Herman Cain has taken our and everyone else's snide "pizza man for president" jokes and stuffed them right in our fat faces! How? By having a week of political success, and at least briefly reaching the top tier of presidential candidates. He prefers to be called Sir President McWinning Pizza Man, now, please, thank you.

And to all those who say straw polls don't matter, now we can change that to straw polls don't matter except for maybe one of them. Cain won this past weekend's Florida straw poll by 20-something points, and now is getting interviews with Jay Leno — who seldom interviews anyone! — and endorsements from Dennis Miller, the old comedian who occasionally appears in cable news guest spots.

The latest Fox News national poll shows him in third place in a tight race with 17% of the vote, trailing Mitt Romney at 23% and Rick Perry at 19%. In today's SurveyUSA poll of Florida, he's only trailing Mitt Romney, 27% to 25%, with Rick Perry in a semi-distant third at 15%. Now you people are all saying "oh so what, these things change every week," and yeah maybe they do, okay? Good. But jumping 10-20 points in several polls for a candidate who's been in the third tier for months is rare, and reminiscent of Mike Huckabee's eventual surge in 2008. And look where Mike Huckabee is today: Getting fat all over again and hosting an agonizing weekend evening show on Fox News! The future is bright for old Herb.

How will he manage the media spotlight, for as long as he has it? Will he train himself to be a robo-sleezeball like Mitt Romney, or will he make all sorts of maybe-controversial statements? Hmm:

Herman Cain has a theory on why black Americans reliably vote Democratic: They've been brainwashed.

"African-Americans have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering a conservative point of view," the Republican presidential candidate told CNN on Wednesday.

"I have received some of that same vitriol simply because I am running for the Republican nomination as a conservative. So it's just brainwashing and people not being open minded, pure and simple," Cain added.

Let's think about this for a second... no, nevermind. Too hot! Not getting involved.

[Image via AP]