Mitt Romney Accidentally Insults Local Bakery – #CookieGate Ensues
We tend to stay out of politics for the most part, but when a presidential candidate spits hot fire (convection level heat) toward a local bakery, the line has been crossed. When sitting down for a televised round table (er, picnic table) on Tuesday, April 17th in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, Romney accidentally ended up insulting a cookie spread from an established local bakery AND 7-Eleven baked goods at the same time. And if you’re wondering how talented Romney’s prose has to be to insult both parties at once, check this out.
I’m not sure about these cookies. They don’t look like you made them…they came from the local 7-Eleven…bakery or wherever.
If you’re wondering about the intonation of the over-politicized sound byte – make sure to check out the video below brought to you by Pittsburgh news station WPXI.
Bethel Bakery, the local sweets dealer that provided the cookie spread, while unamused, took the publicity and ran with it – establishing a “CookieGate” special (now over) – buy a dozen cookies, get a half-dozen free. At least the bakery understood the once-in-a-business-lifetime publicity opportunity and ran with it. The owner of Bethel Bakery, John Walsh, did land a jab towards Romney when he followed with a sound byte of his own and said, “Let him eat cake next time.”
7-Eleven spokesperson Margaret Chabris disregarded Romney’s cookie comment as negative (as the proper PR response should!) and ended up throwing out some statistical figure about convenience store cookies that really doesn’t matter. Although we still love the Slurpees. And the buffalo rollers. And the new bacon & cheese potato stix. Damn, you still got us!
Nevertheless, both 7-Eleven and Bethel Bakery have sent Romney cookies that he will never see, but at least some of the door-knocking, phone-banking, sticker-distributing volunteers will get to have a Hunger Games free-for-all. Winner gets to eat the cookies from Bethel. Well, at least that’s what I imagine happening — but what a distraction to the party and the convention.
