no he cain't Five Theories About the Bizarre New Herman Cain Campaign Ad [Updated] 
 
 We've gotten used to being baffled by Herman Cain on an almost daily basis, but a new ad his campaign released last night really takes things to a new level. Coinciding with a new New York Times/CBS News poll that shows Cain still leading the GOP field  25 percent to 21 percent over Mitt Romney  the 56-second ad is simply one of the strangest you'll ever see. It consists mostly of Cain's unknown, mustachioed chief of staff, Mark Block, staring straight into the camera and saying patriotic, optimistic things about the Cain candidacy. The real weirdness, though, takes place in the ad's final fifteen seconds. First, Block takes a long, slow drag of a cigarette as a painfully cheesy tea party anthem begins to play. Then we see a close-up of Cain turning to the camera and very slowly breaking into a smile. In the words of one YouTube commenter who we're not going to try to top, "I imagine Herman Cain is closing the curtains behind him at that shady﻿ motel, turning slowly, and making that creepy smile at a scared prostitute on the bed." 
 
 
 
 The whole ad is odd, but it's the cigarette that has most people talking. So let's think about why it might have been included. Here are five theories, in order of least plausible to most plausible. 
 
 
 
 5. Over at Salon, Steve Kornacki suggests that the "smoking shot ... could represent Cain’s defiant response to recent media scrutiny of his three-year run in the late 1990s as the head of the National Restaurant Association, during which time he aligned the lobbying group with the tobacco industry." Maybe! But that's a pretty obscure reference, and Cain doesn't tend to obsess about the media as much as some other GOP politicians. 
 
 4. The smoking scene was another way to signal that Cain is not your normal, focus-grouped, politically correct politician. His chief of staff will smoke a cigarette like he's a rogue cop in a film noir, and he doesn't care if the anti-tobacco groups or the liberal nanny-staters whine about it. 
 
 3. Herman Cain is trying to appeal to people like Mark Block. He's white, he has a mustache, he has a Midwestern accent, and yes, he smokes cigarettes. In short, he looks and sounds like someone from the SNL Da Bears sketches. And he believes in Herman Cain. Come on in, working class Republicans  the water's fine! 
 
 2. The smoking scene guaranteed that the ad would become viral. The Cain campaign knew that the mainstream media would throw a hissy fit over the inclusion of cigarette in a campaign ad, and they were 100 percent correct! Look  we're talking about it right now! 
 
 1. All of the previous theories assume that the Cain campaign  by which we mean Cain, Block, and, we don't know, maybe that random accountant in Cleveland that helped Cain craft the 9-9-9 plan?  made conscious, deliberate decisions about the content of the ad. But maybe that's giving them too much credit. Cain hadn't even thought about his position on abortion until a few days ago  how hard could he have thought about the cigarette scene in his web ad? He probably just thought it looked cool. 
 
 Update: The Smoking Man, Mark Block, told Fox News this afternoon that there was no deeper meaning to the smoking scene (ding ,ding, ding, Theory Number One!): 
 
 
 
 
 
 “The message behind the ad was to are supporters that we’re on a roll. We’re excited about what’s happening. There was no subliminal message. In fact, I personally would encourage people not to smoke. It’s just that I’m a smoker. A lot of the people on the staff said ‘Just let Block be Block." 
 
 However, he soon added: 
 
 
 
 
 
 “I tell you, you walk into a veteran’s bar in Iowa and they’re sitting around smoking and you know we are resonating with them. I’m not the only one that smokes in America for God’s sake." ||||| Topics: 2012 Elections, Opening Shot 
 
 Sometime last night, Herman Cain’s latest campaign video exploded onto the Web, and immediately the debate began: What the hell was that? 
 
 Titled “Now is the time for action!” the 56-second spot, which doesn’t seem designed to air as a paid television ad, features Mark Block, who is Cain’s campaign manager, offering a series of broad platitudes about how “Herman will put ‘united’ back in ‘United States of America’” and how “together we can take our country back.” 
 
 The decision to use Block, who seems slightly uncomfortable in front of the camera and whose name and face are unrecognizable to virtually every Republican primary voter, is curious, but what makes the video so bizarre is what happens when he finishes speaking: With an aggressive soundtrack rising in the background, Block raises a cigarette to his mouth, takes a drag, and puffs out a cloud of smoke. Watch it for yourself: 
 
 The intent of the smoking shot is unclear, but it could represent Cain’s defiant response to recent media scrutiny of his three-year run in the late 1990s as the head of the National Restaurant Association, during which time he aligned the lobbying group with the tobacco industry. As the New York Times reported in a profile of Cain that ran over the weekend: 
 
 Under Mr. Cain’s leadership, the restaurant association opposed higher taxes on cigarettes and the use of federal money to prosecute cigarette makers for fraud — positions that Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said had little to do with the restaurant business. And Mr. Cain argued vociferously that the decision about whether to go smoke-free was the province of individual restaurant owners, not the government. “The restaurant industry literally became the alter ego of the tobacco industry during that period of time,” Mr. Myers said in an interview. The restaurant association relied heavily on R. J. Reynolds for financial support, records show. Mr. Meyne, the Reynolds senior director of public affairs, served on the restaurant group’s board, and Mr. Cain served on the board of Nabisco, which had earlier merged with Reynolds. 
 
 There will be those who claim the video represents savvy political marketing. After all, it was an instant viral sensation, with reporters, pundits and political professionals furiously passing it around on Twitter, and it will surely be replayed and dissected by all of the cable news channels today. Certainly, this is how Cain’s campaign is trying to spin it, telling NBC News last night that they’re pleased with the attention it’s receiving. In this sense, it’s a direct descendant of the “demon sheep” Web video that Carly Fiorina released during her campaign for the GOP Senate nomination in California last year; it was widely ridiculed, but Fiorina did end up winning the primary. It’s also not the first time that Cain has released an unconventional campaign video. There was, for instance, this from late August: But back then, Cain was barely registering in the polls and the adage that any publicity is good publicity truly applied. Now, though, he’s running near the top of the GOP field nationally and in Iowa. His main challenge no longer involves attracting attention; he’s suddenly getting more of it than he knows what to do with. Instead, he needs to overcome the profound skepticism of opinion-shaping Republican leaders over his seriousness and staying power as a national candidate. But pushing out a video that reeks of amateurism seems almost guaranteed to reinforce their doubts. This is consistent with how Cain has handled the spotlight since surging to the front of the pack two weeks ago. In a nationally televised debate, he offered an incoherent defense of his 9-9-9 tax plan when his rivals ganged up on him, then faded into the background for the rest of the night. A few days later, he caused a stir by seemingly arguing in favor of abortion rights, an inexplicable self-inflicted wound for a candidate who has cultivated support from culturally conservative Christians. And he may have made matters worse over the weekend by alienating a key gathering of social conservatives in Iowa. Christian Heinze, who tracks the GOP race for the Hill, perfectly captured how the last week has gone for Cain in a series of screen shots from Fox News, where Cain appeared four times in recent days to “clarify” problematic statements. Now he’s gotten into a war of words with Karl Rove, who recently declared that Cain is creating an image of “not being up to the task” of running for president. And, of course, Cain’s utter lack of a meaningful campaign footprint in any early primary and caucus states continues to invite the impression that he’s mainly interested in selling books and becoming a political celebrity — not actually winning. If that’s what he’s trying to do, of course, then “Now is the time for action!” really is a brilliant video. But if the rap on Cain is wrong and he actually is trying to win the GOP nomination, then it’s just the latest in a long lone of baffling and utterly counterproductive moves. 
 
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 Close ||||| “We’ve run a campaign like nobody’s ever seen,” says Mark Block, Herman Cain chief of staff and protagonist of his latest ad, which dropped today online. He may be right, because it has been quite a while, if ever, since we’ve seen an ad like this. A close up of Block speaking takes up most of the time, giving the impression that this is a normal campaign spot, until he concludes that “together we can do this. Together we can take this country back.” Then things get weird. 
 
 The end of the sentence prompts the beginning of a dramatic song with a woman proclaiming “I AM AMERICA” (it’s a song we’ve heard before, by Krista Branch), and, for some reason, serves a cue for Block to reveal in slow motion that he is smoking a cigarette. He takes a breath and blows nicotine into the camera while Branch sings the chorus of her song. A profile of Herman Cain then fades into view, concluding one of the most bizarre 5-10 second chunks of film in some time. 
 
 RELATED: This Happened: Herman Cain Sings Pizza Ode To Tune Of John Lennon’s Imagine 
 
 Of course, everything Block previously had to say fades almost immediately from memory as he reveals this new riddle. Why is he smoking– a more or less unpopular practice, particularly for millennials– in this ad? The only answer the audience gets is that he is smoking because “I am America, once voice, united we stand,” or something. Is this ad secretly not pro-Herman Cain, but actually anti-Mike Bloomberg? Who knows, but it will definitely be a water cooler topic for the next few days. 
 
 Watch the new Herman Cain ad below: 
 
 
 
 Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com ||||| Meet Mark Block, Herman Cain's top adviser and the newest YouTube star of the 2012 presidential campaign. 
 
 Block is the star of the video below, which was posted to Cain's account, and shows the former Wisconsin political operative reflecting on the campaign and puffing on a cigarette. It ends with a shot of Cain giving a sidelong smile to the camera as the song "I Am America" plays. 
 
 “We’ve run a campaign like nobody’s ever seen," Block says in the video. "But then, America’s never seen a candidate like Herman Cain.” 
 
 It took about 10 seconds for someone to scoop up the Twitter account @FakeMarkBlock and add this bio: "Herman Cain COS. Smoker. Post modern genius."
– Herman Cain's new campaign video is generating lots of attention, but not because of 9-9-9 or 9-0-9 or anything remotely related to policy. It's all about a cigarette: The video (it's in the gallery at left) features chief of staff Mark Block praising his boss for about half a minute. Then the camera moves in for a slow close-up of Block smoking a cigarette and exhaling, which fades into a profile of Cain. All in all, it's "one of the most bizarre 5- (to) 10- second chunks of film in some time," writes Frances Martel at Mediaite. What gives? At Salon, Steve Kornacki suggests it might be Cain's defiant response to a New York Times article that noted he buddied up to the tobacco industry when he led the National Restaurant Association. (But if Cain is actually serious about winning the nomination, it's a "baffling" video, adds Kornacki. Read his full post.) One thing is clear, however: "Block is the newest YouTube star of the 2012 presidential campaign," writes Alexander Burns at Politico. He's even got a fake Twitter site now. And real Mark Block isn't a fan. Click for more theories on why the cigarette shot was included.