Forget about Herman Cain!

Let's get back to relevant campaign issues.


I'm no fan of Herman Cain, the erstwhile Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States. He's a one-trick pony, and the "9-9-9" plan, frankly, was a non-starter from the git-go. It's not a "bold" plan, it's a simplistic, unrealistic plan. All headline, no body copy. All sound bite, much too little substance. That is, it's perfect for cable news talking heads, but goofy for a campaign plank.

But this isn't a partisan rant against Herman Cain. It is a fed-up, despairing complaint about the degraded, voyeuristic coverage of Cain's alleged habit of sexual harassment and his alleged long-running affair with a woman not his wife. Is there anyone who's never, ever heard of stories like these? The sexual harassment cases can't be trivialized, but our current embattled national political discourse is not about sexual harassment. Extramarital peccadilloes are pathetically commonplace, and, as a nation, surely, we must be almost completely if not actually completely jaded to the revelation of yet one more, even if it does involve a presidential candidate. I don't care who Herman Cain sleeps with….

I do care about the transfixed media attention to Cain squirming in the unwelcome limelight of accusers and reporter/interrogators. I do care about the waste of unrelenting media speculation about if or when Cain will bow out of the Republican primary race. I do care about the fact that Cain hasn't said one substantial word about domestic or foreign policy issues for days, and still he's the celebrity in media coverage.

Is there any reasonably realistic person anywhere in America, and, indeed, among Cain's remaining adherents, who doesn't know that Cain is washed up as a candidate? Why are the media wasting air time, ink and bandwidth on continuing coverage of Herman Cain? Forget about him! No need to hear any more about Herman Cain. Let's get back to the relevant campaign issues.

A random bit of comment on Cain media coverage: