More Bad News For Cain: Pajamas Media Post Details Alleged Cain Sexual Harrassment Incident
What further sign can you see that Herman Cain is in trouble then the fact that the drip-drip-drip has now become closer to a flood of stories on the sexual harassment allegations and he publication by the conservative website Pajamas Media of more details of an alleged sexual harassment incident.
This can’t be dismissed as that bad, ‘ol liberal media moving another step in a nefarious plot to go after a conservative, or a black conservative (to use the line Ann Coulter prefers). Just as The Politico is hardly a liberal news site, Pajamas Media has never been accused of being part of the liberal media (but just wait 24 hours it may happen yet). Here’s part of the post:
Adding to the ongoing Herman Cain sexual harassment controversy, two sources have now confirmed to PJ Media that a female employee of the National Restaurant Association told associates she had been brought by Mr. Cain to his Crystal City, Virginia residence where she alleged “he had taken advantage of me.”
Both sources claim to be politically conservative.
One source, a male, told PJ Media:
Herman took advantage of seniority and power with a young woman. It was an abuse of power.
Implying that coming forward with the accusations was an ordeal for the young woman, the source also said:
Who do you believe, a CEO or a mid-level staffer? It was unsettling for her to make charges.
The name of the woman — who was in her early twenties at the time of the alleged incident — has been confirmed by PJ Media. We have chosen not to reveal her identity for reasons of discretion.
Both sources, one male and one female, worked at the time — mid-1990s — for the governmental affairs department of the National Restaurant Association, as did the woman.
According to the female source, Mr. Cain and the woman had been with a large group for a long evening of food and drink at the Ciao Baby Cucina, a restaurant near NRA headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C. This was a normal routine, as the trade association worked with the food and beverage industry. Afterwards, Mr. Cain allegedly took the woman by taxi to his apartment, where she spent the night and woke up.
The female source told PJ Media that she witnessed the woman and Herman Cain break away from the large group as part of a smaller group.
Neither source has direct knowledge of what occurred at Mr. Cain’s residence, but several days after the alleged incident, the female source witnessed the woman returning to her workplace “distraught.” “She was very upset.”
One source told PJ Media: “Some people didn’t believe [the accuser]” at the time she made the allegation. The female source recalls the woman continued working at the NRA for several weeks after the encounter; the male source recalls the woman continued working there for a few months.
Both sources claim that during this period following the incident while the woman was still employed, the NRA’s human resources office held many “closed door meetings” that included her. The woman’s parents retained legal counsel and arranged an undisclosed financial settlement.
Of course in scrutinizing allegations there will be many more tough questions — including some aimed at this report.
But Cain is now becoming a textbook example of the way not to handle a crisis.
Expect this story to continue with media of all kinds — new, old, conservative, liberal, non-partisan — to be looking for new twists. When I was a reporter on newspapers owned by Knight-Ridder and Copley an editor would typically ask: “So is there a new twist on this? Have we looked at all angles?” It wasn’t how to “get” someone but whether a hot story that was picking up steam or that had been raging for a while had a new angle that my publication could get that no one else had.
Editors and reporters also advance in their careers if they get new, fresh info that their news outlets can put on page one or at the top of broadcasts. It’s about news gathering on a hot story and stories where a source does not seem to be giving all the info are the most tantalizing to those in the news biz. That’s why the best advice is the advice always give now: get it all out soon and behind you to minimize damage and move on.
This story has “legs” (in more ways than one).
4 Responses to “More Bad News For Cain: Pajamas Media Post Details Alleged Cain Sexual Harrassment Incident”
but, but, Joe …
LOL
Far to many holes in this PJM story.
There was a time – not so long ago, actually – when the personal lives of candidates for the Presidency were just that: Personal.
Then along came this guy that had, to put it mildly, a checkered past when it came to the opposite sex, and suddenly his business became everybody’s business.
Thanks to a rare and perhaps unintentional collaboration between the GOP and the mainstream media, this guy’s personal peccadillo’s became politics, and within short order the salacious details of not only his indiscretions, but everyone else who worked inside the beltway became legitimate news.
I wonder if, deep in the dark recesses of the GOP strategists minds in the 1990s, it ever occurred to them that the idea of “if we can’t get him on policy, let’s go after his sex life” would ever come back to bite them in the behind?
My guess is that it didn’t.
Whether the accusations against Cain have merit or not, the fact remains that the GOP is reaping what they sowed with their campaign against Clinton.
cjjack-
All this reaping and sewing talk makes me think randy thoughts. Obviously to journalists, and, to other gossip oriented mercenaries, it’s extremely profitable. Which, in my mind, makes them more suspect than the reaper or the sewer. If a woman says “no”, that being the end of it, why then should it be a scandal, save for loss of face?
Lets not forget the Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings Affair. We must remember that reaping and sowing is fully part of our heritage. Though my Mother was not much of a farmer, my Father certainly was….thank the stars.