A New Sexual Misconduct Claim On Herman Cain Emerges

Background:

Herman Cain, a GOP presidential candidate, has had numerous claims against him on sexually inappropriate behavior. After the previous two women were paid for the charges they laid against Cain, a new claim from Sharon Bialek has emerged. In the article found on CNN titled “Cain Faces New Claim of Sexual Misconduct”,written by Tom Cohen, Kevin Bohn, and Sharron Travis, Bialek claims that Cain groped her after having dinner in 1997 when she came to him asking for a job.

Premises:

• Cain upgraded Bialek’s suite without telling her.

• Bialek and Cain went out to dinner and spoke about Bialek getting her job back.

• On the way back to the hotel Bialek was staying at, Cain offered to show Bialek where the National Restaurant Association offices were.

• Instead of going inside to see the offices, Cain parked the car and put his hand on Bialek’s leg and up her skirt toward her genitals. He also grabbed her head and pulled it toward his crotch.

• Upon Bialek’s protestation about the situation, Cain said “You want a job right?”

Conclusion:

Bialek says that Cain performed sexual misconduct and wants him to admit what he did.

Premises:

• Bialek’s accusation against Cain follows two other accusations made by two other women that were reported by Politico

• Bialek is the first woman to accuse Cain in public and her accusation could be true as she did in fact work for the National Restaurant Foundation in 1996 and was laid off in 1997. She also provided detailed accounts of what happened.

• It has also been proven to be true that Cain was head of the National Restaurant Foundation from 1996 – 1999.

• Bialek was waiting to come forward about the accusations now because there were other women doing so as well, not only against Cain but against harassment in general.

Conclusion:

“ "I think what you're seeing is a huge assault on women's rights in the Republican parties, and an extreme right-wing that has taken over that is going to make it very difficult for anybody in a general election in the Republican Party to be a centrist," Richardson said on NBC. ”

Analysis:

I think Sharon Bialek performed her speech pretty well, though I do not agree that she is telling the truth about what happened. It is clear to me that her throat tightened up when she began to accuse Cain of groping her. However, the purpose of this post is to point out the fallacy committed within the article, as well as the speech. Within the speech itself, I found no fallacy. However, within the article I feel a Hasty Generalization fallacy is being made. A Hasty Generalization fallacy is one in which a conclusion is made about a group of people based on a very small sample of the group, in this case, one man as compared to the entire Republican party. As mentioned in the previous conclusion: "I think what you're seeing is a huge assault on women's rights in the Republican parties, and an extreme right-wing that has taken over that is going to make it very difficult for anybody in a general election in the Republican Party to be a centrist."