"non-sourced allegation"

[Victor Steinbok]

OK, it's clearing up now. From the stories this afternoon:

> "I was aware of the false accusations that took place at the
> restaurant association, and then when we were asked for me to comment,
> they wanted for this to be from two anonymous sources," Cain said. "We
> weren't going to go and chase anonymous sources."
> That line of reasoning is fine, as far as it goes, except Cain
> neglected to mention one thing: one of the sources /Politico/ came to
> the Cain campaign with wasn't anonymous at all.

Add that to the fact that Cain is now saying that he knows he had been
accused but that he did not know that the association paid settlements
to the accusers. Plus the fact that a part of his campaign was illegally
funded. Like I said earlier, if they claim that the Politico report was
unsourced or from anonymous sources and then are proved to be lying, the
campaign is effectively over.

Wave goodbye to Herman! He's toast.

On the language side, I appear to have underestimated the stupidity of
his aides. Whatever the case, the language issue portion of this is now
over and it's all political. So I'll shut up now and let the story go
away on its own.

     VS-)


On 10/31/2011 3:27 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
> There is nothing unsourced, anonymous or unattributed about the
> Politico allegations against Cain. In fact, even the names of the
> women are known, although, apparently, unpublished. (And the quotes
> are from the Cain campaign people.) The "thinly sourced" reference in
> the campaign statement to the AP was to the original allegations, not
> to the current ones--it's quite obvious where the current allegations
> are from. What's going on here is that the campaign is trying to
> dismiss the /original/ allegations of harassment, the ones that
> resulted in settlements, which are now being reported. Most of the
> time, one thing that a settlement does not do is force an admission of
> guilt. Settlements could be offered in response to legitimate claims
> that would result in exposure, embarrassment and financial loss of
> greater proportions (as well as, in exceptional cases, criminal
> charges and convictions). Or they could be offered in response to
> nuisance suits whose prosecution, although ultimately likely would
> result in dismissal, nonetheless would incur greater legal expenses
> than the amount of the settlement.
>
> Generally, in  the political world, there is an assumption that there
> is no smoke without fire--that no settlement would be offered by an
> innocent man and that the payments are only offered to hush thing up.
> On the other hand, every lawyer would love to paint the opposite
> picture--that all such settlements are simply prudent financial
> decisions that have nothing to do with guilt or innocence or merits of
> the challenge. More specifically, when the confidentiality of
> settlements is pierced, they go to the opposite extreme, painting the
> alleged victims as gold-digging liars who concocted the
> "thinly-sourced claims" to squeeze money from powerful people (exhibit
> A: the Strauss-Kahn affair). Neither is about the truth. This is
> exactly what we got here.
>
> It would be quite pointless to accuse the press, in this case, of
> publishing unsourced allegations because the chain of sourcing is
> quite obvious and easily documentable. The weak link is not the press
> sourcing, but the original claims that have varying degrees of
> supporting evidence. Anyone who tries to accuse the press, under these
> circumstances, is digging his own political grave, because once the
> source is uncovered, the lie is exposed--it's impossible to say that
> the reports and the settlements don't exist because they do. But
> smearing the original complainers is de riguer in such cases. But, of
> course, along the way, the messages can get crossed. It's quite
> possible that JR thinks he's asking about the current allegations--the
> ones that the claims and settlements exist--while Gordon is responding
> to the sourcing of the original allegations--the ones that the claims
> and settlements are based on. Of course, it's also possible that
> Gordon is just an idiot and has just screwed the pooch. But it seems
> unlikely IMO.
>
>     VS-)
>
> On 10/31/2011 12:54 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>> Doesn't "non-sourced" just mean "anonymous; unattributed"?
>>
>> Herman Cain has been having some trouble with such allegations today.
>>
>> JL
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 11:38 AM, Laurence
>> Horn<laurence.horn at yale.edu>  wrote:
>>> Apparently this is what you call an accusation about your candidate
>>> that you can't directly refudiate.
>>>
>>> =
>>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/30/herman-cain-sexual-harassment-accusations_n_1066487.html
>>>
>>> "Are you denying it ever happened, J.D. Gordon?" Geraldo asked.
>>>
>>> "What I'm saying is that these are thin allegations, that this is
>>> non-sourced," Gordon answered. "And so right now, we're just trying
>>> to put this into perspective for you -- that this is not even a
>>> sourced allegation."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> LH
>

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