Ooops, Cindy McCain's recipe for recipe plagiarism

Take one 26-month presidential campaign. Mix in pervasive 24-hour media that have to find something to say or film or write around the clock. Add -- what? -- 1,000 television channels, each one slicing another piece of American life thinly, from Irish jewelry to left-handed golfers.

Stir in a dollop of voter curiosity.

And there you have the modern-day political campaign, which is trying to develop credible, debatable policies to guide the United States of America for the next four to eight years, but is being besieged by you wouldn't believe how many different organizations to complete policy questionnaires and also answer some of the most inane feature questions you could imagine.

Not just boxers vs. briefs. But a candidate's favorite movie from childhood. Favorite bed-time story. Most romantic vacation. Biggest surprise in life. Most delicious food. Favorite hymn. Worst movie ever.

Answering these are the jobs that get passed to the...

lowliest campaign staffer, who is coincidentally the least likely to know the accurate answers. It makes sense in the high-pressure world of presidential politics.

Aren't you dying to know the favorite homemade dish of the next possible president?

So to save time, they put all this stuff on the website. But now the McCain campaign has been outted by TMZ.com and the Huffington Post for a kind of cereal plagiarizing of Cindy McCain's alleged favorite recipes.

Some intern, likely the daughter of a contributor taking a semester off from school, posted the Arizona senator's wife's favorite recipes, the campaign says. Just to look at the beer distributor heiress, anyone can tell she spends five to six hours a day over the stove.

Trouble is, those recipes already existed on the Food Network. And other places. And as David Weiner points out, when you Google certain ingredients, you get both the Food Network and the McCain campaign website.

An unlikely melange, shall we say.

According to the campaign, the Web recipe pages have been taken down. The intern has no doubt been diced and sliced. But they discovered something in the process.

It was a really popular feature. So the McCain folks are gonna put up new Cindy McCain favorite recipe pages. As soon as the oven reaches 450 degrees.

Next comes the favorite dishes that Bill Clinton likes to whip up after a hard day of criticizing other people.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Photo credits: HuffingtonPost.com and Care.org

Comments

[Sean K]

Who cares? Absolutely pointless pseudo-journalism. I would call this article a complete waste of paper, but its on the internet... O well... Its still a waste of cyberspace.

[Figgins]

Definitely the most important fact finding venture of the 2008 Presidential Campaign.

It's no wonder the status of reporters is slipping to the level of ambulance chasing attorneys.

Find a real topic, do the background research, and give us an NON-biased report.

[U2]

mmm....Ahi Tuna, how very "of the people"

[BoobyBear]

Favorite recipes? My favorite is by someone else also....stupid report and stupid reporter

[CALIFORNIAMARTY SAYS]

CINDY MCCAINS RECIPE FOR FEEDING THE POOR AND PROVIDING THEM WITH MEDICAL CARE-NOT PLAGARIZED OR EVEN EMULATED BY MICHELLE OBAMA-

In 1988, Cindy McCain founded the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT), a non-profit organization that organized trips for doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel to provide MASH-like emergency medical care to disaster-struck or war-torn third-world areas such as Micronesia, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq, Nicaragua, India, Bangladesh and El Salvador.She led 55 of these missions over the next seven years,with each being of at least two weeks' duration.AVMT also supplied treatment to poor sick children around the world.

While at Mother Teresa's orphanage in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1991 — as part of AVMT's assistance team following the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone — she met two infant girls she decided needed to be brought to the United States for medical treatment. She decided to adopt one of the girls (her husband readily agreeing), later named Bridget (who became the McCains' fourth child together), and helped coordinate the adoption of the other little girl, named Mickey, for Wes Gullett, a family friend. In 1993, Cindy McCain and the AVMT were honored with an award from Food for the Hungry.

Cindy and John McCain-no need to worry about their love of America and humanity

[Tannim]

Well, like husband, like wife. Dishonest, all of them.

And people *want* to elect THAT?

[Pomeroy]

Sort of hard to plagarize a recipe. Those aren't eligible to be copywritten for a reason. And, besides, very few of those are "new" unless a few ingredients have been tweaked from an old one. I would be willing to bet that I could look back through my 20 yr accumulation of cooking magazines and find the same recipes from the Food Network site that the reporter apparently thinks were original. Andrew Malcom also seems to be gloating about some poor "intern" being assigned to post those recipes, but maybe Malcom should think about what kind of reporter gets assigned this type of story. So, Malcom, if this is an example of what your employer is assigning to you, maybe you should consider that they may be trying to get you to move on. It doesn't appear that you are very valuable to them. You may want to take the hint before it's too late.

[Mike Phillips]

GOOD GRIEF........

Mr. Malcolm, you really need to get a life and find another career. This will never get you a Pulitzer prize. In fact it won't get you anything except abuse from folks who actually want to know something important about the candidates.... This does not qualify.

[dave]

the recipe for this blog is not new. however who would venture to say it is plagiarized? you might say it's a blog that comes in a certain fashion or tradition. and who knows, this might not be the 'lowliest' assignment of the 'propaganda department' - in a 'media controlled' society and in the turmoil of crucial presidential elections it is perhaps considered the greater challenge to skim the internet for dissenting voices and try to mute them by providing a forum and platform to attract them to and hopefully keep them 'under control' and tied up busy and frustrated, replying to industriously produced largely inconsequential and discouraging, cynical, sarcastic, patronizing, indiscriminately and preemptively 'authority' subservient disinformation, maintaining the semblance of freedom of speech in the boggy backwater of a blog most people won't ever notice. and does the strategy work?!

[Tad Dawson]

It's about time someone finally reported some honest information about Cindy McCain. If all reporters would take the time to truly invesigate Cindy McCain they might find that most of what comes out of her mouth is less-than-true.

[Rich Cain]

Did the McCain ask the intern to call up Cindy McCain to get these recipes, and the intern decided on their own to go on the Food Network website???

Or, more likely, did the McCain ask an intern to find some recipes which they intended to pass off as Cindy McCain's?

Why is the McCain campaign lying (not very effectively) about such a ridiculous issue????

[A]

"Cereal plagiarizing?" Is that when you copy breakfast foods? Perhaps LAT meant "serial plagiearizing."

(No, actually since the item involved recipes and food we intentionally used the wrong to give at least one reader something to comment upon. Thanks for reading so closely.)

[bonnie]

I would venture to say that well over half the recipes on the Food network are recipes that I have tried in the past. Some are the exact same recipe my mother used to make and some have had slight changes. We have "family favorites", but I couldn't claim that they are MY recipes. People have been trading recipes forever. Get a grip!!! Not since one of the Presidents claimed not to like green beans has there been such a to-do about food and politics. Write about something that matters.

[Robin]

A non-story.

[Bill]

So let me get this straight: when Dems do or say anything (or someone they know says or does something) it's fair game; but when a Republican lies and steals intellecutal property from someone, and they are called on it, we're accused of attacking and pseudo-journalism? Double standard, anyone? I'll have the Ahi Tuna, please, but hold the cabbage...

[Ann Brewton]

Well some people really need to get a life, all this over a Recipe? How silly can some people be? Oh I know they are called Democrats!!!They are looking for anything all they could find.

[m]

Ann, please. If she hadn't DONE it, it wouldn't have been there for any reporter -- Democrat OR Republican -- to find.

And if you've done your homework on her, and you support her husband's candidacy, I don't think you really want a reporter digging around in her background any deeper than that.

Are we going to go back to the flag lapel pins now? Oh, wait, that's Republican reporters chastising a Democratic candidate, so that would be OK with you, as a REAL issue, right?

*rolleyes*