Chip Somodevilla
The political world marveled at the way conservatives circled the wagons around Herman Cain when sexual-harassment charges emerged. But they weren’t just denying that Cain was guilty, writes Dahlia Lithwick in Slate; they were denying that sexual harassment exists at all. “The harassment skeptics claim that harassment, like racism, used to exist but is now over.” Cain’s conservative defenders claim no one knows what happened, but in the same breath openly declare that his accusers must be money-grubbing sluts. “The claims that women (and only women) invent sex-discrimination cases for personal fame and fortune are absurd on their face … It’s no longer just a Republican war on women. It’s a war on the idea that any woman might ever tell the truth.”