Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Hypocrisy of the Feeding Frenzy

I don't know what, if anything, happened between Herman Cain and the women who are accusing him of various levels of sexually inappropriate behavior.

I do think, though, that anyone who, on the basis of these charges, criticizes Cain should be required to tell us whom they voted for in 1994. If it was Bill Clinton they should be dismissed with a wave of the hand and a shake of the head. They have absolutely no credibility.

No one who supported Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy or John Edwards has any business criticizing Herman Cain for his alleged indiscretions. Yet the lefties at MSNBC, NBC, CBS and elsewhere are attacking Cain like Piranha attacking a luckless cow that wandered into the river.

The hypocrisy of this feeding frenzy is, in my opinion, the most significant aspect of this whole sordid episode.

I could hardly believe my ears this morning watching MSNBC's Morning Joe and later listening to Martin Bashir and others on the Dylan Ratigan show on the same network.

Morning Joe featured a fine interview with former president Clinton on his ideas for rousing us from our economic malaise, at the end of which Joe Scarborough lamented that people like Mr. Clinton cannot again run for the presidency. This, after his own show and others on the network have ceaselessly made the point, both implicitly and explicitly, that the behavior alleged to have been indulged in by Mr. Cain, behavior no worse than that of Mr. Clinton, by itself disqualifies him as a serious candidate for that office.

The panel on the Dylan Ratigan show was uniformly adamantine that Mr. Cain's indiscretions were beyond what a decent American polity should be expected to tolerate, and yet every one of these folks would, I am willing to bet, vote for Mr. Clinton today were he to run again for the White House.

It never seems to occur to any of these people how hypocritical they look. Or maybe it does, but they don't care.