Dishing Cindy McCain

So a lowly intern lifted Food Network recipes for the McCain campaign! So they tell us. Another gift-wrapped three minute filler for cable news's Chattering Classes. Stretched to ten minutes.


Actually, this non-story says much about the quality of Lowly Interns these days:

1. Ethics: Even lowly unpaid interns should know enough not to plagiarize in anyone's name, much less that of a candidate for First Lady. After all, when they buy their term papers online, they pay for them fair and square.



2. Stupidity: Nothing says tradition like exotic fruit desserts! Obviously, Lowly Intern is too young to remember a time when every family didn't have the resources to whip up a batch of Passionfruit Mousse. I love going through my Gramma's recipe box and taking out that dog-eared card, written in her elegant copperplate, for oil-poached Meyer Lemons with Yuzu gastrique.



3. Tastelessness: Rachel Ray, for God's sake. They plagiarized Rachel Ray. Inventor of the Cheeseburger Salad.

And in particular, the passionfruit mousse recipe also calls for baby bananas and a blowtorch. How's that for elitist?

16 years ago,Elite Big Lawyer Hillary outraged the citizenry by announcing that she wasn't staying home baking cookies. Then in expiation she had to produce a chocolate chip cookie recipe for the nation's consumption. And she did, differing only slightly from the recipe on the chocolate chip bag. Although it really ought to be Bill's turn to show off his kitchen chops, at least with a barbecued something, it's still Hillary's cookie recipe in the paper (Hillary's F.U. Cookies) along with Lawyer Michelle Obama's Apple Cobbler and Beer Heiress Cindy's purloined passionfruit.

To be sure, the Obama Cobbler sounds good, fattening, and easy to make: toss a bag of frozen apples with sugar and spices, stash them in the fridge overnight, "so the spice goes all through the apples"--an evocative, compelling phrase---and sling them into a pan with sticks of butter and ready-made piecrust dough. Bake until "it's all crusty on top like Obama likes it." Obama? Hell, everybody! Nothing elitist about all crusty on top cobbler.