I don’t think anyone would describe Pulitzer Prize Winner for Commentary Kathleen Parker as a Liberal. A member of the Washington Post Writers Group, she describes herself politically as “slightly to the right of center.”
Sharon Grisby, deputy editorial page editor, The Dallas Morning News, has described her writing and her journalistic talents as follows:
In a media genre that’s all too often predictable, Kathleen Parker almost never fails to surprise – with her passion, her wit and her creativity. She’s an independent thinker and her viewpoint is often so fresh and original, you can’t help but be moved even when you disagree.
Why am I saying all this?
Because in the free-for-all, partisan, opinionated buzz-saw surrounding the Cain sexual harassment flap, I have to agree with Grisby that Parker’s viewpoint is so fresh and original, you can’t help but be moved even when you disagree –as I do on one or two of her points.
Although the Cain flap is unraveling so fast that it is hard to keep up with it, Parker’s column yesterday in the Washington Post is, in my opinion, as valid and current today, as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow.
Parker concludes her piece as follows:
Cain is hardly the first political candidate to suffer this kind of scrutiny. But a faulty memory is a weak defense when the national media is chasing your history. As soon as humanly possible, Cain needs to find out what was in the complaints and settlements and get the facts on the table. If he doesn’t, someone else will.
If I understand her right, Parker is saying: Listen Herman, it’s not the alleged sexual harassment that will get you, it’s the totally unnecessary and stupid obfuscation.
In Cain’s possible defense, Parker says:
As political history makes clear, where there is smoke, there is usually at least a match. In this case, as in many instances of alleged sexual harassment, it also can be a matter of perception. Nothing is more subjective than sexual harassment.
But she also warns Cain that “When you’re running for president of the United States, you’d better know the difference …” between what in Cain’s generation might have been viewed as a gesture of friendliness, and what someone younger could view as “hostile or at least inappropriate.” Parker claims Cain today knows the difference.
If he does, he should stop pretending he doesn’t. He must understand and face the perception head-on, stop the obfuscation and halt the bleeding.
Read more of Parker’s column here.
UPDATE I:
The New York Times has just reported that
The National Restaurant Association gave $35,000 — a year’s salary — in severance pay to a female staff member in the late 1990s after an encounter with Herman Cain, its chief executive at the time, made her uncomfortable working there, three people with direct knowledge of the payment said on Tuesday.
The woman was one of two whose accusations of sexual harassment by Mr. Cain, now a Republican candidate for president, led to paid severance agreements during his 1996-99 tenure as the association’s chief. Disclosure of the cases has rocked Mr. Cain’s campaign just as he was surging in polls.
Further challenging Mr. Cain, a lawyer for the second woman called on the restaurant association to release her from a confidentiality agreement signed as part of her settlement, raising the prospect that she could publicly dispute Mr. Cain’s account of what happened.
Read More here.
UPDATE II
The Associated Press reports that a third former employee of the National Restaurant Association says she considered filing a workplace complaint against Herman Cain when she worked for the presidential candidate in the 1990s.
She told the AP that Cain made sexually suggestive remarks or gestures about the same time that two co-workers had settled separate harassment complaints against him. She says the behavior included a private invitation to his corporate apartment.
Read more here:
