Close-reading Herman Cain

The charge that Herman Cain sexually harassed two women when he headed the National Restaurant Association may indeed be false. But the candidate’s responses merit close reading.

“I never sexually harassed anyone,” Cain insists. Consider this statement in light of an exchange from Sunday’s Face the Nation (before the scandal broke), concerning an electric border-fence:

Bob Schieffer: You also said at some point that you might want to back that fence up with a moat and fill it with alligators. Was that a joke too?

Cain: That was totally in jest, Bob. Some people are getting used to my sense of humor and as I get more attention I will tone down this sense of humor until I become president because America needs to get a sense of humor.

Thus “I never sexually harassed anyone” can easily translate to “That was totally in jest.” And of course the women involved need to get a sense of humor, &c.

Consider too Cain’s “Nothing happened.” What does this assertion deny? It might mean that no mingling of bodies took place: “We just talked. Nothing happened.” This denial too seems to deny, uh, nothing. It depends on what the meaning of nothing is.

Given this candidate’s willingness to joke (?) with the American public about electric fences and moats, I think it’s reasonable to wonder what he might say in private.

Related reading
Herman Cain claims on cash settlement raise questions (CBS News)

7:42 p.m.: There’s already more — an odd story about commenting on a woman’s height, and this exchange:

Judy Woodruff: Was there any behavior on your part that you think might have been inappropriate?

Cain: In my opinion, no. But as you would imagine, it’s in the eye of the person who thinks that maybe I crossed the line.

Cain Confident He Can Win Nomination, Says Harassment Claims Are “Baseless” (PBS NewsHour)

Next day, 8:12 a.m.: And still more:

“I believe I have a good sense for where you cross the line relative to sexual harassment but you have to know the lady, the individual.”

Herman Cain Changes Story, But Tells FOX He’s Innocent (Talking Points Memo)

[In 1998, when Bill Clinton told PBS’s Jim Lehrer that “There is not a sexual relationship,” I immediately asked (yes, out loud), “But was there?” Would things have turned out differently had Lehrer asked that question?]

Happy Halloween

[Ellsworth Kelly, Untitled (orange and black), n.d. Yale University Art Gallery. Gift of Mrs. Henry J. Heinz, II. From the Yale Digital Commons.]

Word of the day: foo fighter

The Oxford English Dictionary word of the day is foo fighter:

Any of various unidentified lights encountered by airborne forces during the Second World War (1939–45), interpreted variously as enemy weapons, natural phenomena, or alien spacecraft.

The term has its origin in the nonsense word foo, a staple of Bill Holman’s comic strip Smokey Stover (one of the great comic strips of my childhood). Alas, the OED misspells Stover’s first name.

More foo
Silence is FOO! (’t Is Goud)
Smokey Stover Online (full of foo and notary sojac)

[Do fans of Foo Fighters generally know the origin of the band’s name?]

Day & Meyer, Murray & Young

The New York Times reports on the storage warehouse of Day & Meyer, Murray & Young:

Behind the mute facade of a largely windowless neo-Gothic tower lies an ingenious system of steel vaults traveling on rails. Within those armored containers, which have been in continuous use since the Jazz Age, are stored some of New York City’s most precious objects and, presumably, a good number of its darkest secrets.

Storing the Stuff of Dreams (New York Times)

It all sounds like something from Steven Millhauser’s wonderful novel Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (1996).

VDP on “Wall Street” and Wall Street

From Van Dyke Parks’s commentary on his song “Wall Street” and current events:

The Creed Is Greed, in a nation dominated by stone-age fundamentalism — despite the fact that Christ admonished against greed and usurious interests repeatedly, raising valid questions about how Capitalism-run-amok can square with Christian precepts.

The “Occupy” movement, while indistinct and lacking a theme song, is emboldening an all-too patient middle-to-underclass seeking a higher moral ground. It’s about ethics.

You can read the commentary and listen to “Wall Street” by following the link: Van Dyke Parks on “Wall Street” (Los Angeles Review of Books Blog).

Heartlessness on parade

The New York law firm of Steven J. Baum, P.C. specializes in foreclosures. Joe Nocera of the New York Times has obtained photographs from the firm’s 2010 Halloween party: What the Costumes Reveal. What a riot. What a rotten lot.

November 22: The firm is shutting down. Thanks for the update, Gunther.

Reducing the number of Cutting words

A New York Times article on college-application essays, edited to fit the 500-word limit of college-application essays: 500 Words About the Common Application.

Shape Type

Shape Type is a letter-shaping game by Mark MacKay, the maker of Kern Type. Shape Type is difficult: which is to say, I had no idea what I was doing.

(via kottke.org)

Telephone exchange names on screen

[Frank Bono (Allen Baron) places a call from ALgonquin 5–9859. Click for a larger view.]

The story is simple: hit man Frank Bono arrives in New York City at Christmas time to do a job, and things go wrong. What makes Blast of Silence (dir. Allen Baron, 1961) compelling is atmosphere, external and internal: a bleak vision of New York and the bleaker vision of human character that unfolds in Lionel Stander’s voiceover.

In a 1990 documentary about this film, Allen Baron says that he had wanted Peter Falk to play Frank Bono. The role would have been a fitting followup to Falk’s performance as Abe Reles in Murder, Inc. (dir. Burt Balaban and Stuart Rosenberg, 1960). Baron though ended up doing the job himself: “We did the best we could with what we had. And I was the best actor available to me at the time, and I was the only one I could afford.”

Blast of Silence is available, beautifully restored, from the Criterion Collection. I think it’s one of the great low-budget films, along with Carnival of Souls (dir. Herk Harvey, 1962) and The Honeymoon Killers (dir. Leonard Kastle, 1970).

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dream House : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Murder, My Sweet : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : This Gun for Hire

Steve Jobs at college (and typos)

I like this brief exchange, Steve Wozniak visiting Steve Jobs at Reed College:

[Jobs] liked being at Reed, just not taking the required classes. In fact he was surprised when he found out that, for all of its hippie aura, there were strict course requirements. When Wozniak came to visit, Jobs waved his schedule at him and complained, “They are making me take all these courses.” Woz replied, “Yes, that’s what they do in college.”

Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

I’ve only been able to take a few quick glances at this book. The index does not inspire confidence: Jonathan “Jony” Ive is identified therein as “Sony” Ive (page 612). There’s also an entry for Jobs’s “topography [read typography] obsession” (page 614). Imagine Jobs’s reaction to such errors.

[Grainy images from Amazon’s “Look Inside.”]