{"id":785,"date":"2011-12-09T13:43:04","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T11:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=785"},"modified":"2015-04-27T22:42:34","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T20:42:34","slug":"truth-or-dare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/truth-or-dare\/","title":{"rendered":"Truth or dare?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Herman Cain is history<\/a>. On December 3, he ended his attempt to become president.<\/p>\n

Five women brought him down. Four accused him of sexual harassment<\/span> while he was head of the National Restaurant Association (NRA) in the 1990s. The fifth said she had been having an affair with Cain for the past 13 years.<\/p>\n

As the accusations became public, the Left was quick to pronounce<\/span> him guilty, while the Right just as quickly pronounced him innocent.<\/p>\n

How could they reach opposite conclusions? Well, in America, there are certain things you can’t print in the newspaper and you can’t say on television \u2014 and those were the things that Cain was accused of. Also, at least two of the women making the accusations \u2014 Karen Kraushaar<\/b> and Sharon Bialek<\/b> \u2014 had received a financial settlement<\/span> from the NRA years ago under the condition that they not talk about the matter. So what came out were rather vague statements.<\/p>\n

When Ginger White<\/b> proved to reporters that she had Herman Cain’s cell-phone<\/span> number and bank statements<\/span> showing he’d sent her money, however, Cain sounded less and less credible<\/span> as he tried to portray<\/span> all these women as part of a left-wing plot<\/span> to destroy him.<\/p>\n

A vast conspiracy?<\/h2>\n

Why would he think this was a reasonable<\/span> explanation? Possibly because there had<\/i> been a right-wing plot to destroy a Democratic candidate \u2014 namely, Bill Clinton<\/b>. In his 2002 book Blinded by the Right<\/i><\/a>, David Brock describes the Arkansas Project, a coordinated attempt financed by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife to discredit Clinton. Brock was paid to find and embellish<\/span> stories for a conservative newspaper, The American Spectator<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The most salacious<\/span> of these claimed that Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, had used state troopers<\/span> to bring him women for illicit<\/span> affairs. Brock interviewed the troopers but found out, years after his story was published, that the troopers had been paid to make their statements. The story, however, led Paula Jones<\/b> to sue<\/span> Clinton for sexual harassment and Clinton paying her $850,000 out of court to drop the case.<\/p>\n

Had Clinton been behaving inappropriately? Jones didn’t need to prove it, because Monica Lewinsky<\/b> did.<\/p>\n

There are, of course, other cases. Both Michael Jackson<\/b> and Dominique Strauss-Kahn<\/b> were found innocent, even though the circumstances<\/span> of their encounters were certainly questionable (and even though Jackson paid one of his accusers to keep quiet).<\/p>\n

What about…?<\/h2>\n

Now attention has turned to Cain’s replacement as front-runner<\/span>, Newt Gingrich<\/a>. Some Republicans are willing to overlook all the hypocrisy<\/span> and corruption in Gingrich’s past. (In some circles, it’s even a badge of honor<\/span>.) But Gingrich has had his own share of<\/span> affairs.<\/p>\n

Gingrich reportedly<\/span> visited his first wife while she was in the hospital receiving cancer treatment in order to discuss terms of divorce. He wanted a divorce, apparently, because he was seeing the woman who would become his second wife. In 1993, while married to the second wife, he began an affair with a young staffer<\/span> in the House of Representatives. The affair went on while Gingrich criticized Clinton very publicly for getting involved with Lewinsky.<\/p>\n

Gingrich married the staffer in 2000, and they’re still married. He’s said that he’s spoken to God about this and received forgiveness<\/span> \u2014 implying<\/span> that we should forgive him, too.<\/p>\n

Unlike Gingrich, I’m not going to be “holier than thou<\/span>” about this. I believe that if you cheat on<\/span> your wife, then your wife is the person you have to answer to<\/span>. But I will say that if you’re in politics, you have been chosen to set an example<\/span> to others. You have also been chosen because people think you will be able to ignore distractions<\/span> and do your job well.<\/p>\n

I am inclined<\/span> to think that where there’s smoke, there’s fire \u2014 and where there’s fire, it’s best to get out of the building.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Herman Cain is history. On December 3, he ended his attempt to become president. Five women brought him down. Four accused him of sexual harassment while he was head of the National Restaurant Association (NRA) in the 1990s. The fifth said she had been having an affair with Cain for the past 13 years. As the accusations became public, the … >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[139,140,145,29,107,171],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1745,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785\/revisions\/1745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}