Category Archives: Herman Cain is a stooge

Tobacco stooge and sexual harasser Herman Cain explains his bizarre smoking ad

Herman Cain on Sunday defended his smoking campaign ad, by saying “we weren’t trying to make smoking look cool. Mark Block smokes.”

Cain defended the ad, saying it was not meant to send a broader message that smoking is acceptable. “Mark Block smokes. That’s all that ad says,” Cain said. “We weren’t trying to say it’s cool to smoke.”

“One of the things within this campaign is let Herman be Herman,” Cain said. “Mark Block is a smoker, and we say let Mark be Mark. That’s all were trying to say because we believe let people be people.”

On the ad released last week, Block praises Cain and states, “America’s never seen a candidate like Herman Cain.” Then with the music “I am America” playing in the background, Block smokes a cigarette and blows smoke into the camera.

The best part is his interviewer, Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,’’ ripped into Cain for the ad.

Schieffer, a bladder cancer survivor, lit into Cain on his show. “It’s not funny to me,” Schieffer said. “I had cancer that was smoking related, and I don’t think it serves the country well — and this is an editorial opinion here — to be showing someone smoking a cigarette.”

Awesome, Bob!

Oh, by the way, Herman Cain took thousands of dollars from Big Tobacco lobbying against smoking bans when he was head of the National Restaurant Association.

Compared to the sexual harassment scandal dogging Cain, this is pretty minor, but I still can’t help shaking my head at this bizarre ad.

By the way, this Colbert bit on the Herman Cain smoking ad is FREAKING hiliarious!

Really bizarre ad from tobacco stooge Herman Cain

cain smoking adThanks to Misti for digging this up.

This is really bizarre. It’s an ad from Herman Cain’s campaign manager. It’s a pretty direct matter-of-fact personal testimony from the guy about why he likes Herman Cain … and then at the very end, they show him smoking a cigarette and blowing smoke right into the camera.

Bizarre. It’s like an old cigarette ad. I think it’s just a clumsy ad. They probably just told him, “act natural,” while they continued filming him, so he lit up a cigarette and smoked it.

I think…

… then again, Herman Cain does have a long, illustrious history of being a tobacco industry stooge.  While he was a lobbyist for the National Restaurant Association, he apparently took a shitload of money from Big Tobacco as he lobbied against smoking bans in restaurants. More on that in this New York Times article. Maybe it was a secret product placement for his tobacco buddies. Probably not…

… but then again, you never know.

What is funny is the reaction to the video, no one could tell whether or not it was REAL! It reminded me of these three videos, one of which pretty Haruko dug up.

You tell me which ones are real and which ones are fake:

Thank you, Haruko, I have WANTED to find this one, but you did for me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFhQu_v1LkY&feature=player_embedded

How about this ad. Is it for real?