Unnamed sources, vague allegations, and innuendo amount to nothing more than a media hit. Politico‘s attack on Herman Cain a week ago stunk, and it stinks today just as badly.
Sharon Bialek, however, is a different story. The 50 year-old self-described Republican who claims she was groped by GOP front-runner Herman Cain in 1997 has stepped into the limelight. With the help of attorney Gloria Allred, Bialek has made very specific allegations. Those charges can’t be written off as just another case of the corrupt, left-wing media being the corrupt, left-wing media.
In the 24 hours or so since she arrived on the scene, Ms. Bialek has done the morning news shows, had a small part of her story confirmed by Big Government, and has had another part of her story called into question by an eye witness who saw Bialek and Cain hug just over a month ago at a Tea Party conference.
None of these development changes the “he said, she said” nature of the charges, and neither does the Cain campaign’s latest line of defense–in which they’ve accumulated what’s described as Bialek’s “long and troubled history, from the courts to personal finances.”
So far nothing we’ve been told proves Cain groped Ms. Bialek.
Nothing proves he didn’t.
In the end, though, this story is bigger than the drama. Nothing more than who will be America’s next President, and nothing less than a man’s reputation, are on the line. And now that she’s chosen to come forward and open herself up to scrutiny, the same can be said for Ms. Bialek’s reputation. Cain is being accused of feeling up a woman against her will, and Bialek is being called a “gold digger.”
The next step a responsible media should take is to look at Bialek’s long history of lawsuits and previous claims of harassment, and let the public know if she has a history of making false accusations of any kind for personal gain or attention.
Whether or not Bialek filed bankruptcy a couple of times, smiles too much or had her hair done recently doesn’t really amount to anything more than the same innuendo Politico used to try and bring Cain down. But because we have little to rely on other than her own words, her credibility is an important issue, and there is much in her public background that could give us a glimpse into her trustworthiness. That kind of information would be very relevant to this story.
Unfortunately, we all know how this works. When a Democrat like former president Bill Clinton is accused of sexual harassment again and again and again, the MSM comes to the rescue and gleefully joins the James Carvilles of the world in seeking to destroy the accusers one by one. But when the accused is a Republican, most especially a black Republican like Clarence Thomas, the media turns the accuser into an American folk hero.
Therefore, we can only hope against hope that the MSM dares to take this story to a place where they may or may not like what they find.
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