Powers That Be Yank Herman Cain Out Of The GOP Limelight
The latest episode of Boss had so many parallels to the Herman Cain saga, I thought I was watching a “ripped from the headlines” episode. A political neophyte with a history of philandering who decides to take on his own party’s establishment forgets the first rule of politics – your opponents always know all your secrets. In a related narrative arc in this episode, the fictional mayor’s office, under fire by the press, manipulates the media scrutiny towards a new target to change public opinion.
Herman Cain was a real life political neophyte whose presidential campaign seems to have upset the timetable of some unspoken media narrative the Republican powers that be have been striving to keep on schedule in order to give their preferred candidates enough media exposure at the top of the heap. With hundreds of millions of dollars being gathered to sit on the sidelines in conservative super PAC’s, ready to make the most coordinated effort you’ve ever seen to unseat a sitting president, the time was past for the GOP to have to wait on an unelectable candidate with an inexperienced campaign organization to mosey off the stage.
The shell shocked look on Ginger White’s face in every interview she has given is the countenance of someone who has been outed by a party or parties who let her know just how many more of her secrets they had the power to reveal. This looks like political skullduggery at its best – a series of anonymous phone calls to media outlets, probably from an untraceable source, duly reported by the media to be a woman’s voice. For a public quick to devour this information once it has been packaged as the six o’clock news, it is a short leap to the notion that it could have been a disgruntled former business partner of Ms. White who made these calls.
Understated acting performances, taut dialogue and superb camera work give a ring of authenticity to Kelsey Grammer’s dramatic depiction of an out of control Chicago political machine. The latest episode of Boss ended with the news media barking up the wrong tree and the political neophyte getting his chain yanked hard by his own party because he got ahead of the script. The latest episode of the Herman Cain campaign ended similarly, with Cain, the political neophyte, holed up at home licking his wounds, and a predominant media narrative now focused on the remaining front running candidates that treats Cain as if he didn’t exist.
