Herman Cain Latest Accuser's Story Rings True

It will be interesting to see how long the objective fact deniers in the GOP's Christianist/Tea Party base refuse to accept the fact that in addition to being utterly ignorant on crucial issues, Herman Cain is also a pervert and sexual predator. Now, we're up to four (4) different accusers and the latest - Sharon Bialek - appears to sound believable. Let's face it, where there is this much smoke (not to mention paid confidential settlements) it's hard to believe that there isn't some actual fire. One has to wonder why those in the GOP seems to always grab onto unsavory blacks (think Clarence Thomas, ethically challenged dullard in chief on the Supreme Court) as they attempt to claim that the party is not racist. Could it be that decent, respectable blacks aren't self-loathing enough to play water carrier for the descendants of white segregationists? Michelle Goldberg looks at Cain's latest accuser in The Daily Beast. Here are some column highlights:

By the end of Sharon Bialek’s press conference at Manhattan’s Friars Club on Monday, you could already see the case against her taking shape. In many ways, Bialek is exactly the kind of accuser who could damage Herman Cain the most—an attractive blonde Republican, a mom who attends Tea Party events. But as the questions put forward Monday suggest, she also has vulnerabilities. She was fired from her job in 1997. For the past two years she’s been a “full-time single mom,” and her lawyer, Gloria Allred, refused to say how Bialek supports herself.

After the conference, I saw the right-wing talk radio host Mark Simone in the lobby. “You didn’t actually believe any of that, did you?” he asked, smirking. I said it sounded plausible to me. He gave a condescending laugh . . .

I have no way of knowing, obviously, whether Bialek was telling the truth. None of us do. But there’s nothing unusual about a woman seeking professional help from a powerful older man and getting sexual advances instead. More than that, it’s often hard to tell, at least initially, whether a man is offering mentorship or lechery. This is one of the difficult things about being a woman in a male-dominated workplace. Career progress often depends on relationships, and on people higher up taking a friendly interest in you. When you have a chance to have drinks or dinner with someone you look up to, it’s not always easy to figure out whether it’s an opportunity or a trap.

As Bialek tells it, she had reason to believe that Cain’s interest in her was avuncular; after all, when she worked as a manager at the Educational Foundation, part of the National Restaurant Association, she’d socialized with him along with her boyfriend. Indeed, it was the boyfriend who suggested that she seek Cain out after losing her job, as he had always been so friendly to her.

This story is wearingly familiar. Most women I know have experienced something similar, though rarely so crude. For me, it was the professor who I thought admired my writing until he propositioned me. Friends have told me about a foreign policy pro who is infamous for coming on to young women who need jobs. Despite the myths on the right about hordes of humorous and litigious harpies eager to turn every dirty joke into a payday, women tend to shrug these things off, especially when there’s no violence or retaliation. No one wants to spend her life in court, . . .

[W]hile I don’t know whether Bialek’s story is true, I do know that it rings true. It makes sense that she didn’t report Cain or come forward until now. According to two affidavits that Allred read at the press conference, she did what most women do: confide in people close to her, in her case her boyfriend and a friend, and move on. She had nothing to gain and much to lose from doing otherwise, and men who do what Cain is accused of doing count on that.