[lilylangtree]

Wonder if these are Ketchupman's cookies?

January 28, 2004 (The Hill)

How did the Kerry cookies crumble?
By Sam Dealey

To hear Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) tell it, his brief foray into the cookie business in the late 1970s gives him a leg up on the concerns of small-business owners. Earlier this month, the Democratic presidential candidate introduced his small-business program with vignettes from his own cookie-making experience.

Yet all that experience kind of, well, crumbles, in the mind of David Liederman, another cookie entrepreneur. Liederman, the founder of the David’s Cookies chain, claims Kerry ripped off the idea from him.

“The bottom line is he just stole it from me,” said Liederman, now a restaurateur and real estate developer in the New York City suburbs.

The Kerry campaign sharply dismissed Liederman’s charge.

“Clearly, the guy who started David’s Cookies didn’t invent cookies,” said spokesman David DiMartino. “John Kerry absolutely denies this charge.”

Kerry’s former venture serves as the backdrop for a number of campaign publicity measures designed to woo voters. In a Vogue magazine profile last year featuring the presidential candidate in surfing wear, Kerry discussed the cookie business at some length.

After dinner one night in Boston, Kerry said, he and a friend had a hankering for cookies. Their search took them to Faneuil Hall. There was no cookie store to be found, but there was an empty retail space. An idea was born, and a store soon followed. The pair named their shop, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., after their mother’s maiden names, and eventually sold their interest when Kerry’s political career intervened.

“It was a late-night inspiration,” Kerry told Vogue. “I had always had this entrepreneurial piece of me, and I saw it as a great business opportunity.” And this experience, Kerry continued, “stood me in great stead on the [Senate] Small Business Committee.”

However, Liederman recalls a different version of how Kerry’s cookie venture crumbled.

“Some guy who called me up was John Kerry, in ’79 or ’80,” Liederman recalled. “He said he wanted to come down and talk to me about franchising. He came to the office and said he had an incredible space in Boston, which was Faneuil Hall. He said he needed some plans and some layouts and all sorts of things to get the approval of the landlord.”

“So I gave him the layout, the package, and he went back and I didn’t hear from him for six or seven months.”

Then one day Liederman got a call from someone who said they’d seen one of his stores in Faneuil Hall. Not having a store in Boston, Liederman decided to have a look for himself.

“It was a direct, 100-percent knock off of David’s Cookies,” said Liederman, from the appliances to the shop’s design to the cookies themselves. “If you had walked into a David’s Cookie’s store in Manhattan at the same time he opened ‘John’s Cookies’ in Boston, you couldn’t tell the difference.”

In his 1989 autobiography “Running Through Walls,” where the charge first appeared, Liederman wrote that he challenged Kerry on the origin of his business. “I told him he had stolen my idea, and he replied: ‘You’re absolutely right. I am a politician; I shouldn’t be in the cookie business, so let me sell you my store,’” Liederman wrote.

Liederman never bought the store, he said, because Kerry was operating it in violation of his lease. “He was supposed to be selling jams and jellies, not cookies,” he wrote.

DiMartino denied the exchange took place. “John Kerry does not recall having the conversation Mr. Liederman discusses in his book,” he said. “The facts included in Mr. Liederman’s complaint don’t match reality.”

Still, if he wants it, Kerry hasn’t quite lost Liederman’s vote.

“I’d support anybody that wasn’t Bush,” he said. “If Kerry got the nomination, I’d absolutely support him — although Bush never stole David’s Cookies from me.”

[VRWC_minion]

Typical parents who are in denial that there kid has behavior problems. This kid is going to be impossible to control after he sees how well he gets his parents to jump thru hoops for him.

The very last thing parents should ever do is to let their kid think their is any daylight between the adults in his life especially the teachers and the parents. In my opinion these parents have no clue what a monster they have just created.

Finally the quote

Jules had brought the cookies to class in his pocket and showed them to some classmates, before one of them — a girl who does not like his son — told the teacher that Jules had threatened to expose her to the cookies, his father said.

Anyone think this "girl who does not like his son" is in the minority ?

[Chewbacca]

The irresponsible person who should be held responsible is the adult or child who brought them and handed them out during this poor boys social studies party.

[Southern62]

just another case of supressing the VAST majority for a minority - typical in the world of academia...

[hosepipe]

( Mr. Horoschak...
(Hand-up)Ooo.Ooo.oooooOOO.OOOo.OOOoo.OoooOoOoO.OoO.OOoOoOO

[colorado tanker]

Alright, kid, this is your last chance. Put the cookie down and slowly back away!

Good. Call in the HazMat Unit! All personnel don protective gear and keep clear - uncontained peanut butter cookie on the floor.

[mississippi red-neck]

Looks to me if she is smart enough to be a teacher she would be smart enough to not put any peanut products in her mouth. Why do people wish to turn everyone else's world upside down just because they have a little problem or a particular dislike. I'm allergic to tomatoes,however I grow some of the most beautiful tomatoes you have every seen in my garden because my family and friends love them.

[jslade]

Since I live in Florida, I like by PBJ's with a more exotic taste. Guava Jelly. Yeah!

[ladylib]

The more I think about this story, the more I think -- What are these parents thinking about? They're waiting for the Grand Poohbah School Superintendent to get off his @$$ and decide when their child can again receive a "free" public school education? Who needs NJ public schools when the homeschooling law is so favorable?

This is NJ -- one of the easiest states to homeschool in. Why aren't these parents contacting NJ homeschooling groups who can help them set up a homeschooling curriculum with homeschooling support? Why are they waiting with baited breath for some government lackey (albeit a well-paid one)school superintendent to decide their child's future?

They thought he was going to get a ten-day suspension? They should have told the school officials to go pound sand on day one and that they would figure out how to educate their kid without the public schools' help.

[Exit148]

My husband is 76 and has had the allergy all his life. He has ended in the ER a few times and when the Epi pen came out, he started to carry it when he traveled.

BUT - it was HIS problem. He watched out for himself.

Daughter is 46 and has the same alergy. She survived her school years without pc in the schools because she watched out for herself, and took care in other situations.

10 year old grandson doesn't have to worry in school because everything is verboten. God help some kid who says the word 'peanut' out loud!! BTW, he also is well versed in his allergy and simply avoids anything suspicious. He doesn't take anyones word -- he simply skips or carries his own treats.

[DH]

What was the kid going to do? Hold her down and force her to eat it and if she didn't, he would use it as a peanutbutter suppository?

We have gone beyond any resemblance of common sense in our fears of EVERYTHING!

[sweetliberty]

"Ingestion of even a tiny morsel of peanut can cause severe reactions in allergic children or adults. Reactions can range from throat irritation to death."

What I want to know is why no one ever heard of this until relatively recently and why is there apparently not another menu substance on the planet that can throw a school into chaos the way even the thought of a peanut can. Peanut butter was the sandwich filling of choice for generations of kids and we all seemed to have survived. Now the evil contained in one piece of peanut is right up their with nail files and aspirin. God help them if they ever have to deal with anything really dangerous.

[Slings and Arrows]

BEWARE OF THIS TERRORIST!