Notes on Politics: Seeing Sexual Harassment Allegations Through a Partisan Lens

Here’s my bottom line when it come to allegations that someone used his office and his power to attempt to intimidate/persuade female underlings/employees to engage in sexual conduct and/or to subject them to sexually harassing language or behavior because they’re women and you’re feeling a bit randy:

If the allegations have merit and the denials don’t hold water (because the stories/explanations vacillate all over the place or because the individual has been deemed to have evaded truth on many occasions) it doesn’t matter what party affiliation comes after their name. Party is irrelevant. I don’t care if you’re U.S. Senator Robert Packwood or President Bill Clinton or GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain. If you have indeed harassed a woman (or women) sexually in the workplace, you should be held accountable for it. If you’re a public figure, you’ve made it difficult if not impossible for the female half of your constituency to believe that you can or will respect them and their rights if you treat your female underlings/employees so shabbily.

But that’s not the approach people always take when it comes to accusations of sexual harassment involving political figures. Some people’s reactions are shaped by their partisan affiliation and they just can’t see past it. If you’re a Democrat and party is more important to you than, say, taking a stand against sexual harassment and abuse of power, you’re going to stand by your man no matter what lip service the politician and the party provide to supporting women in the workplace -- a la Bill Clinton and those groups who continued to support him in the wake of his sex scandals and his administration's trashing of Monica Lewinsky's reputation to try to discredit her. Yet these folks also wanted Sen. Packwood, who’d voted “correctly” on women’s issues, booted from the Senate because he was a Republican, and conservative Clarence Thomas' nomination not to be confirmed to the Supreme Court in light of Anita Hill's testimony.

On the flip side, conservatives who vigorously went after Clinton on issues of character after the Monica Lewinsky scandal (and the Paula Jones one and the Juanita Broaddrick one came to light) are defending GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain and calling the allegations nothing more than a sleazy smear. This sure sounds familiar.

I don’t know whether the allegations against Cain are true. I do know that the organization which he used to run handed two women who claimed he’d sexually harassed them some nice walking away money (one woman got a year’s salary, according to the New York Times). There are now rumblings about a third woman who was allegedly harassed by Cain as well.

Cain has denied the charges. (As, you might note, so did Clinton when it came to Lewinsky and as did former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards when confronted with stories that he got a campaign consultant pregnant and persuaded another staffer to pretend to be the father of the child.) Cain has said he didn’t remember what happened. He said he didn’t really recall if a “settlement” had been paid to the women.

But then we learned that he had allegedly spoken about these allegations with campaign aides in 2004 when he ran for U.S. Senate. Clearly he didn’t really “forget” and was not unaware of a “settlement.” As one political pundit suggested, Cain’s sounding awfully Clintonian. I’m just waiting for him to say it all depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.

Late Night Comedians Lampoon Cain Ad That Already Seems Like a Joke

While talking heads puzzled and puzzled over what on earth the slow-smile Herman Cain/chief of staff blowing smoking ad was trying to accomplish, late night comedians have taken great joy in mocking it.

Stephen Colbert did the best parody on Comedy Central of not just the eight-second smile bit, but had his staff do a series of “dangerous” things in phony Cain ads. I have a soft spot for Colbert's version of the elongated smile.

Over on The Late Show with David Letterman, he and his crack staff likewise took a stab at re-imagining Cain’s ad, throwing a smoking baby into the mix.

Conan O’Brien also made sport of the unorthodox commercial and had his staff do edgy things just before Cain’s drawn out smile appeared on the screen.

Cain certainly is getting a lot of free mileage out of his freaky web-based spot. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Notes on Politics: Cain's Odd Smoke-Filled Campaign Ad, Rich Getting Super-Rich & Gotta See 'Margin Call'

What are We to Make of This . . . Cain’s Campaign Blowin’ Smoke?

There has been a lot of buzz about GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain’s sudden rise in the polls, in at least one of them he has, shockingly, topped front runner Mitt Romney.

And while we’re trying to figure out when the Herman Cain 9-9-9 apples and oranges bubble is going to burst – I will be utterly astonished if it doesn’t – I’d like to know what in the heck is up with this latest Cain ad featuring his chief of staff literally blowing cigarette smoke at the camera. Seriously, anyone care to venture forth an explanation for the cigarette followed by Cain's Cheshire cat grin? It's baffling. I don't know what it means and it's been bugging me.

Top 1 Percent Saw 275 Percent Increase in Income, CBO Says

A new Congressional Budget Office report says that the top 1 percent of U.S. wage earners have seen their incomes increase by 275 percent over the past 30 years, Politico reported. Politico continued:

“The after-tax income for the highest-income households grew the most out of any group form 1979-2007, the CBO reported. The richest 1 percent of Americans saw a 275 percent growth in household income, while the poorest 20 percent experienced just 18 percent growth . . . The 60 percent in the middle of the income scale saw just under 40 percent growth in after-tax income.”

This provides the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy [Everywhere] protesters with fresh ammo in their objections to the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots.

Go See ‘Margin Call’

Over the weekend I caught the new “inspired by a true story” film Margin Call, an insiders’ look at what happens when a Wall Street investment firm realizes it has taken on more financial risk than the total worth of the company and decides to sell off investments which they know have no value to unwitting customers in order for the firm to survive. It mixes a little bit of the aura from The Company Men and Up in the Air, as it starts off with mass layoffs at the firm, and also has the intelligent tension of the HBO drama Too Big To Fail.

It provides an unflinching look at the 2008 financial meltdown from the perspective of folks from inside one firm who are making decisions which they know will have a wide-reaching impact only most of them only care about what happens to themselves. While moral questions are raised, many immoral, greedy answers are provided, as some folks who aspire to do the “right” thing – which isn’t always clear – find themselves trapped within the confines of the framework of today’s financial world and believe they have no good choices. This whole financial mess, it’s complicated and ugly. But, then again, we already knew that.