Here we go again. Just two months after we broke Recipegate comes news that Cindy McCain is up to her old tricks. The July 2008 issue of Family Circle featured an article in which each (it went to press before Hillary conceded) of the presidential candidates' significant 
others submitted a cookie recipe. A tipster caught a whiff of something besides sugar after reviewing Cindy McCain's Oatmeal-Butterscotch cookies, and quickly found the original recipe at Hersheys.com (see image below). While McCain, or that same low-level staffer, managed to take the time to switch a few minor details in her version of the recipe this time around, there is no doubt that the recipes are the same.
While Bill Clinton gives credit to the family cook, and Michelle Obama to the godmother of her daughters, Cindy McCain attributes her cookie recipe to "a good friend."
Unless John McCain was a childhood friend of Milton S. Hershey or her beer baron family worked with him on a chocolate beer bar back in the day, it seems Cindy is a plagiarist of the most delicious kind. Again.
Let's hope I don't get another unpaid intern fired this time around...
See for yourself:
(click to enlarge)
Cindy McCain's Oatmeal-Butterscotch Cookies
Hershey's.com Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies
Related: Bill Clinton's Cookie Recipe Copied from Betty Crocker
TPM covered Cindy McCain's latest recipe theft here.
Follow David Weiner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/daweiner
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Can't have a FL who rips off recipes....
Oh, wait a minute....
Who thinks EVERYONE else is stupid. (Maybe it's that cold gleam in her eye....)
My political philosophy is that the Republicans deserve to have every bit of it thrown back in their faces, especially considering just how mean and nasty they were around these kinds of issues....
What nonsense!
Is that all the media can find to spend its time on?
Wouldn't it be nice if the media were taking a leadership role in getting our country back on track by reporting on the issues and refusing to report all the nonsense distractions.
Though I suppose one could argue that when there are no real differences between the candidates in an election, the candidates and the pundits are forced to focus on superficialities.
More depressingly, the answer could be that issues like this are the real issues and
Iraq, health care, the composition of the Supreme Court are the superficialities.
In a democracy the voters get exactly the government they deserve.
Having stated this up front, I find this an annoying non-issue for a number of reasons.
First of all, why do all females involved in politics have to supply baking recipes? If this gender stereotyped litmus test must be applied, then John McCain, Barack Obama and all the other major dudes in the politial arena should be forced to make an appearance on one of those home improvement shows and demonstrate how well they can fix a leaky sink, build a bookshelf or do something else "handy" around the house...That, or go out in the driveway and tinker with the car on national television.
None of these people actually cook for themselves, you know. They are never at home and they all have "staffs".
I am someone who cooks daily from scratch. I have a recipe file with a thousand recipes in it at least. Almost all of them are "lifted" from somewhere...a cook book, a friend or relative. Some are of unknown provenence at this point because I forgot to write it down. I think very few of us create all new recipes for things from the ground up. A bit of tweaking here and there for individual taste, but most people follow recipes they have been given by others or else what they saw on a cooking program somewhere.
You forgot one crucial ingredient in your "recipe" for political nirvana.
The husband must wear a flag lapel pin - otherwise sadly it won't work.
And btw the cookies will taste even better if he has a lapel pin on his pajamas.
A "story" like this is one that unskilled, not-smart, people who think they are journalists like to pounce on. Let's leave them in their sandbox.
No Free Pass for McCain. No Free Pass for Hillary.
While it was foolish and less than honest of Cyndi to pass off the Hershey's recipe as her own, it's not the end of the world.
Let's give Cyndi the kind of slack for her flubs and foibles, that we would like to be given to Michelle.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/17/1520/13390/56/458621