Your Obligatory Herman Cain Scandal Post

Now that something significant has finally happened with it, I’ll go ahead and say something here.

What has happened that is significant? Rush Limbaugh opined on it, and it’s the first thing I’ve read that makes sense. Video with recording of the broadcast behind the link.

Politico, you failed. You attempted, along with others in the mainstream media, to take the guy out, and you failed. Your influence isn’t what you thought it was. Alana Goodman at Commentary magazine writes, “Basically, the entire Washington media could have collectively called in sick all week, and it wouldn’t have made a difference — at least not for 70 percent of Republicans. The latest Washington Post/ABC poll, one of the first to be taken post-scandal, reports: ‘Seven in 10 Republicans say reports that [Herman] Cain made unwanted advances toward two employees when he was head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s — allegations which have been stiffly rebutted by Cain’s campaign — do not matter when it comes to picking a candidate.'”

Don Surber bottom-lines it:

Politico blew it by not showing any patience on the story. Instead of developing the story, they rushed headlong with basically nothing.

Liberals cannot press the issue. They have no credibility. They blew it by standing by their man in 1998. I knew this day was coming. Surprisingly, I am nether happy nor satisfied. It is what it is.

Karma.

A “scandal” is supposed to be an event, or rather a series of events about an event. Not a procedure. So is it possible to have such a thing as a “botched scandal”?

Yes it is, I say, and yes that’s what we have here. An honest and valuable media tells us about things that happen, a dishonest one makes them happen. An incompetent one tries & fails.

Generations from now, when the history of the twentieth-to-twenty-first century turnover is written, something is going to have to be said about how we learned about things happening as they were happening. It’s obvious, to us, that this has been in a state of change, but I think there won’t be any getting away from it later, when people look back. I think it will be unavoidable. There is too much happening now that can only be explained by: Loudmouths are accustomed to the position of unilaterally dictating what the rest of us will hear about something, and how we will hear it, and they’re slowly losing this status and not adjusting to it too well. There isn’t any other way to sum it up other than to ignore it, and I don’t think our great grandchildren will enjoy the luxury of ignoring it even if they want to.

It’s already started to happen, really. This is one of many reasons why this scandal hasn’t taken off. Think about it; what’s the story? Herman Cain did something that someone back in those days managed, maybe, to make into a big deal. Well even now, people are responding to it with “Uh yeah…people managed to make a big deal out of lots of little deals back then, and it’s good that things aren’t like that anymore because that was wrong. Those were bad things we were doing.”

It’s easy to see that on Main Street. Not so easy in the offices where Politico operates, I think.

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes.

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