cindygate

I couldn't help blogging about this hilarious scandal, and I feel justified since it is about cooking, after all. :)

Basically, the long and short of it is that John McCain, like Barack Obama, has a section on his website letting us "get to know" his wife. [Curiously enough, Hillary has no "get to know" Bill section on her website; perhaps she feels we already know enough about him, or maybe she avoided it because it might include a mention of how much he loves cigars.]

I am already predisposed to despise Cindy McCain, considering she got together with John while he was still married to his first wife (who had gained weight while waiting for him to return from being tortured in Vietnam, which obviously justifies him cheating on her and then divorcing her). How Angelina Jolie of her. But now I can sneer at her for a reason other than infidelity, being an heiress, or single-handedly funding the Botox industry. Apparently, in a segment entitled "Cindy's Recipes" on the McCain website, Cindy listed several recipes that she stole, word for word, from the Food Network.

After this story broke on the Huffington Post, "Cindy's Recipes" mysteriously disappeared within 12 hours, and the faux pas was blamed on an intern. David Weiner on HP said it best: "Personally, I'm not sure how an intern can be responsible for messing up the McCain "family" recipes. Did the intern lose Cindy's recipe box only to haphazardly try to replace them with Food Network recipes? If only we could all steal and lie and lay it off on the unpaid help." And the New York Times notes that Cindy apparently had previously published the passion fruit recipe under her name in the January 16th New York Sun, as well as a no-bake cookies recipe in the December 2007 issue of Yankee Magazine that bore an uncanny resemblance to a Quaker Oats recipe. That feisty intern; he won't be stopped!

What I like even more is that the recipes were so frickin' highbrow: "Ahi Tuna with Napa Cabbage Salad"; "Passion Fruit Mousse" [you have got to be kidding me that McCain would even try this stuff]; "Farfalle with Turkey Sausage, Peas, and Mushrooms." Okay, the last one isn't so elitist, as long as you know what farfalle is -- but the fact remains, she could have just said "Bow-Tie Pasta" and made it a whole lot clearer. And hey, then maybe the world wouldn't have noticed the plagiarism on that recipe.

I am including the screengrabs from HP, just because they are too hilarious; I just love how each recipe is done up like a recipe card with the "McCain Family Recipe" label on the top. Also, because they have mysteriously disappeared not only from the McCain website, but also from Google Cache itself (I didn't even know that was possible), I feel as though I am doing my part in preserving history.

A final note: The Washington Post's FactChecker gave the story only one Pinocchio, but at least they adorned the puppet with a chef's hat.


Photo credits:
Pinocchio with a chef's hat, Washington Post
Screengrabs from Huffington Post