Pics to Remember Cain By

Within minutes of sitting down, we discovered one reason why Cain has done so well despite crossing so many lines: No matter what blunder or offense pops out of his mouth (and plenty do), it’s awfully hard not to like him.from: A Pizza Party with Herman Cain. GQ. (Nov 14, 2011)

What lasting picture do have take away from the Herman Cain candidacy? (Of course, that’s after the choice of “none.”)

What about the one shot of Cain embracing his camera shy wife — the only picture in circulation of the two of them before his infidelities became known? Or, the awkward promo shots from the FOX News “defending my man” interview with Greta where we can’t see Gloria’s ring and Herman doesn’t move?

Besides those, which we’ve chatted about already, I like these other two. The first is the gilded shot of Cain in the gold tie outside the Trump Tower. (That’s besides this pic — oolala — in Trump’s office.) The shot on the street was taken on October 3rd, two days before Cain ripped Occupy Wall Street as an Obama administration conspiracy, and blamed the unemployed for not having jobs. So, that was Cain’s message: don’t blame anybody else for your problems (such as those various women you paid out settlements to for sexual harassment), blame yourself.

The other photo I’ll remember is this recent shots from Cain’s sit-down with a GQ correspondent, a senior editor and the mag’s food critic — all guys — in an upscale pizza joint in D.C. Photographed in mid-October and released in mid-November, this was published about a week after Sharon Bialek went public with her harassment charges, and a couple of weeks after the story of the large settlement of multiple harassment charges by the National Restaurant Association was disclosed.

So maybe some of you could interpret that hand gesture for me, and whether it means something different in photo #1 and #2 — and did I forget to mention the ubiquitous, power lunch, gold tie emerging again? Overall though, the photo is delicious in combination with the testosterone topping of conversation:

Chris Heath: What can you tell about a man by the type of pizza that he likes?

Herman Cain: [repeats the question aloud, then pauses for a long moment] The more toppings a man has on his pizza, I believe the more manly he is.

Chris Heath: Why is that?

Herman Cain: Because the more manly man is not afraid of abundance. [laughs]

Devin Gordon: Is that purely a meat question?

Herman Cain: A manly man don’t want it piled high with vegetables! He would call that a sissy pizza.

Of course, boys will be boys.

(Trump photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images. caption: Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain speaks to the media outside of Trump Towers before a scheduled appearance with real estate mogul Donald Trump on October 3, 2011 in New York City. Cain, a fiscal and social conservative, won a recent Florida straw poll of Republican candidates. GQ photos: Melissa Gordon.)