Cindy McCain's "Family" Values earn her the GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award

August 22, 2008

Cindy McCain

Welcome back to the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

In an attempt to come off as the all-American wife and mother, Cindy McCain is putting aside real family values. Cindy (or her handlers?) has shown a pattern of deceit in her attempt to fulfill the role of Stepford wife in her husband's campaign. But her most recent fabrication is quite hurtful.

Most recently, her oft-repeated assertion that she is the only child of her father, Jim Hensley, was proven untrue on all accounts.  In fact, Cindy has three, count 'em, three half sisters.  One, Kathleen Hensley Portalski, called in to a program on National Public Radio this week to correct the reporter who repeated Cindy McCain's characterization of herself as an only child.

Cindy's father was married to Mary Jeanne Parks, who gave birth to Portalski before the couple's divorce.  Hensley then married Marguerite Johnson, who bore Cindy McCain nine years later. Even before all this, Hensley already had a daughter, named Dixie Burd, by a third woman. In addition, Cindy is not the only child of her mother, who had another daughter before her marriage to Hensley.  So, Cindy is no one's only daughter.

This isn't Cindy's first lie about her "family woman" credentials, just the most painful one. Cindy has been caught volunteering at least three original "family" recipes that were plagiarized, word for word, from the Food Network.

There was also the plagiarism of the Hershey's cookie recipe for the July 2008 issue of Family Circle. 

Then on Wednesday, The Christian Science Monitor reported that Cindy McCain's touching story about having been "convinced" by Mother Teresa to bring two Bangladeshi children home to the States for medical treatment in 1991 (one of whom became the McCains' adopted daughter, Bridget), was also a lie.

In truth, Mother Teresa was in Mexico suffering from medical problems when Cindy was at the orphanage in Bangladesh. The McCain campaign has since revised the "About Cindy McCain" section of JohnMcCain.com. 

The Christian Science Monitor's story quotes one analyst that thinks Cindy might have a serious problem:

"'You always have to look for a pattern,' says political analyst Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia. 'If it happens once, you can say it's a memory problem, but if there's a pattern there, there's a problem.'"

A common problem with politicians -- and sometimes their wives -- is that they try to be something they aren't. We at BuzzFlash urge Cindy McCain to fess up. We don't care if she finds her recipes online. We don't care if it was not a proto-saintly intervention that convinced her to adopt a child. And we certainly don't care if she has siblings! There's only one step to coming clean, Cindy: tell the truth.

Because she is willing to lie about her family to come across as your average American wife and mother, we proudly present Cindy McCain with the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award.

Remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

See you next week!

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This is the first HOTW Award for Cindy McCain. Welcome to the Club.

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