Cain Unable, Part 10

So Herman Cain went on CNN this morning to defend his TSA profiling program of "targeted identification" as entirely not like a profiling program, only that it would accomplish the same things.

In an interview Sunday, CNN’s Candy Crowley pressed Cain on what he meant by “targeted identification.”

“I don’t see it as another word for profiling,” Cain explained. “Targeted identification is a deliberate approach to figure out patterns associated with people who have tried to kill us.”

“But this sounds a little bit like ‘flying while Middle Eastern,’ not unlike ‘driving while black,’” Crowley noted, referring to the fact that African Americans are often stopped by law enforcement more often than whites.

“Candy, you are trying to pull me into the rhetoric that gets people in trouble, and what I’m trying to do is not be drawn into that,” Cain objected. “No. I am not trying to identify a particular religion, a particular color, a particular ethnicity. I’m simply saying, we should not be afraid to identify those characteristics that basically have been consistent in people who have tried to hurt this country. That’s all I’m saying.”

Right, we just generalize people for extra scrutiny and accuse them of being security threats based on completely physical, if not racial criteria but it's not profiling and it's not like "driving while black" at all.

Can Herman Cain even name those "characteristics" that he would have the TSA look for in suspects?  No, because a truly fair system would A) acknowledge that we have a domestic terror problem with white male terrorists and that they exist, and B) we'd have to do something about them. Better to say "we're keeping an eye on that young male Muslim looking guy."

Cain's done, but to see his last gasps like this?  Just depressing.