Thursday, March 27, 2008

Lies, Damn Lies, and Mispeakings

The Hillary camp is now saying that the candidate simply mispoke in concocting an elaborately detailed Bosnian war story of sniper fire and corkscrew maneuvers and running, heads down to armored vehicles.

Balderdash.

Hillary is a habitual teller of tall tales. She’s far worse than Al Gore ever was.

Let us not forget that she long claimed to be named after Sir Edmund Hillary, long after it was pointed out that Edmund was an anonymous beekeeper in New Zealand at the time of her birth, when, she long claimed, her mother read a news clipping of Eddie’s exploits and gave his name to a daughter who was also destined for great heights. (Shortly before she jumped into presidential politics, Hillary kinda sorta fessed up that this just wasn’t true.)

And then there’s this idea that Clinton, in 1975, attempted to become one of the Few. The Proud. The Marines. Right after moving to Arkansas and marrying Bill. Really, I’m not making this up.

But she may well have been.

Hillary claims she was turned away for being a bespectacled woman. Not entirely improbable. But fishy, because it’s almost identical to another mythical tale from her childhood, in which Clinton says she wrote away to NASA, asking what it would take for her to become an astronaut, only to have her childhood hopes dashed by the sexist culture of the space program.

I for one am less troubled by the fact that the senator is a teller of parables and tall tales, than by the fact that she cannot, for the life of her, admit fault.

She didn’t misspeak.

She was caught in a whopper. Perhaps several.

Don’t compound the error with double talk.

It’s time to fess up.

Original here

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