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.

Candy corn cravings

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: The following is a slightly edited version of an old post.]

This year I noticed that, when kids came to the door for Halloween, they seemed to grab the little packets of candy corn first. That doesn’t surprise me, since I’m a huge fan of the disgustingly sweet stuff myself and have absolutely no ability to resist it.

So it’s best if no candy corn is left over come November first, because if there were I’d just eat it. I’m hardly alone in this; it’s estimated that twenty million pounds of the classic treat (invented in the 1880s) are sold every year in the US. I personally might be responsible for approximately a ton of that if I gave in to my worst impulses. However, I keep my addiction in tightly-controlled check.

Once I even went to a Halloween party dressed as a piece of candy corn, and I was already a grownup at the time. And apparently I am not the only adult who has dressed up as candy corn on Halloween. And no, I didn’t look like this—more’s the pity (although to be technical, isn’t she dressed as two pieces of candy corn, the body and the hat?):

candycorncostume.gif

Even some fanatically health-consciously vegans seem to crave candy corn although alas, the treat is off-limits to them because of its animal-related ingredients. Animal ingredients? If you doubt my words, just take a look:

Sugar, Corn Syrup, Salt, Honey, Soy Protein, Gelatin, Confectioner’s Glaze, Dextrose, Artificial Flavor, Titanium Dioxide Color, Artificial Colors (Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Red 3, Blue 1)

Gelatin and honey must be the big no-nos. But happily, a thoughtful vegan (are there any other kind?) mother has come to the rescue with a recipe for candy corn so complex and labor-intensive that it undoubtedly reflects a devotion to the stuff even more intense than mine. Try it if you dare—and if you are insane.

There are various gourmet variations on candy corn, and I’ve sampled quite a few in my day. To my mind they can’t compare to good old Brach’s. But after watching the following highly informative video, I may just try some Goelitz:

And here’s a burning question I was reminded of by the video: do you eat your candy corn in sections? And, if so, do you consider the top to be the yellow part or the white part? I’ve always seen the little white triangle as the “foot” of the candy corn, but I learned when I designed my costume years ago that most people see it the other way. For those who might be inclined to disagree with me, I offer the following exhibit from the realm of science:

corn-components.jpg

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The New Neo Posted on by

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Herman Cain and the sexual harrassment allegations

The New Neo Posted on by

So, Politico has dug up some dirt on Herman Cain.

And it’s dirt of a sort so common in our modern PC world: allegations of sexual misconduct of an unspecified nature that ended with a payout (from the National Restaurant Association).

Such charges are, quite literally, indefensible—it’s “he said she said” in the modern age, in which the victim is always right. Unfortunately, a payoff means nothing except that the organization has decided it’s cheaper to pay than to fight in a game where the deck is stacked against an alleged perpetrator.

That’s true whether the supposed perpetrator is Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, white or black. What’s more, the system encourages false claims, because the name of the accuser is protected. Even now, in the case of Cain, Politico is not releasing the accusers’ names for “privacy” reasons—although perhaps the names will leak out over time, as these things often do.

Starting way back in the 80s or even earlier, I became skeptical of all such allegations since I saw firsthand (mostly through an incident I witnessed at a university) how unfair they can be and how the deck is stacked against the accused. In the case I knew best, it shocked me to learn that all that was necessary for the charge to stick was nothing more than an assertion by the accuser that the accused had done something that made her uncomfortable. The locus of the offense was in the definition/reaction of the hearer, not any objective standard of right or wrong.

How far we’ve come from the bad old days when sexual harassment in the workplace was winked at (literally). Now the worm has turned so decisively that the accused pretty much calls the shots. This does not mean that sexual harassment doesn’t occur, or that’s it’s okay when it does. But it does mean that we should regard all such allegations with automatic suspicion (as I did with those against President Clinton, until a certain blue dress appeared).

Let’s see what has been alleged about Cain’s behavior [emphasis mine]:

During Herman Cain’s tenure as the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, at least two female employees complained to colleagues and senior association officials about inappropriate behavior by Cain, ultimately leaving their jobs at the trade group, multiple sources confirm to POLITICO.

The women complained of sexually suggestive behavior by Cain that made them angry and uncomfortable, the sources said, and they signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave them financial payouts to leave the association…

The sources ”” including the recollections of close associates and other documentation ”” describe episodes that left the women upset and offended. These incidents include conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature, taking place at hotels during conferences, at other officially sanctioned restaurant association events and at the association’s offices. There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship.

Notice that the locus of the offense appears to have been in the perception of the accusers.

It occurs to me that, although the exact date of the Cain allegations and settlement is not specified except that it was “in the 90s,” we know it had to have been after 1996 because that was the year Cain became affiliated with the restaurant organization. So if the charges were trumped up, it would have been possible for the accusers to have gotten the idea from the Anita Hill hearings against Clarence Thomas, which had such high visibility in 1991.

Cain alleges that he didn’t even know about the payments:

“If the restaurant association did a settlement, I wasn’t even aware of it,” [Cain] claimed, “and I hope it wasn’t for much. If there was a settlement, it was handled by some of the other officers at the restaurant association.”

That is certainly possible as well.

Which enemies of Cain’s might be responsible for pushing this story? There are a host of possibilities on either side, way too many to choose from. And isn’t it interesting that Politico is refusing to go into more of the details of the allegations?:

Politico’s Jonathan Martin: “And also, what actually happened to these women as well, we want to be sensitive to that, too. It includes both verbal and physical gestures.

“These women felt uncomfortable, and they were unhappy about their treatment, and they complained to both colleagues and senior officials. In one case it involved, I think, inviting a woman up to a hotel room of Cain’s on the road ”¦ We’re just not going to get into the details of exactly what happened with these women beside what’s in the story.”

How very “sensitive” of Politico.

I imagine we’ll be hearing more about this story.

You think the postal service is bad now?

The New Neo Posted on by

You should have seen it around 1815:

To send a letter from the United States to Britain, you addressed it by domestic U.S. Mail to a shipping house on the coast, enclosing money to cover ocean travel and inland postage in Europe. The captain of the transatlantic ship was the real carrier, and passengers sometimes undercut him by agreeing to take letters at 25 to 50 cents apiece. But the total cost of a letter from the New World was never less than a day’s wages, or two days’ wages in the other direction. Time taken was rarely less than two months, even if the letter was an important official dispatch carried by fast frigate. In 1817 the new president, James Monroe, wrote to John Quincy Adams in London, summoning him to be Secretary of State, on 6 March; it reached Adams only on 16 April, the fastest of four identical letters sent by different routes.

Early snow comes to New England

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s not so very unusual for a dusting of snow to occur in New England right around the beginning of November. But a more substantial snowfall is predicted:

Simpson cautioned that the early snowfall is not an indication of what the winter might bring.

“This doesn’t mean our winter is going to be terrible,” he said. “You can’t get any correlation from a two-day event.”

It’s pretty weird, though. But not unheard of. I well remember a fairly large October storm in 1979, although I had the good fortune not to be in Worcester, Massachusetts at the time (a record-setting 7.5 inches).

By the way, speaking of Worcester, Massachusetts (which I rarely do if I can help it), it used to be the location of the best southern Indian restaurant ever. Alas, “used to be,” because the place has been defunct for years. But it’s where I was introduced to this transcendental comfort food, the masala dosa, a jumungous crisp thin pancake made of fermented rice and lentil flour and stuffed with spiced potatoes (the white stuff in the little dish is a great coconut chutney):

Did that seem like an odd segue? The link is Worcester, and the connection is storm=comfort food. And if you don’t think that a fermented lentil-rice pancake stuffed with potatoes sounds good, just try one—if you’re lucky enough to locate an Indian restaurant that features the fabulous vegetarian food of the southern part of that country.

The Left’s view of the racist right and the problem of Herman Cain

The New Neo Posted on by

The mind continues to reel at the mental gymnastics of the left when confronted with the right’s support for Herman Cain. The latest exemplar is Karen Phinney, who said:

Let’s review the logic here. If Finney starts with what she considers a truism, that the right is racially bigoted, she is faced with a conundrum: how to reconcile this with their support for a black man. Rather than abandon the sacred meme “the right is racist,” Finney must instead reason that support for Cain is just a cover for racism, and that he’s either (a) not a “real” black man; or (b) a certain kind of black man who is acceptable to racists. Finney chooses (b), and rather than call him an “uncle Tom” (the preferred nomenclature for black people on the right) she calls him a black man who “knows his place.”

Finney herself is bi-racial, so perhaps she feels she is inoculated against the charge of racism herself. But she, like much of the left, seems to see almost everything through the prism of race. The fact that a certain not insignificant percentage of the left may have supported and voted for Obama in part because he, as a black man, made them feel good about themselves in the racial sense, is ignored. The fact that many people on the right choose candidates to like or dislike because of their politics rather than their race is also ignored; neither process conforms to the approved narrative.

But the strangest thing about Finney’s observation is that it fits the case of Herman Cain so poorly. This is a man the right supports because he “knows his place”—a phrase which, in the traditional racist sense when used about black people, has always meant their not rising very high in the world? But Cain is an extremely successful man and is in fact running for president of the United States. If that’s his “place,” according to the right, then how can the right be racist?

The mind boggles.

[ADDENDUM: And then there’s Joy Behar, who notes that “the Republican Party hasn’t been black friendly over the many centuries in this country.” It would be hard to find a more Orwellian comment anywhere, and if Behar isn’t even aware of the actual history of the Republican Party and its noble fight against slavery and racism, than we can add abysmal ignorance to her resume.

For those of you who, like Behar, may have slept through the entire American history curriculum, here’s a teeny introduction:

Founded in Northern States in 1854 by anti-slavery activists, modernizers, ex-Whigs and ex-Free Soilers, the Republican Party quickly became the principal opposition to the dominant Democratic Party and the briefly popular Know Nothing Party. The main cause was opposition to the Kansas”“Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise by which slavery was kept out of Kansas. The Republicans saw the expansion of slavery as a great evil.

But perhaps Behar knows all that, to give her the benefit of a doubt she doesn’t probably deserve. And perhaps this is her reasoning, somewhat akin to Finney’s twistings: the Democrats in the South who were actually the racists for lo nigh those “many centuries” were really closet Republicans, and the Republicans were really closet Democrats.]

Time rocks on

The New Neo Posted on by

Time treats people (even rock stars) differentially.

Some look great: Billy Idol, Bret Michaels (who’s a mere 48, though, so it’s not a good test), and Bruce Springsteen. Pat Benatar looks better than in her youth, and David Bowie looks good without seeming to have had any cosmetic surgery, since his eyes are hooded in a way that’s normal as a person ages.

Meat Loaf looks better, too—but then he had almost nowhere to go but up. Other “goods” are Joan Jett, Van Halen, Tom Petty, Ted Nugent, Sting, Bon Jovi, and Annie Lennox.

The bad ones (and it’s not always due to weight gain, by any means) are Grace Slick, Mick Jagger in one of the worst photos ever of him (they really had to search for that one), Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop (terrifying), the most dreadful photo of Dylan ever (he should sue), Ron Wood (scary), and Neil Young (my goodness).

No doubt some of this is the result of long-term and determined abuse of the body through good old sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The rest? Dunno. And probably some of the “goods” have done their share of partying, too.