Why Tell One Lie When Two Will Do?

Hillary still isn't ready for prime time:

Here is the synopsis, to bring our latecomers up to snuff. Back in 1995, the then-First Lady was visiting New Zealand and met the great adventurer, Sir Edmund Hillary, then 75 years old. Naturally, her true excitement expressed itself in a lie: she told him that her mother had named her after Sir Edmund, in admiration for his scaling Mount Everest. It did not take long for researchers to discover that Hillary Rodham was born in 1947 while Sir Edmund did not make it up the hill until 1953. This quickly became a synecdoche for all her other fabrications, obfuscations and tergiversations. How big a liar do you have to be to lie about your own name?

Later, she prudently left this gem out of her autobio. Then Bill imprudently included it in his. So this week we get the lie about the lie. Her office announces that her Mom told her this little white lie, but she did it in the hopes of encouraging her to scale great heights in her own life. The New York Times duly passes on the word, although the reporter is struggling desperately to keep his tongue from lodging in his cheek. Done. Hillary is now a) an innocent, b) a victim, c) honest enough to set the record straight, d) big enough to forgive her Mom.

You have to stand back and admire the beauty. To lie is easy enough. You say something about a past event guided by convenience rather than accuracy. What then happens if you get caught? Some hardy blogger looked it up, wrote it up and the jig seems to be... well, up. Here is where the men are told from the boys. A Republican wuss will own up, fess up and pack up. Not a Clinton, no way. A Clinton will keep it up; more than that, dress it up. This is the fun part, where you tell a lie about why you lied that garners more sympathy than had the original lie stood. The second lie makes us feel bad that they had to lie the first time.

She needs to work on her lip-biting.