UPDATE, 1pm EST, 4-15:
It took less than 12 hours from the time the media caught wind of Cindy McCain's recipe theft for John McCain's campaign website to scrub away the offending pages (screen-captured below). That's 12 hours more than it took Cindy to come up with the recipes... (In the meantime, you can still see the listing of recipes as it originally appeared on the campaign website through the Google cache.)
It also turns out that Mrs. McCain submitted "her" Passion Fruit Mousse recipe to the New York Sun for an article that ran on January 16th. Just like on the McCain campaign site, there is no sourcing other than McCain herself...
CNN (and TMZ) are now reporting that Recipegate was the work of an intern, and that according to McCain's campaign, the whole thing is a "low-level unpaid staff debacle."
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.
Original McCain "Family Recipes" post:
What will they call it? Farfallegate? The Rosemary Chicken Dome Scandal? Perhaps something with the ubiquitous Rachael Ray in it.
It seems that Cindy McCain, John McCain's perfect, blonde beer-baroness wife is about to find herself painted as the latest example of plagiarism on the campaign trail.
This past Sunday, Lauren Handel, an eagle-eyed attorney from New York, was searching for a specific recipe from Giada DeLaurentis, a chef on the Food Network. Yet whenever she Googled the different ingredients in the recipe, the oddest thing happened: not only did the Food Network's site come up, as expected, but so did John McCain's campaign site.
On a section of McCain's site called "Cindy's Recipes," you can find seven recipes attributed to Cindy McCain, each with the heading "McCain Family Recipe." Ms. Handel quickly realized that some of the "McCain Family Recipes," were in fact, word-for-word copies of recipes on the Food Network site.
At least three of the "McCain Family Recipes" (below) appear to be lifted directly from the Food Network, while at least one is a Rachael Ray recipe with minor changes.
See for yourself... and Bon Appetit (click on each image to enlarge):
Ahi Tuna with Napa Cabbage Slaw
Farfalle Pasta with Turkey Sausage, Peas and Mushrooms
UPDATE: The Cindy McCain "Family Recipe" plagiarism story, broken here, has been picked up by Politico. Wonkette and Gawker also covered the Cindy McCain recipe story. Even the L.A. Times mentioned the McCain family recipes.
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Ahh!! TV!!! Ruuunnnn!
If McSameOld didn't hand out favors to the media moguls he wouldn't be afforded such favorable coverage.
"In 1991, Sen. McCain became embroiled in the "Keating Five" scandal, in which five senators were probed for ties with a thrift executive. The Arizona lawmaker wasn't charged with any ethics violation.
That same year, Mrs. McCain underwent two back surgeries, and she said she became addicted to painkillers. She resorted to stealing some drugs from a medical charity she had started and using others' names for prescriptions, according to news reports at the time.
"I was trying to be the perfect woman," Mrs. McCain said in interviews at the time. "That was the darkest period of my life."
The Drug Enforcement Administration began an investigation of Mrs. McCain in 1994, but she avoided prosecution by paying a fine, performing community service in a soup kitchen and joining Narcotics Anonymous. She had to close her medical charity.
"Cindy faced up to her addiction," Sen. McCain said.
Since coming clean, "I've never been secretive about it at all, because [talking about addiction] is part of the recovery process," Mrs. McCain said. "It's part of my life; it has made me a better person and certainly made me a better mother."
Like she says, she's..."a better person now". :-)
But that's not really what's annoying me. What's annoying me is the GOTCHA Game the media keeps playing with ALL these candidates. Same thing in the debate last night. Why are we not discussing IMPORTANT stuff? Like the war, national health care, illegal immigration, etc. etc. etc.
I DON"T WANT TO HEAR CRAP LIKE THIS ANY MORE!!!!
McSame: Came in SECOND to Bush - Defeated and wrong in 2000, what makes him BETTER today?
Is that "IMPORTANT" enough????