Yesterday, Herman Cain’s campaign went live with a new web site: Women for Cain.
For 24 hours, the blogs and even the mainstream media mocked the site relentlessly when someone thought they recognized the four women in the banner of the site holding their thumbs stiffly erect for Herman. The photo turned out to be a stock photo, going for about $20 from a supplier of such clip art, taken originally by a photographer in Germany. The preceding link gives two examples of the clip art being used, one for sugar in South Africa.
After hours of withering and sarcastic commentary, the stock photo was removed.
Before:
After:
Today it has been replaced by a shot of Herman and his wife hugging and smiling.
If there were any true journalist in America, he or she would be tracking down these women and interviewing them, On the one hand, if they are real, it would be interesting to have them explain their motivation. On the other, if they are not genuine, which for 95% or more of them I suspect is the case, then that would certainly be a fact to be factored in by the American public.
Frankly, the contents of the comments on the site immediately reminded me of nothing less than the kind of women who are groupies to hardened criminals doing hard time in the penitentiary. They seem to be suffering from the same psychology of fascination by evil mixed with blind denial of its reality in the person of the object of their “affection”. I mean, really, who writes stuff like this except the profoundly disturbed?
“I’ll admit that when I heard that you sent $ to a woman w/out your wife knowing, it gave me pause.. I wouldn’t appreciate my hubby sending $ to another woman w/out my approval,” says Debbie Stevens-Paulsen from Tulsa, Oklahoma. But she adds: “If Mrs. Cain is OK w/ what you did, I am.”
“I do not believe these women are victims…I believe you are,” writes a lady from Georgia.
“Dear Mrs. Cain, don’t pay attention to these pathetic husbandless women who are jealous of women like you in happy long-term marriages,” a supporter from California writes. “These vindictive women can’t find a husband or keep one. They are like stalkers who try to latch on to any man who shows a bit of kindness or attention to them. When these unstable women come out of the woodwork to make accusations about Herman just say, ‘Honey, get a life, I believe my husband.’ We want you to be our First Lady Mrs. Cain!”
“Stay in the race. I am so turned off by these women who get their 5 minutes of fame – they set women back a century. They are an insult to sucessful working women. I have been successfully self employed in a male dominated industry, commercial real estate, and never once did I have a problem with any male counterpart. I was fortunate that I was mentored because I worked for it. So I can relate to you in your journey of success. You appear to be a very decent human being that genuinely will help anyone and you also appear to be a true gentleman. Its disgusting these women have taken advantage of you. They are the ones with questionable character, not you. It also appears that your wife is a true lady and has the character to see through all of these allegations to what they are – attempts to keep you from running because you are a threat to the status quo. If JFK was running today,my what a feeding frenzy that would be, yet he is an adored former president. Please stay in the race – we need a businessman in the White House.”
Of course, the fact that Herman Cain’s acts of sexual harassment, which are thoroughly documented, and did happen, payoffs were made to the women, meant nothing to the hard core GOP voters. That is pretty much because the don’t believe in sexual harassment. As some GOP members remarked after the first revelations of Cain’s behavior, women just can’t take a joke!
It took exposure of what appears to be a 13 year running extramarital affair to upset Cain’s apple cart. And even then, one has to wonder was it the affair, or is race a part of the equation. After all, Newt Gingrich is a serial adulterer, ditching his first wife while she was fighting cancer, and committing adultery at the same time he was trying to impeach Bill Clinton for wasting a good cigar on Monica Lewinsky.
This web site is one of the most pathetic and disgusting things I have ever seen in a presidential campaign, and I was barely into the teens and conscious during Dwight Eisenhower’s second term campaign, and have voted ever since I was 18.
Of course, one of the reason that Congress wants to pass the draconian censorship bill, known as the IP Protect or the Stop Online Piracy Act, depending on whether you are looking at the House or Senate version, is that it is really a means to bypass due process and judicial review, and just let the corporate oligarchy shut down a web site at whim.
In fact, the rich and the powerful are feeling the heat from the free flow information and truth that the Internet has engendered. And this freedom to express truth to power, as in the Internet meme of the UC Davis cop pepper spraying a row of passive students, expressed itself immediately with these works of art commenting on Herman Cain’s “Women for Cain” web site.
I am honestly hard pressed to distinguish between Herman Cain, his web site, and satire. The two seem to have merged into one.
And the GOP Clown Car battle for the nomination rolls on.
