Now laughing friends deride
By DougJ, Head of Infidelity October 25th, 2011
Fox News fembot on Cain’s smoking commercial:
“Were you trying to appeal to, you know, folks who are out there, you know, living real lives, working the farm, working in Detroit — you know, that kind of thing, as opposed to the East and West Coast elite, people in media circles who shun smoking? And you know, sort of real American things?”
Bonus: the smoking guy refers to himself in the third person.
Posted in Hoot-Smalley
Who’s keeping tabs on the wayback machine? Smoking is ‘real living’. People in Detroit have ‘jobs’ and, well, presumably are no longer inner city black gangbangers. People broadly still work the farm.
We should soon be approaching the point when Perry releases a commercial which supports our brave boys fighting the Japanese and calling for the widespread electrification of America.
Let’s not go too far, though, or we’ll be right back in the banks blowing shit up and everyone standing on bread lines.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
Herman Cain just wants everyone to experience how character-building cancer is! And if you get cancer and you can’t overcome it, it just proves that a) you didn’t work hard enough, and b) god didn’t really like you in the first place.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
Megyn Kelly, of course, is as distant from the East and West Coast elite as one can imagine. And I’m sure she totally chain-smokes a couple packs a day.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
of course! it was a wheezy dog whistle to VA, NC, SC and the other tobacco-producing states!
October 25th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
Really, I think the main question should be: What the hell is up with that look Cain gives the camera at the end? It reminds me of that sun-baby from teletubbies or something. It weirds me out.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:40 pm
There seems to have been a transcription error.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:41 pm
@Steve: Yes, well, she went to Syracuse and got her JD in Albany. You know how long it takes a hot, blonde lawyer to drive to Greenwich from Albany in her convertible BMW? Like, two and a half hours. And that assumes you can take the time away from rustling buffalo and repairing the combine.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
We here on the West Coast don’t shun smoking. We’ve just learned that using a Volcano Vaporizor is way better for our lungs.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
three words: pisses liberals off.
the end.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:44 pm
Does she me people working in Detroit at the auto factories that Obama kept open so they don’t have to work delivering shitty pizza?
October 25th, 2011 at 5:44 pm
I’ve been laughing too hard today. Bad, bad, me.
And I still think Cain must be punking everyone.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:44 pm
@Mino: pretty soon Doug is gonna “Cain-roll” us.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:45 pm
Fembot? It’s all fun and games until machine guns sprout from her nipples. Oh Yeah, Baby!
October 25th, 2011 at 5:45 pm
Cain’s pick for Surgeon General, I’m guessing.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:46 pm
Ok, they sampled the 10 seconds of the commercial where Block’s head wasn’t jerking back and forth like the hit of crack he just took in was just starting to take effect. They ought to have played the whole thing.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:48 pm
Why does Fox hire these interchangeable blondes? Do men really find blondes more attractive?
October 25th, 2011 at 5:48 pm
Fortunately, it didn’t take too long for the other shoe to drop. I can relax now.
@The Other Chuck:
I burst out laughing. Perfect.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:48 pm
My initial reaction was that the guy doesn’t look healthy. It may have been the lighting. But I tend to think it’s the tobacco intake. Habitual smokers often have a sickly look to them. You know what I mean?
A dear friend of my mom’s died just last week of emphysema. The poor thing was a heavy smoker all her life.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:49 pm
The snark is strong in this thread. Martin for the win at the moment. Who’s keeping tabs on the wayback machine?
October 25th, 2011 at 5:50 pm
@Mino:
As long as he keeps taking the Koch suckers money, it’s OK by me. And even though I think Cain stands a chance in hell of getting the GOP nomination, I want him to do well in primaries and split the GOP vote. Make Romney and the GOP powers that be sweat for it.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:51 pm
What the hell is a veterans’ bar? Is this something unique to Iowa?
Just because Iowa hasn’t outlawed smoking in bars doesn’t mean … oh hell. I give up.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:52 pm
I’m also disappointed that they cut out the bit where Block threw the still lit butt out his car window into a national forest. Good thing that Smokey the Socialist Bear wasn’t anywhere around.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:53 pm
@opie jeanne:
VFW?
October 25th, 2011 at 5:54 pm
BTW do any Balloon Juicers celebrate Diwali?
October 25th, 2011 at 5:54 pm
@JWL: I thought the same thing when I saw the ad, that he looked sickly, kind of yellowish, and it looked like it was shot outside where the lighting would be pretty good.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:54 pm
@Brachiator: Amen. Let him keep it up to the convention. He’s in the wrong profession, though. He should be script writing for Mel Brooks if he’s the one doing these ads.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
@gocart mozart: I thought of that at first, but the one nearest our house in Anaheim (Orange County, CA) made them smoke outside.
October 25th, 2011 at 5:56 pm
I’m also disappointed that they cut out the bit where Block threw the still lit butt out his car window into a national forest. Good thing that Smokey the Bear wasn’t anywhere around.
[edited to remove word that kicked off moderation …]
October 25th, 2011 at 5:59 pm
The video is one of the most surreal things I’ve seen this cycle. I am tempted to say “ever”, but I’m sure some past thing was even stranger and I’ve blocked it out.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:01 pm
@opie jeanne: That is so they will catch pneumonia and die quicker.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Someone needs to tell him that the majority of those people out there in middle america, living real lives, working the farm, and working in Detroit don’t smoke. The smoking rate in the US is under 20%.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:03 pm
Boy howdy, quite a day for song lyrics as post titles!
Two Elvis Costello tunes this morning and now “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.” And if I’m not mistaken “Kthug Gets It” was a track on the latest release from Godspeed You Black Emperor. (Dougerhead’s earlier post “Bleed on Me” should be a lyric, but I don’t know it.)
Must be some kinda contest among front-pagers.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:04 pm
marketing to the randroids? mistress ayn did declare smoking a moral obligation.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:05 pm
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’ve been to a few. My best friend is a Hindu, which pretty made me a Hindu, when I lived in New York.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:05 pm
Wait… someone in Detroit still has a job?
October 25th, 2011 at 6:06 pm
For the record, I haven’t managed to block out the Mike Gravel videos yet, and this is weirder.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:06 pm
@handsmile:
The least obscure of the group from the title track of the Stones’ “Let It Bleed”.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:06 pm
@handsmile: Where is Guinness?It must be a record—two songs written to an economist.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:08 pm
‘Nother awesome thread title, Dougerhead!
October 25th, 2011 at 6:09 pm
@Dougerhead: 2010 satellite image of india on diwali
http://my-reverie.tumblr.com/p.....estival-of
October 25th, 2011 at 6:09 pm
Megyn Kelly is a brainless, ignorant, bitch. Maybe not the nicest word choice in the world, but damnit, it fits women like her and Sarah Palin.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:09 pm
Hey, it got y’all to watch his ad.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:09 pm
@CaptainFwiffo: Gravel’s was longer—or at least seemed an eternity.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:10 pm
@pragmatism:
Im fact, a cigarette with a $ as its only branding was one of the Big Clues to the John Galt Mystery.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:11 pm
Cain’s message: We only have enough money for about two ad spots, and being weird enough to get free airtime (Thanks, Megyn!) is our only hope of staying in this thing. It’s the Mike Gravel strategy – hopeless, yes, but still unforgettable. (Edit: I see CaptainFwiffo beat me to the Gravel connection)
October 25th, 2011 at 6:12 pm
I just looked out of my office window and a couple of West Coast Elites were out smoking in the parking lot next to a BMW 740! Do they qualify as “real Americans”?
October 25th, 2011 at 6:12 pm
I may have missed a mention of it comments above, but I read someplace that Cain did some work, or political favors, for the tobacco industry in the past.
So… maybe a little promise of things to come for that industry group if he is elected? Beside appealing to the smoker vote, though most regular daily smokers want to quit or at least cut down, so not sure if a drag on a coffin nail is a sure fire winner with that group.
As for Kelly, she is Fox news actor, so the sense of what she says is of no importance. Just as long as a dog whistle to listener prejudices is embedded in the word salad.
As far as I can tell, what she said had no obvious connection to reality. But will look through comments in detail latter to see if some one has figured it out.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:13 pm
I assumed that he lit up a cigarette because he’d just had an 0rgasm.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:14 pm
I think Cain is a sure thing for the Polli(best) and the Daisy(worst) awards for political advertising.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:16 pm
@Jim C.: Give her some credit. It took a lot of courage to tell the Cain campaign went the ad signified. Think about how she would describe the Obama ads.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:19 pm
@pragmatism:
Thanks for that photo! I just printed it out and shared with an Indian colleague. He’s off to buy sweets at a local South Asian grocery for his Diwali feast tomorrow.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:25 pm
@Mino: Not too likely in that climate.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:25 pm
@pragmatism:
I’ve heard that. Why, exactly? Did she invent “pissing off liberals”?
October 25th, 2011 at 6:27 pm
@jl: (#46)
In the late 1990s, Cain served as chief executive of the National Restaurant Association, leading this lobbying group’s efforts to oppose higher taxes on cigarettes and the use of federal funds to prosecute cigarette companies for fraud.
From today’s Guardian article, “Herman Cain’s smoking gums: the worst ad in the history of politics”: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl.....g-ad-video
October 25th, 2011 at 6:27 pm
@handsmile: thanks.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:28 pm
@gnomedad: basically to justify her nicotine addiction.
from http://www.lewrockwell.com/rot.....ard23.html
“The official justification for making smoking a moral obligation was a sentence in Atlas where the heroine refers to a lit cigarette as symbolizing a fire in the mind, the fire of creative ideas. (One would think that simply holding up a lit match could do just as readily for this symbolic function.) One suspects that the actual reason, as in so many other parts of Randian theory, from Rachmaninoff to Victor Hugo to tap dancing, was that Rand simply liked smoking and had the need to cast about for a philosophical system that would make her personal whims not only moral but also a moral obligation incumbent upon everyone who desires to be rational.”
October 25th, 2011 at 6:34 pm
@gnomedad:
So that they get emphysema, and thus end up burdening the welfare state, maybe? Didn’t Rand herself end up doing that?
October 25th, 2011 at 6:35 pm
@SiubhanDuinne: nice! i wonder how many people know of diwali solely because of the episode on the Office (U.S.)?
October 25th, 2011 at 6:35 pm
@schrodinger’s cat: Celebrating Diwali in Chennai, India. Have to wake up in a couple of hours and start the show.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:41 pm
@pragmatism: ME..
October 25th, 2011 at 6:44 pm
Love the shout-out to Jerome Kern. A day or two after Rodgers and Hammerstein!
October 25th, 2011 at 6:52 pm
@jl:
He was a lobbyist for the national restaurant association or something, and pushed against no-smoking laws. He also pushed against attempts to curtail drunk driving. He’s a real prize.
October 25th, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Mormons are non-smokers and non-drinkers. We’ll know Romney takes this affront seriously when we see Mitt cut an ad with with a cigar and a Rolling Rock.
October 25th, 2011 at 7:13 pm
Megyn, please don’t try to drag my hometown into this “heartland vs. the coasts” bullshit. Because if you knew anything about the Detroit area, you’d know that it contains a whole lot of people who are regularly excluded from the “heartland” model.
I also happen to think that the “heartland” concept doesn’t even accurately describe the areas that are considered to be “the heartland”.
October 25th, 2011 at 7:15 pm
Maybe this has something to do with the fact that I quit cold-turkey eighteen days ago (after a pack-and-a-half a day habit) AND I live in Detroit, but this makes me want to punch Megyn (wtf?) Kelly in the enormous paycheck she cashes every other week for spewing this bullsh!t and carrying the water of people who could give f*ck all about us Detroiters.
GRRRRRR.
October 25th, 2011 at 7:19 pm
Oh dear god. Are we resurrecting that “real American” shit from the Palin 2008 campaign? You know, the non-elites, salt-of-the-earth meth-smokers of Small Town America”.
The problem with the “pundit” Republicans is that they SAY they’re not “elitists”, but I’ll bet they’d choose the smartest doctor for an operation or the smartest lawyer for legal help. And don’t tell me they don’t want their OWN kids not to go to Harvard.
October 25th, 2011 at 7:20 pm
Moderation? What did I do wrong?
October 25th, 2011 at 7:20 pm
@pragmatism:
I know it’s almost impossible to tell with Rand, but perhaps we weren’t really supposed to take that one seriously.
October 25th, 2011 at 7:27 pm
There are plenty of fundy Xians out there who regard nicotine as immoral as sex, rock music, weed, booze, card-playing, moving-picture shows, etc. I take it they’re coastal elitists, too?
October 25th, 2011 at 7:29 pm
@different-church-lady: I think with Ayn Rand, everything was to be taken seriously. That is the burden of total freedom!
October 25th, 2011 at 7:32 pm
Maybe this has something to do with the fact that I quit cold-turkey eighteen days ago (after a pack-and-a-half a day habit) AND I live in Detroit, but this makes me want to punch Megyn (wtf?) Kelly in the enormous paycheck she cashes every other week for spewing this bullsh!t and carrying the water of people who could give f*ck all about us Detroiters.
GRRRRRR.
October 25th, 2011 at 7:37 pm
@schrodinger’s cat: Peripherally. Walk toward the lights, Carol Ann!
As for the smoking thing, there are no adults (other than tea partiers and militia members) who can be more bovinely belligerent about their right to do stupid shit than a certain type of smoker. And yeah, there’s plenty of crossover between the groups.
October 25th, 2011 at 8:04 pm
@CaptainFwiffo wrote:
yes, peak wingnut IS a LIE.
October 25th, 2011 at 8:04 pm
@handsmile:
Stones, Let it Bleed.
October 25th, 2011 at 8:06 pm
@different-church-lady: What jl said. She and her followers took it seriously. We have to take her paranoid delusions seriously as they are pimped then repackaged then repimped.
October 25th, 2011 at 8:11 pm
@different-church-lady: What jl said. She and her followers took it seriously. We have to take her paranoid delusions seriously as they are pimped then repackaged then repimped.
October 25th, 2011 at 8:12 pm
@JPL:
. . . and ME!
October 25th, 2011 at 8:14 pm
Ok, all the obvious jokes about anyone in my city still having a job have already been made but what I would really like to know is, when the hell did Detroit become part of “real America” again? We sure as shit weren’t considered real Americans in ‘08 or ‘09 when all of our jobs were evaporating and the GOP was busy calling us all deadbeats and Marxists for wanting the terms of our contracts, negotiated in good faith, to actually be delivered on. Wall street got golden parachutes from these fuckers while we got golden showers and now these assholes at FOX actually have the gall to call me one of them? Everytime I think the disingenuousness can’t possibly get anymore obvious a little story like this pops up and reaffirms my absolute hatred for the GOP and FOX News.
October 25th, 2011 at 8:22 pm
@CaptainFwiffo:
Carly Fiorina’s Demon Sheep Ad ring any bells?
October 25th, 2011 at 9:22 pm
Those smoke-filled rooms where tough political decisions are made aren’t going to fill themselves with smoke.
Vote Cain, he comes with a smoke machine!
Maybe the guy was trying to quietly message everyone that Cain is blowing smoke up their asses?
October 25th, 2011 at 9:26 pm
Cathyx:
I don’t think conservatives love real America, just Real America, the one playing on tape inside their heads. How real people live is altogether not their concern, just as David Brooks can read the drop in credit card use to increasing moral fiber, rather than decreasing money. When conservatives want to make fun of my hometown, they use Detroit as a template for failure. When they want to project their fantasies about everyone between the Sierra Nevada range and the Allegheny Mountains, Detroit becomes Real America again.
October 25th, 2011 at 9:49 pm
[...] of Doug’s post over at Balloon-Juice — on Fox’s latest defense of addiction, lung cancer and related [...]
October 25th, 2011 at 10:27 pm
@schrodinger’s cat:
Sure some of us do. :-) Happy Diwali!
October 25th, 2011 at 10:45 pm
herman cain is alive with pleasure.
October 25th, 2011 at 11:01 pm
Sad thing is Cain’s a cancer survivor.
October 26th, 2011 at 12:19 am
Anyone remember the Smoking Guy from X-Files?
October 26th, 2011 at 7:03 am
@Joe L.: Good Luck, Joe L. I quit cold turkey last Christmas, after a 30yr pack a day habit. If I can do it, you can. The next couple weeks may still be a little touch, but if you can make it to three weeks, you can make it to three months.
October 26th, 2011 at 7:51 am
[...] Balloon Juice, this is the kind of godawful, embarrassingly leading question that Faux News specializes in. [...]
October 26th, 2011 at 9:38 am