A Brief Exegesis of a Herman Cain Campaign Video:
At the opening of "Now is the time," an unlisted video on presidential candidate Herman Cain's YouTube channel, we see the face of a man, a middle-aged white man with glasses and a mustache and silvering hair, and he's speaking very sincerely to us. What does he want? On first blush, we might assume he is about to confess something to us, perhaps an unspeakable lust for young boys for, indeed, he looks as if he knows his way around an illegal chat room or two. But, no. He is the chief of staff for Cain's campaign, and he is imploring us to rally to his man's side. When he is finished speaking, music surges. "I am America," a female voice sings, and we see a close-up of the man as he sucks on a cigarette and then blows smoke out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes staring at us as if we are strippers on a stage, spreading our legs for his inspection. The video ends with Herman Cain looking serious and then slowly, slyly smiling. It is the look of a father about to get pleasure from spanking his own child's bare bottom. In fact, the whole of the ad seems to say: "These men are stalking you, and you will probably need a restraining order in order to survive the weekend."

To be fair-ish, that final creepy smile is featured in several of the videos on Cain's channel and website. If you want three minutes of unadulterated bugfuck insanity, check out "He Carried Yellow Flowers," which takes place on the set of an Old West movie and during which a buck-toothed black cowboy is beaten by a white cowboy in the background as an actor in costume tells us how much we need Herman Cain. This is not to mention the sexy, silent woman holding a chicken, which prompts two "nice chicken" comments (one imagines Cain wanted them to say, "Nice cock," but, you know, he's running for office, for Pete's sake). Then it ends with the Cain slow smirk, except this time it seems to be saying, "The joke's on you."

At least one ad contains a piece of information that probably ought to be included whenever anybody takes seriously his 9-9-9 economic "plan." It is a quote from Cain: "If 10% is good enough for God, then 9% should be just fine for the federal government." It's not an insignificant, throwaway line because it's at the end of his video introducing the plan (the one where he compares a progressive tax code to slavery, which you can be sure that Harriet Tubman would totally agree with).

While everyone is amused at the idea that 9-9-9 may have come from Sim City, perhaps the more relevant questions are whether Cain actually believe that everyone should be giving 10% of their income to churches and if his economic "plan" is actually based on the idea that the government should get less than religious groups.

(Note: None of this means that the Rude Pundit thinks Cain is anything less than a greedy exploiter of idiot Republicans who long for anyone who is not Romney.)