Howard Kurtz to Politico’s Jonathan Martin:
You had to make a go or no-go decision. I think that at a lot of news organizations an editor would’ve said, ‘You have done some terrific reporting here, you’ve got some great leads here, but you don’t have it’.
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Well, no kidding they “don’t have it.” All they do have is a 90-plus story feeding frenzy (as of Friday) based on two settled sexual harassment complaints from over a decade ago.
These are also two complaints that seem to be settled for next to nothing when you consider we’re talking about an organization as large as the National Restaurant Association and a high-profile target (even during the nineties) like Herman Cain. Furthermore, these disputed events occurred during the nineties at the height of the post-Anita Hill sexual harassment jamboree when any of us who were in the business world at the time remembers the litigious atmosphere (more on this below).
But the key word here is “disputed,” isn’t it? After all, although Cain and his campaign weren’t very sophisticated in how they handled the story last week, one area in which there has been nothing but consistency is the candidate’s firm denial that he never sexually harassed anyone, ever.
And yet, if you listen to Jonathan Martin, these charges against Cain are neither alleged or disputed — they are FACT:
Martin: “Well, we had the fact that one of these women was brought upon by Cain in a hotel room and was made to feel very uncomfortable. We reported later this week more upon what actually happened with that episode, Howie. She was upset by that, that hours later she confronted a member of the board to complain about Cain’s treatment of her, an explicit sexual overture in a hotel room.”
I’ve seen serial killers, rapists, and child molesters given the benefit of the doubt with the word “alleged,” but black conservatives apparently don’t qualify for those kinds of niceties.
Over the weekend I was told something by an old friend–and since it took place in my small town, I had remembered the incident, but this was the first time I had been made aware of the details. I’m changing a few things around for obvious reasons, but the moral of the story remains the same…
Post-Anita Hill, a small to mid-sized company was sued after three employees accused a middle manager of sexual harassment. The three plaintiffs all hired the same attorney and sued for around a half-million dollars each. The first response from the company was to save on legal fees and just make it go away with a settlement offer of around 10%. The settlement was declined and the suit went forward. Once the company saw the depositions and how laughably stupid the charges were they immediately pulled the settlement offer. The case was eventually thrown out.
The moral of the story is crucial. Had the plaintiffs not been greedy morons and accepted the original settlement, it’s just a fact that for as long as this completely innocent middle manager lived, at any time a Politico could’ve come along and written the exact same story against this person as they did against Herman Cain.
Talk about an injustice.
In the end we may well discover that Cain did behave in a way that disqualifies him for the presidency. Who knows, the woman Gloria Allred’s trotting out this afternoon might have the goods. My point is that for nine days now, Cain has been treated as though he’s terribly guilty of something that we don’t know the details about and that we also have a high-profile journalist labeling as fact something he hasn’t even come close to proving.
This is not journalism. This is a witch hunt. And whether or not Cain ends up being a witch isn’t the point.
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