El cigarrillo de Block tiene a todos devanándose los sesos

The Atlantic Wire:

A new YouTube ad put together by the Herman Cain campaign has quite a few people scratching their heads. Mostly because it appears to have been filmed on campaign manager Mark Block's smoke break. Literally.

(...) The video was posted about a week ago, and is unlisted, meaning it doesn't appear on Cain's official YouTube page and no one can see it unless they already know the exact URL or find it embedded on another page. But now that it's out there, it's yet another piece to the Herman Cain puzzle. Is he crazy? Or crazy like a fox?

Given this and his "Imagine there's no pizza" salute, Cain might just be the king of viral video campaigning.

The Atlantic:

The web ad was uploaded to YouTube on Oct 19 with the caption info: "Chief of Staff Mark Block talks about Herman Cain's Presidential Campaign and urges people to act because together we can elect Herman Cain!" It was not immediately clear why it took until Monday to gain notice.

Making a bold statement against anti-smoking regulations would seem general election suicide but also the sort of thing that might help Cain in Tea Party circles, where voters frequently complain about what they see as intrusive government regulations that prevent them from living the lifestyles they want to.

CBS News:

A number of factors make the spot itself very strange: Block's halting delivery, the close-up nature of the shots, a pair of rapid pans away from Block's face before the cuts. And that's all a precursor to the most memorable moment: A close up of Block inhaling a cigarette and then wordlessly exhaling a thin puff of smoke as a woman sings "I am America" in the background. The spot then cuts to a close up of an unsmiling Cain turning toward the camera, the candidate gradually breaking out into a laugh.

The spot was posted on October 19th, according to its YouTube page, but because it was unlisted on Cain's main YouTube page it seems to have gone undiscovered until now. There has been some speculation online that the spot is a hoax, but the Cain campaign late Monday night confirmed to CBS News that it is legitimate.

A campaign official said that the video was "just Block being Block." But it's unclear what the campaign planned to do with the video, whether it was intended to be an ad, or why it wasn't publicly available on Cain's page with his other videos.

Intentionally or not, the ad brings to mind Cain's history opposing smoking bans as a lobbyist with the National Restaurant Association, which the New York Times recently reported out.

"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," the Times reported. The story also noted that "Cain argued vociferously that the decision about whether to go smoke-free was the province of individual restaurant owners, not the government."