The Twitter account formerly used by the late Herman Cain fired off a head-scratching message on Sunday, insisting that the coronavirus “isn’t as deadly” as once thought.

Cain died in July at the age of 74 after being hospitalized for more than a month with the COVID-19 infection. 

Full story here.

Hey, when someone’s got a platform- they’ve got a platform. Whoever’s putting this out could have just made a burner account, but then who’s gonna see that? What attention is that going to bring? 

First thing we’ve got to find out is: who did this and why?

If this is was a hack-job, or an Anonymous type organization trying to make a mockery of our politicians and, possibly, our entire society - then consider this a job well done. 

If this Herman Cain’s ‘estate’ (I’m using that term very loosely), or cronies (using that term appropriately) then there are a couple things we have to cover. First it’s generally frowned upon to tweet from a dead person’s account. Second, and related, it’s generally frowned upon to tweet out a conspiracy theory that contradicts itself when you look at the the account that tweeted it. In this case, it’s very difficult to overlook the account that tweeted the information, because, as I mentioned in my first point, the account holder is dead; and, as I mentioned in my second point, the account holder IS DEAD because of the thing you argue is NOT DEADLY.

I’m a little at a loss on not only how these points were ignored, but how nobody, NOBODY, nobody at all responsible for this, thought that maybe it was a good idea to ask for an alive person to tweet this? It can’t be that big of an ask. As member of the the Left I can attest to the fact that we love to toss around articles from the Guardian and the Atlantic. I assume there’s also some sharing of media going around on the other side of the aisle! Send Herman’s book club buddies the crazy conspiratorial article you found, they’ll love it!

Regardless, the fact that the first of the possibilities I offered is as plausible as the second- basically proves that there’s no real point to even go through with that. No need to hack the files! We live in this world, we already know how dumb it is!

All in all if it’s coming from someone who has legitimate control of Herman Cain’s account it’s a pretty savvy social media move. It gets views, it gets retweets, responses, news articles, hot blogs, all the above. Of course, much of that is, of course, in response to the fact that Herman Cain died from the ‘not so deadly Coronavirus’. I know that all press is good press, but I don’t think that counts when the press you’re getting is a complete, total, absolute, unquestionable, borderline moronic contradiction to the message you’re trying to send. 

I will say. I have to respect the composition of this tweet. It’s just such a ‘huh, look at this *shrugs and beckons to conspiracy*. Dead Herman Cain isn’t trying to cram this down our throats, he’s just trying to casually show us this article that he just happened to click on!  This doesn’t change the fact that when it comes down to it, this whole things is infuriating. 

Look I don’t like to get that political on the blog- but after the week, month, year, we’ve had (and years for those in our country that don’t look like they were pulled directly from an Abercrombie and Fitch modeling campaign) I’m kind of tired of not saying anything. So yeah, I think Herman Cain was an idiot. He was careless, he was flippant, and he ultimately set a terrible example for millions of people who, for better or worse, looked to him for an example. 

I don’t want to make light of a death, especially of one caused by this pandemic. But this is such a stupid, idiotic to an ungodly level, all-around dumb as fuck move that I can’t ignore it. This is like using my lactose intolerant friend, Noah, shitting himself on a street corner as the poster child for your ‘milk’s good for everybody!’ campaign. 

So since I apparently can’t ask you to take the virus seriously or wear a mask, can I at least ask that if you’re going to try and fool us about the media’s misrepresentation of Covid 19- first try to fool us that you have a fucking brain.