John McCain's camp blasts N.Y. Times Cindy McCain profile

The New York Times ran a lengthy profile of John McCain's beer-heiress second wife, Cindy McCain. And the piece has elicited an outraged response from McCain's camp.

The piece notes her charity work, her recovery from a recent stroke and her adoption of a Bangladeshi orphan. But it also goes into her role in the Keating Five savings and loan scandal and that she was "caught stealing drugs from her nonprofit organization to feed her addiction to painkillers."

Click here to see Cindy McCain's fashion evolution.

In a confession made to Newsweek, Cindy admitted drug use in the wake of the Keating scandal in the late 1980s. She was the sole Senate spouse to be implicated. "The pills made me feel euphoric and free,'' she wrote.

McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb has called the Times piece  "gutter journalism" and a "trash report."

Here's some of Goldfarb's statement: "Today the New York Times launched yet another in a series of vicious attacks on Senator John McCain, this time targeting not the candidate, but his wife Cindy. Under the guise of a 'profile' piece, the New York Times fails to cover any new ground or provide any discernible value to the reader other than to portray Mrs. McCain in the worst possible light. Though Mrs. McCain's battle with drug addiction and even her miscarriages are again reported, the paper entirely ignores a life devoted to family and charity work in the most impoverished and violent corners of the world -- except when a detail can be quibbled with so as to imply some kind of deceit. This campaign made every effort to share personal accounts of Mrs. McCain's good works with the paper, but apparently they were deemed unfit for publication in the New York Times."

McCain's lawyer, John Dowd, also wants to know why the Times has not interviewed Barack Obama's drug dealer.

Speaking of drug dealers, Cindy McCain is the chairwoman of Hensley & Company, Arizona's largest beer distribution company. But even her millionaire income from selling alcohol has hit hard times.

According to her recently released tax reports, her income dropped form $6.1 million in 2006 to just $4.2 million last year! Which is probably why her presidential-candidate husband can totally relate to the economic crisis the country is in.

Have you read the NYT piece on Cindy? Is it fair?

Do you think we should be prying into personal lives of presidential candidates' wifes?

And why hasn't "Saturday Night Live" done a Cindy McCain skit?

Photo: Is Cindy McCain trying to do the Sarah Palin wink?  Credit: WireImage

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