Hillary Rodham Clinton was NOT named after Sir Edmund Hillary and falsely stated that she had been.
The political advantage of being named after Sir Edmund Hillary probably is nil, but the truth is the truth, misrepresentation is misrepresentation and of a presidential hopeful it should be expected that the record will be corrected.
To her credit, Hillary corrected the record.
World Net Daily, October 17, 2006:
"Years after alternative media pointed out the virtual impossibility, Sen. Hillary Clinton finally has admitted she was not named for the famous conqueror of Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary.
"The New York Times, which repeated the claim as fact in a story just one week ago, reported Sen. Clinton's campaign issued a correction yesterday.
"'It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add,' said spokeswoman Jennifer Hanley.
"For more than a decade, Sen. Clinton's informal biography repeated the story, and it was recounted in former President Bill Clinton's 2004 autobiography, 'My Life.'
"The problem with the tale, however, is one of timing. Sir Edmund and his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, became known to the world only in 1953, after becoming the first men to reach Everest's summit. Sen. Clinton was born in 1947.
"Nevertheless, Clinton recounted to the press her meeting with Sir Edmund in 1995, during an Asian tour, in which she told the mountain climber how her mother had named her.
"'It had two l's, which is how she thought she was supposed to spell Hillary,' she said. 'So when I was born, she called me Hillary, and she always told me it's because of Sir Edmund Hillary.'
"In 1947, Sir Edmund was an unknown beekeeper, but Clinton had explained her mother read about him in a publication while pregnant and liked the name."
It seems more plausible than not that Hillary's mother told her the story and Hillary and Team Clinton simply assumed it was true, because there is no apparent reason for Hillary to make up such a story.
Rookie United States Senator and presidential hopeful Barack Hussein Obama was born in 1961.
Nevertheless, he claimed to have been conceived as a result of the Selma Voting Rights March.
That March was in 1965, so it's actually impossible for it to be true.
UNLIKE being named after Sir Edmund Hillary, however, being conceived by a black man and a white woman inspired by the Selma marchers fits nicely into the Obama-as-savior-and-uniter myth, so the advantage in making it up is apparent.
Here's Obama's stirring fairy tale of how the Selma marchers inspired his bi-racial birth:
"What happened in Selma, Alabama and Birmingham also stirred the conscience of the nation. It worried folks in the White House who said, 'You know, we're battling Communism. How are we going to win hearts and minds all across the world? If right here in our own country, John, we're not observing the ideals set fort in our Constitution, we might be accused of being hypocrites.' So the Kennedy's decided we're going to do an air lift. We're going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is.
"This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves; but she had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided that we know that the world as it has been it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child. There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Alabama.
"I'm here because somebody marched. I'm here because you all sacrificed for me...."
Reality: Obama was there campaigning, but he was NOT "coming home to Selma" because the Selma marchers showed his parents that it was "possible for [them] to get together and have a child."
In addition, Obama falsely connected his father to JFK. His father came to the United States in 1959, years before JFK became President and arranged for that air lift.
The truth is that (1) Obama is not above playing racial politics or fabricating for perceived political advantage, (2) the leftist media is vigorously promoting the myths that he is and (3) Obama is more dangerous and less experienced than Hillary.
