Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd has a must-read column entitled, Cain Not Able, today in the NY Times that provides her analysis of the recently divulged sexual harassment charges against Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.  It is on target and very much in the Dowd style.  Here is her introduction:

“We have the starchy guy [Mitt Romney]— tall, handsome, intelligent and rich, with a baronial estate — who’s hard to warm up to. And we have the spontaneous guy [Herman Cain], who’s charming and easy to warm up to — until it turns out that he has an unsavory pattern with young women and a suspect relationship with facts.

It’s the Republican primary. Or “Pride and Prejudice.” Take your pick.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that it’s not the scandal that kills you; it’s the cover-up. Herman Cain has added a corollary: It’s not the cover-up that kills you; it’s the cascade of malarkey that spills out when you try to cover up the cover-up.”

She concludes with reference to conservative Ann Coulter:

“Ann Coulter has a point when she says that feminists rewrote their own rules on sexual harassment to support Bill Clinton. It is never right for any boss, especially the president of the United States, to mess with an intern, even if she’s the aggressor.

But Coulter falters when she charges that, like Clarence Thomas, Cain is the victim of a high-tech lynching, that “if you are a conservative black, they will believe the most horrible sexualized fantasies of these white women feminists.”

This isn’t an incendiary story about race. It is the most hackneyed story in Washington — another powerful man who crossed the line and then, when caught, tried to blame the women.”

Tony