"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Sex Sells

Sex sells.  Hermann Cain may or may not have had a sexual harassment problem in his past.   I don't know the man, so I don't know what he may or may not have done.   I do know that sexual harassment charges have been thrown about loosely over the past two decades (see Thomas, Clarence), with innocuous, if gross, behavior labeled as predatory.   I also know that there's a double standard for behavior between Republicans and Democrats (see Kennedy, Ted; see Clinton, Bill). 

That being said, what's really irritating about the Cain story is not the effect on a Republican candidate.  It's that this mini-scandal, because of the media's obsession with sex, is distracting the media from investigating and reporting on real and important scandals in the Obama administration -- Solyndra, Fast and Furious, Corzine-gate (where exactly did $900 million go to out of MF Global, the investment firm run by the former New Jersey Senator and current Obama bundler?), not to mention the ongoing scandal of Obama's support for the increasingly criminal and dangerous Occupy Wall Street movement.   And, of course, it's distracting us from the real issues -- the financial meltdown in the Eurozone, our crushing national debt and runaway entitlement programs, the increasing danger of a nuclearized Iran, the fallout from the Arab Spring which is turning into an Islamist Winter.   Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  

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