Damn...is this the final straw that breaks the back of the Cain campaign?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68146.htmlBy PATRICK GAVIN
11/11/11 9:46 AM EST Updated: 11/11/11 11:52 AM EST
Mustache group shaves Cain support
Herman Cain has plenty of problems to deal with at the moment, so why not add one more coal to the fire: The American Mustache Institute has decided to withdraw its endorsement of the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO.
In October, the Institute announced that was throwing its support behind Cain for, well, the obvious reasons.
“Mr. Cain would be the first Mustached American President of the United States since William Howard Taft, thus inspiring a new generation of good looking and fearless Mustached American leadership and public service,” said the group (hey, it’s a real organization!)
But they’ve had a change of heart.
First, the accusations of sexual harassment have the Institute’s mustache twitching.
“We’d be kidding ourselves if we didn’t say it caused us some concern,” said Aaron Perlut, the group’s chairman, who admits that the Institute carries about its business in tongue-in-cheek fashion. “We’re an organization that is principally involved in using humor to promote facial hair and we have little interest in having our good name being dragged through the mud based on something that may or may not be true.”
Second, the quality of Cain’s ‘stache created a hairy situation internally at the Institute.
“We’ve had a number of sources come to us and say it is in fact a theater-quality mustache,” Perlut told POLITICO. (For non-mustache aficionados, Perlut explains that “theater quality” refers to a mustache that appears “convincing” as a full, proud mustache but doesn’t stand up under closer examination.)
Third, and this might seem a little cheesy, but Godfather’s Pizza just left a bad taste in the Institute’s mouth. Perlut says that a fellow AMI member was disappointed during a recent pizza parlor visit, saying that their all-meat combo was far too sparse in its meat volume.
Lastly, Cain rejected the Institute’s proposal to allow mustached Americans to deduct $250 for the incidental costs for proper mustache maintenance.
(You quickly get the sense here, that the American Mustache Institute didn’t think their initial endorsement through carefully enough.)
On Friday, Cain laughed off the loss of the endorsement.
“I think my campaign can withstand the blow,” he said during an appearance on Fred Dicker’s radio show on Talk 1300 AM in Albany. “I will get a cup of coffee, wipe the tears from my eyes, and then move right on.”
Although they’ve since withdrawn their support, Cain wasn’t the first political candidate to receive an endorsement from the A.M.I., which has thrown its backing behind the mustached Bob Barr and Ed Lee. Perlut also said ‘it was quite exciting when President Obama nominated and ultimately succeeded in placing Eric Holder in the Attorney General’s role because he’s the first mustached American Attorney General since the 1940s.”
But the outlook for mustached men in power is not good. Perlut says there are fewer than 30 members of Congress with facial hair, thanks, in part, to changes in popular culture that came about during the 1980s. “Once Walter Cronkite left the airwaves in 1981, most newsmen became clean shaven and it has a trickle down affect,” he said.
It’s unlikely that the Institute will consider anyone else for president, saying that “there’s a dearth of candidates that we’d be comfortable in getting behind.” Perlut says they “would have taken a good hard look at John Bolton had he made a run, but we try to be apolitical and he tends to be fairly polarizing.”
CORRECTION - An earlier version of this story referred to Cain having a ‘cedar-quality’ mustache. The proper term is ‘theater-quality.’
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