Having been caught in rolling disclosures and shifting stories regarding the settlement apparently paid to two female employees of the National Restaurant Association during the time he led the organization between 1996 and 1999, Herman Cain has resorted to a familiar defense.
He and his supporters are accusing the "liberal media" of a "high tech lynching" of yet another "uppity black" who dares to be conservative.
If that sounds familiar, you probably lived through the Clarence Thomas hearings.
Back in 1991, Thomas uttered the infamous phrase after Anita Hill, who was supervised by Thomas at the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, testified that Thomas repeatedly sexually harassed her and behaved lewdly in the workplace
Cain, who called Thomas one of his model Supreme Court Justices< on Meet the Press last month, actually has been laying down the "high tech lynching" framework since at least May, when he warned National Review's Byron York that his "lynching" by liberals was coming. Makes you wonder if he saw his kinship with Thomas in literal terms.
Conservative talk radio gadflies like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham (who clerked for Thomas) rushed to Cain's defense, immediately picking up the "high tech lynching" meme.
The spectacle of Limbaugh denouncing the story as a "racially stereotypical attack" on Cain was particularly galling, given his past statements, including saying the NFL, with its preponderance of black players, looks like the Crips vs the Bloods street gangs.
