Does he or doesn't he?

    There has been a lot of coverage of the Herman Cain sexual harassment charges. Really, a lot. The story seemed to overshadow important elections happening in Mississippi, Iowa and elsewhere last evening as well as the Occupy movement and all the rest. In fact, there seemed to be nobody other than Herman Cain on tv yesterday. We saw Herman Cain discuss the allegations (in the third person no less) and pundits cable-wide were caught up discussing not so much the did he or didn’t he but the will he or won’t he? Will his poll numbers go down because of this? Won’t he have to drop out of the race if women keep coming forward with these types of claims? (So far, the answer seems to be no).

   There are even polls about whether people believe the allegations, which I find a bit unsettling. There are also articles analyzing the breakdowns of those numbers across demographic lines. I may be a bit burnt out on this story, but at least it’s getting the serious media attention that it deserves.

    Except that it isn’t.

    For all the airtime and newsprint spent on the allegations against Herman Cain, the most serious question is not being asked. Aside from ‘did he or didn’t he?’ the question that remains to be asked is ‘does he or doesn’t he’? Does Herman Cain understand that sexual harassing one’s employees is completely unacceptable, that these allegations are extremely serious and, if true, reflect poorly on his character? The answer seems to be no.
    Judging by the way Cain has laughed off these charges—not just denying them but joking about them—I am forced to conclude that he does not. His defiant attitude says, to me at least, not “I’m innocent” but “so what?” This is extremely troubling. That the front runner for the Republican Presidential nomination seems to see sexual harassment as a laughing matter is something we should be discussing.

    Cain has blamed Rick Perry, the Democrats and the media for what he sees as a witch hunt. Why he thinks this issue wouldn’t have come up in the course of a presidential campaign is really beyond me. It’s not as if a democrat would have gotten a free pass on this issue either. He seems to truly believe that this is not something he should be called to account for, which I take issue with. Anyone who believes he is well within his rights to abuse his authority that way, anyone who would joke about a female lawyer that there is “not a thing I would hire her for” – and not because she is professionally incompetent—is not someone who is worthy of the title of President of the United States.

    It seems like this story is going to be with us for quite some time. We might as well talk about the reasons why it matters.

the (s)hit list

Things that are rocking my world this week:

    -The Decemberists Tiny Desk Concert

    -Niall Ferguson's awesome mini-history lesson for TED (the accent is an added bonus)

Things I could probably do without:

    -Looming grad school deadlines (November sort of snuck up on me this year...)

   -My looming existential crisis (You try staring 25 in the face in 2011)

And then there is the impossible to classify, unending Jobs Act/Debt Ceiling debacle, which is neither awesome (the proper adjective is a bit more colorful) nor easily disregarded.  Watching Eric Cantor cheerfully leading this particular parade of legislative dysfunction makes me mildly nauseous. With a look at some of the riders republicans have tacked on to the Labor HHS Edu approps bill (the usual attempts to deny women control over their own bodies, to mandate abstinence education and to de-fund NPR-- source of my world-rockingly awesome tiny desk podcasts), I have come to a startling conclusion.

The Republican leadership are total geniuses.

Evil geniuses, maybe, but brilliant all the same**. Conservatives have spent years fighting hard against any and all taxes, on the assumption that taxes are a waste of money and that what they procure us is less valuable than what we would otherwise purchase for ourselves. Now, as most people enjoy the things that our tax dollars provide (schools, firefighters, safety at home and abroad, technological advances, national parks, Social Security to keep our old folks out of extreme poverty, Sesame street... stuff like that) and would never be able to buy that stuff on their own anyway, this was a battle they were generally loosing (please see the early 90s, when taxes were up but america rocked).

So, and this is the brilliant part, the republicans have decided to MAKE this true. Rather than proving our tax dollars are wasted, they are going to systematically stop the government from providing all the good things, the services and the safety nets, that we generally get as a return on the taxes we pay. Think about it. What are republicans demanding and where does that leave us if they get it.

NPR? gone. Social Security? Cut to shreds. Oh, and lets not build any bridges or anything either.

When we finally get where the right is leading us, our government will build nothing, support nothing and help no one. Then, at long last, conservatives will be correct on the tax issue. That money is wasted which does nothing to help our country and our citizens. But so long as we continue to run schools and lay train tracks and provide much needed assistance to the poor and the sick, I will continue to pay my taxes. (Not that I have any income to tax right now anyway, but you know...)

(**note: to our more sensitive readers -- if we have any-- I don't really think all repubs are evil. I just enjoy the turn of phrase. I'll blame it on all the comics adapted for tv I've been watching lately)