CBS Anchor Lectures Herman Cain About “Smoking” Campaign Ad

A campaign commercial posted on the Cain campaign’s YouTube site, in which his campaign manager Mark Block blows smoke at the camera has caused quite a stir (see it here). In an interview on Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer claimed the moral authority of a cancer survivor to lecture Cain about the inclusion of smoking in the ad.

Cain initially defended the ad, saying his campaign wants “Herman to be Herman.”

“Mark Block is a smoker, and we say, let Mark be Mark,” he said.

Cain said the campaign thought some would find the video to be funny, which prompted Schieffer to make an “editorial opinion” an chastise Cain for belittling the issue.

“Let me just tell you, it’s not funny to me,” Schieffer said. “I am a cancer survivor, like you. I had cancer that’s smoking-related. I don’t think its serves the country well – and this an editorial opinion here – to be showing someone smoking a cigarette. And you’re the front runner now. And it seems to me as front runner you would have a responsibility of not to take that kind of a tone. I would suggest that perhaps as the front runner, you would want to raise the level of the campaign.”

In other words, Schieffer wants Cain to censor his ad to satisfy the whims of political correctness. Which is, frankly, un-American.

I loathe this idea that we’re all such a bunch of lemmings that, upon seeing something like tobacco use or alcohol consumption or violence in the media, we’ll all immediately begin to emulate the behavior. The nanny statist attitude of people like Mr. Schieffer holds that we’re all children in the thrall of whatever we last saw on television.

Which, of course, we aren’t.

We are an informed people who know full well the risk of something like smoking. That some of us choose to do it anyway is neither here nor there, and attempting to expunge any mention or image of activities disapproved of by the self-appointed PC police is not just irritating, it has little impact on how people behave.

Herman Cain is running to be president of the United States. There are a lot of things Americans need to know about him and his polices. The use of a cigarette in a campaign ad is about the least important thing he could have been asked about.