I’m sure that everyone has seen Republican presidential nominee/frontrunner (!?) Herman Cain’s strange, weird and terribly confusing campaign ad, “He Carried Yellow Flowers.” 

For those of you haven’t seen this simultaneously amusing and frightening campaign, let me synopsize it for you. Keep in mind that this man could become our next president (And you thought Palin was bad!).

The ad takes its sweet time to build into its message. First, a cowboy on horseback comes riding through a desert landscape accompanied by the sweet, twangy melody of an old western song. The words “There was a time in America when a man was a man…and a horse was a horse…and a man on a horse was just a man on a horse…unless he carried, ( <---their unnecessary comma, not mine) yellow flowers” flashes over the cowboy and a bunch of Wild West-looking dudes drinking sassafras.

I see, American men should be strong and straight, and those damn liberal horses should stop asking for equal hay rights! Got it. But what’s the deal with the yellow flowers?

We don’t get to understand. Not really.

The man on horseback dismounts and takes the flowers to the door of a cabin. He’s just about to knock when the two sassafras drinkers start berating him for bringing the yellow flowers. One says that the cowboy is probably as yellow as the flowers. At this point, I start to wrack my brain about the significance of yellow (is it Sasha's favorite color? Did Michelle wear it at the inaugural ball?), but then the cowboy says, “Why does it always have to be about color? What are you guys, liberal?” He hits one of them over the head with the flowers when the liberal man spits tobacco on his shoe.

Ah, so it’s a very poorly executed play on how Republicans don’t care that Cain is a black man, but that liberals made a big stink about Obama's race. Right, it was the Democrats who called Obama a Muslim because he was born in exotic Hawaii.

The weirdest part is yet to come. Cain goes on to negate the credibility of his cowboy mouthpiece—and thereby, his "race doesn’t matter to Republicans" message—by cutting the cowboy scene away to reveal that the whole thing was part of the filming of a movie. The cowboy—who is given the moniker, Nick Searcy-– goes on to order a melon-mango margarita and then berate the production assistant who serves him for forgetting his straw. After we already think he’s an ass, Nick Searcy negates Obama's credibility because he reads pre-written lines like an actor does, and then endorses Herman Cain for president.

But we already know Searcy's an actor! Who gets paid to read lines onto a camera (for people like Herman Cain)! And the fake actor is a real/fake-life asshole!

I don’t get it. I really don't get it. Why the untrustworthy, jerky narrator? Why the scene that is undercut into oblivion by the revelation of the movie set? Ugh, Cain, you made me think too much, and that certainly isn't what you want for this country.

What do you think if this nutty ad? Do people really take this guy seriously?