another target of a high-tech lynching.

Cain was not a favorite candidate of mine even before this, but I have respect for his achievements and I have learned to be extremely wary of sexual harassment charges—and I actually have a quaint habit of trying to reserve judgment on these things till a few relevant facts are in.

[ADDENDUM: Stop the presses! A third woman “experienced behavior by Cain that made her uncomfortable and considered filing a complaint but ultimately did not.”

And you know, come to think of it—I once had a dream in which Cain looked at me funny. I found it very disturbing but I never did anything about it. Does that count?

An article in Forbes offers another angle on who was behind the surfacing of the original story. It claims that Kurt Anderson, a Perry adviser, is being accused by Cain of being the source of the leak about the sexual harassment settlement. But the piece is written in such a way that I don’t see the smoking gun quote in which Cain actually accuses Anderson. Unless something is being left out, it appears that Cain is merely saying that Anderson had been informed about the case back in 2004 when he was a Cain consultant, and therefore had the information that would have allowed him to leak it, not that he actually was the leaker. Unless you count this:

Aside from knowing about the alleged sexual harassment accusations, Cain campaign officials point to the timing of Anderson’s hiring by Perry as evidence of his involvement. The campaign announced Anderson’s role on October 24, just a week before Politico broke the story.

But that’s “Cain campaign officials,” not Cain. Who are they? What is the actual quote? And are they speaking on authority from Cain or not? If Cain’s throwing around accusations against Anderson without good evidence, that doesn’t reflect well on Cain. But I’m not sure that’s what’s happening.

What a murky story, written about in a uniformly murky fashion.]

I still hate the new Yahoo email

The New Neo Posted on by

I knew I was going to hate the new Yahoo email, and I now that I’ve been using it for six weeks I can say I was right and I do. I just didn’t know which features were going to bug me the most.

First, the good news. Used to be that if you had your Yahoo email account open already, you’d still have to click again on “Inbox” or “Check Mail” to get your new mail. Now that arduous step has been eliminated and it loads automatically, which is sort of nice.

But there are a ton of new glitches, most of them put there on purpose as “improvements.” Bosh. The worst of them turns out to be something that appears at first glance to be very trivial but is not (at least not to me): the position of the flag.

Under the old system when you wanted to mark an email for further attention (which I do all the time, or I’d get lost in a sea of messages), the flag symbol was highly visible and to the left of the email’s line in the inbox. It did exactly what a flag should do, which is to get your attention.

Now the new improved flag is not a flag, it’s a yellow star (that’s not really a problem, but it’s not an improvement at all), and it appears as far to the right as possible. This new positioning makes it more difficult to notice, to a great extent defeating the purpose of the entire enterprise. Thanks, Yahoo!

In fact, except for the aforementioned automatic update of new emails, there is not a single feature of new Yahoo that is a plus. I have had more glitches—difficulty signing in and navigating, more freezings and bouncings and carryings-on—with the new Yahoo than I ever had with the old.

But worst of all I hate the forced-choice nature of the thing. I was given no option to keep the old format if I didn’t like the new. And yes, I know I can switch to gmail, but I already have a gmail account and don’t like it. Had it for years and still have trouble finding things on there because to me the format is counter-intuitive.

No, I loved the old Yahoo, and they took it away from me:

Very trivial musical trivia

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Shirley Jones was named after Shirley Temple.

(2) Gordon McCrae took over the role of barker Billy Bigelow from Frank Sinatra in the movie version of “Carousel” .

(3) Meredith Willson, who wrote “The Music Man,” was a graduate (piccolo and flute) of the school that later became Julliard. Before writing “The Music Man,” he’d been a member of the New York Philharmonic under Toscanini, and of John Philip Sousa’s band. The Meredith Wilson songbook is now owned by Sir Paul McCartney.

As far as #2 goes, here’s the real reason Sinatra quit the film (to which, I believe, he would have been highly unsuited anyway):

Here’s Gordon McCrae’s performance of “Soliliquy” from the movie “Carousel.” You can see why he was so eager to lose those ten pounds Shirley Jones mentions in the earlier clip, given the costume he had to wear (this segment and much of the movie was filmed in midcoast Maine, by the way):

Here’s “Soliliquy” by McCrae’s stage successor and the originator of the role, John Raitt:

And here’s Sinatra’s version (although I assume he would have changed his style for the movie; this is very cabaret):

Politico’s Alexander Burns trips himself up…

The New Neo Posted on by

…but will anyone notice?

According to Burns, Herman Cain has been contradicting himself in his descriptions of what he remembers about the sexual harassment charges against him in the 90s [emphasis mine]:

Herman Cain once again revised his account of the sexual harassment allegations he battled in the 1990s, saying in a TV interview that he recalled there were additional “ridiculous” items in his accuser’s complaint, beyond the single incident he detailed Monday.

Cain said in Monday television appearances that he could remember only one specific incident in his accuser’s complaint. He described that episode again to Headline News this morning, saying it involved “putting my hand under my chin, standing near this lady, saying, ”˜Oh, you’re the same height as my wife.’”

But this time, Cain went on to say that there had been “a couple of other things” in the complaint filed during his time at the National Restaurant Association, though he claimed not to remember the specifics.

The complaint concerned “the gesture with the height thing and there were a couple of other things in there that I found absolutely ridiculous,” Cain said, as HLN’s Robin Meade cut in, asking him what “ridiculous” things he was referring to.

“I don’t even remember. They were so ridiculous, I don’t remember what they are,” Cain said.

And then there’s the following addition at the end of the article:

UPDATE: Christian Heinze points out that Cain mentioned in his interview with Greta Van Susteren yesterday that there had been additional “simple stuff” in the harassment complaint, but said he couldn’t recall the details. The National Restaurant Association’s general counsel “may have told me what incidents that she might have included in the claim, but all day today, as I’ve been getting beat up, I’ve been trying to recall what some of those things were and haven’t been able to recall a lot of them because that’s why they got dismissed,” Cain said on Fox. “It was no basis because it was simple stuff.”

So it turns out that Cain hasn’t changed his story here at all; there’s no there there to Burn’s article. The reader has to figure that out for him or herself, though; there’s no explicit mea culpa or retraction, just the update above.

Was Burns sloppy, or purposely misleading? I don’t know, but I vote the latter, on the basis of the tepid nature of the update. This sort of thing works; the hit usually has a longer life than the correction.