After Emmett Till

I'm following the Herman Cain sex-scandal (or non-scandal) fairly closely, but I still have not made up my mind. Did he or did he not? It is not entirely a he-said-she-said-situation since there are settlements and money has been paid. We don't know, however, what for. It might well be that a small incident was blown out of proportions. But then again, I was not there. It's pretty much like the DSK scandal, and frankly, I would not be very keen on spending a lot of alone time with both men.

Here is the interesting part: Cain is black, and I mean, actual black, not Tiger-Woods-black. He is OJ Simpson black. And at least two of the women are white. So, this is a country were laws forbade interracial marriage in Cain's lifetime, where black men who raped a white woman got the death penalty while white men would walk free for raping a black girl, where black men have been lynched, and black boys have been clubbed to death by Klan member for whistling after a white woman.

Of course it is different today, but nobody can tell me it does not matter any more. Cain is often compared with Clarence Thomas, but Anita Hill was a black woman, so the white establishment did not care. In today's scandal, everybody is walking on eggshells. Mostly, Conservatives and Liberals are closely watching each other whether somebody makes a slip that can be interpreted as racist. Maybe this is the only acceptable way to talk about it nowadays.

So, the whole thing is handled in a "don't mention the war"-fashion, but I yet have to see a white woman coming out for Cain's defense (Ann Coulter does not count; she criticized Timothy McVeigh for not killing enough Jews, so she would say just about anything). Actually, Cain himself knows, otherwise he would not be talking about a "high-tech lynching". In any case, it is interesting to watch.