The moment I saw it, I knew Mark Block should not have
smoked in that ad.
When you engage in cloud-seeding, you can’t complain about
the deluge that follows. Not only did Block
smoke on camera - worse than a snuff film these days - but the ad was not run
on paid media. The latter, of course, is
the real crime that has brought about the flash-mob hit on Herman Cain.
In the world of political punditry, Herman Cain is doing
everything wrong and it is working. He
is the most dangerous man in America. If this guy can win the nomination without
spending hundreds of millions of establishment money and employing thousands of
politicos, then the jig is up, and the whole electioneering industry is
doomed. They can’t have that, so they
have to take him down - now.
One week into the corporate media beat down and we still don’t
even know what he is accused of: apparently someone told someone else about a
rumor he heard from another guy about something that Herman might or might not
have done or said or gestured that someone might or might not have
misunderstood or might or might not have taken offense to at some time in the
last century. There’s your blockbuster,
pun intended.
Unless you are clairvoyant, the 90 articles Politico has already
devoted to this mirage add nothing to the description I just provided. All we know for sure is that Gloria Alred has
not yet magically appeared like David Copperfield behind a battery of
microphones in Atlanta; if there was really anything to this, she would have pulled a hamstring running for the cameras.
People who wouldn’t be caught dead parking the Mercedes among
the F-150’s and walking their facelift into a Waffle House might reach for the
pepper spray if someone calls them “honey”, but most of us human beings actually
like it. South of the NASCAR line, it is
just a word they attach to sentences without thinking – like “eh” for Canadians
or “recall” for Wisconsin Democrats.
But this isn’t about sexual harassment and everyone knows it;
this is about money. And money does not
care about truth, or justice, or fairness, or morality. Who is behind the hatchet job on Cain –
Perry? Paul? Romney? Rove? Obama? Soros?
DNC? RNC? trial lawyers? unions? The answer is…yes. Charges
of skirt chasing aren’t going to work on Ron Paul, so who knows what they will come
up with if he puts 10 points on the pack.
The electioneering industry used to be the ultimate cyclical
sector – every two years a minor bump, every four years a boom, and scratching
for survival in between. So the smart
guys who run corporate media and the major party apparatus figured out how to
make that cycle continuous and billions have been pouring into the political
sector ever since. Call it the election
bubble. There is a ready stockpile of fundraisers and candidate marketers
available, and they pick their candidates like waterfront hookers choose
steamships – whoever is in port and has cash.
The action has been non-stop since 2007. That nomination process started a year
earlier than normal – most of us were sick of it already before the first
primary vote was cast in Iowa.
The inauguration trash was not even
picked up when they swung right into the selling of Stimulus, then almost a
year of health care and the rise of the Tea Party, which bled right into the
historic 2010 mid-term House flip.
In Wisconsin the hits just
kept right on coming: a winter of protests over budget reforms, then judicial
elections, recounts, senate recalls, and now the Walker recall petition drive which will take
us right into the 2012 primary season. It
is as likely to end as Cher’s goodbye tour.
A lot of people profit handsomely from elections - campaign
staff, consultants, PR firms, law firms, security, private investigators,
travel agencies, advertising agencies, pollsters, media outlets, pundits, event
organizers, hotels, food service, paid “volunteers”, fundraisers, money
managers, bloggers, social media managers, the guys who paint the busses, film
crews, the list goes on and on.
So whoever had the idea to turn governing from a non-profit
public service gig into one continuous for-profit election cycle must be the
most popular guy or gal in the business - full employment and big fat checks
for campaign ramrods and their menagerie of hangers-on. Palin figured out which side of the bread was
buttered with c-notes. Life is
good.
And then along comes this guy Cain. No prior office. No staff.
No money. No plan recognizable to
those who sell them off the shelf. He
talks without a teleprompter; speaks without a script. He answers different questions with different
answers, he wears a hat. His man Block smokes.
And people love him. Ruh-roh.
We libertarians oppose any initiation of force or
fraud. Either Herman Cain sexually
harassed someone (force) or he has been falsely accused (fraud). Americans are fed up with hypocritical
moralists running for office and telling us how to live our lives; and we are
also fed up with the politics of personal destruction. So there is no middle ground here, someone is
going to win and someone is going to lose.
The keepers of the conventional wisdom did not see 2010
coming; and still don’t get it. This
isn’t politics as usual; we don’t keep score of cheap debating points and
gotcha moments. We want someone who can
lead us out of our malaise. Someone is lying and someone is telling the
truth; whoever is telling the truth has just won the White House this week.
We have devolved into a society where taking offense is an
occupation, where feeling uncomfortable entitles us to compensatory
damages. You want to see what real
sexual harassment looks like? Go to
Sturgis. You want to see how real women
put an ape in his place without a lawyer?
Go to Sturgis. You want to turn
this whole country into Eggshell Nation because a few delicate flowers didn’t
get enough attention from their daddy?
Go to hell.
If a guy makes a rude suggestion in a restaurant, the woman
should slap his face. That’s how we
handled it before we handed the country over to the lawyers, parasites, and
bedwetters. Her honor is vindicated and
the cad’s low character is exposed to the public and it takes a second for
justice to be served.
$45,000 and a sealed agreement accomplish neither, and predation
leaves a cloud over an innocent man for life.
This is not progress.
“Moment
Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D. Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.
