By Melanie Jones: Subscribe to Melanie's RSS feed
November 6, 2011 11:05 AM EST
In the wake of a third woman coming forward in the Cain sexual harassment scandal, and the GOP primary candidate threatening to sue POLITICO for libel, Republican supporters have scrambled to find ways to distract from the charges.
The first, taking a page from Hillary Rodham Clinton in the wake of Monica Lewinsky scandal, is the idea that this is a vast media conspiracy orchestrated by the ideological Left. It's no secret that most of American media (with the omnipresent and glaring exception of Fox News) is left-leaning, especially in print journalism, and that Democratic writers have dived into the Cain harassment story like sharks in a feeding frenzy.
The second strategy was far more risky, and problematic: the roots of the POLITICO scandal were racist, and liberals hated Cain for being a strong, conservative black man. This tactic began with Cain himself when he compared his "high-tech lynching" to the case of the man who coined the phrase, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Extremist conservative firebrands like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh quickly dove on this angle, with Limbaugh claiming Democrats "owned" minorities and Coulter telling Sean Hannity, in one infamous segment, that, "our blacks are so much better than their blacks."
Now, however, a third strategy has emerged. It plays off both American perceptions of sexual harassment charges and the impact of the feminist movement and, more even more insidiously, questions of racism and race. It is a new GOP contention, shared by those across the right-wing spectrum and said by those in the media and elected to office. It is, quite simply, this: the GOP hopeful's guilt isn't even an issue, because sexual harassment just isn't that big a deal.
Dismissing Harassment: "That Appears To Be It!"
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Ann Coulter, as usual, began the assault, accusing "horrible, angry feminist women" of drumming up the charges against Herman Cain on Andy Levy's Red Eye on Oct. 31.
Rush Limbaugh meanwhile, in a radio segment later that evening, consistently grouped allegations of sexual harassment against Cain with the adultery charges leveled at Bill Clinton, equating sexual abuse with anything involving sex.
He spoke of "all kinds of bimbos popping up all over the country" saying that they slept with President Clinton, ending with the emphasis that "Clinton had actually done things to them."
Such rhetoric was part of a wider scope of Cain defense, where sexual harassment, if it existed at all, was so arbitrary and insignificant as to not count as "doing" something at all, especially if it happened some time ago.
"We're talking about, as far back as fifteen years ago here!" Limbaugh said, ending with a rundown of Cain's alleged crimes-repeated sexual innuendo, suggestive gestures, frequent personal questions of a sexual nature-and saying, somewhere between dismissiveness and incredulity, "that appears to be it!"
Comments questioning the validity of sexual harassment as a charge, and painting it as a tool used by "horrible, angry feminists" or "bimbos" looking to get attention, are something American audiences have come to expect from Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
Conservatives' New Strategy: Trivialize Sexual Harassment Itself
Such insinuations however, didn't stop with the extreme faction of the GOP. As the days following the POLITICO story wore on, less and less commenters on the Fox Network and among Cain supporters were concerning themselves with the charges' validity, and more and more began to trivialize the idea of sexual harassment itself.
Guest host Peter Johnson Jr. was one of them. Appearing on the morning show Fox & Friends on Nov. 1, Johnson moved straight from the allegations themselves to joking about whether Cain should have had a "witness" tailing him in all his interactions with women, just to make sure he didn't make a pass at her. "Does he need someone," Johnson Jr. said, smiling, "to stand there and corroborate [every] discussion with a woman in a room?"
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