CBS’ Bob Schieffer lets Herman Cain have it over ad glorifying smoking

Herman Cain ran a political ad glorifying smoking cigarettes.  It was bizarre, and more than a bit retro in its inappropriateness.   Last week, Herman Cain released an ad showing his campaign manager smoking a cigarette.  It was bizarre.  And clearly intentional.  The man spoke for a while, finished, and then all of a sudden, with the camera zoomed on his face, he takes a long drag from a cig.  Cain's excuse for glorifying smoking to children was that the guy smokes in real, and Cain's message of the ad is to "let people be people."  Oh really?  Does the man have sex?  Is that popping up in the next ad?  How about foul language, does he ever swear?  The notion that smoking is in the ad simply because the man smokes is laughable, and rather insulting from a man who claims he wants to be President.  We deserve a real answer as to why Herman Cain decided to glorifying smoking in a political ad.

CBS’s Bob Schieffer really let Cain have it on Sunday. Cain started off by claiming the ad had no subliminal pro-smoking message.

"One of the themes within this campaign is, let Herman be Herman," he told CBS' Bob Schieffer. "Mark Block is a smoker. We say, let Mark be Mark. That's all we're trying to say because we believe, let people be people."

When asked if he thought the ad was meant to be "funny," Cain said his campaign "didn't know whether it would be funny to some people or whether they were going to ignore it or whatever the case may be."

"It's not funny to me - I am a cancer survivor, like you," Schieffer said. "I had cancer that was smoking related. I don't think it serves the country well - and this is an editorial opinion here - to be showing someone smoking a cigarette. You're the frontrunner now. It seems to me as frontrunner you would have a responsibility not to take that kind of a tone in this campaign. I would suggest that perhaps as the frontrunner, you'd want to raise the level of the campaign."

Good for Schieffer. It's pretty abominable that Cain would intentionally show someone smoking a cigarette in a campaign ad, and in this case the camera was zoomed on the man's face as he smoke3d for a few seconds, then the ad finished. It was downright bizarre, and made me wonder if a tobacco company, or lobbyist, had paid for the product placement.  (You can watch Schieffer go after Cain on the video on CBS' site via the link above.)

But I guess Cain has bigger problems now.