HolyCoast: She Should Be Thankful Her Mom Didn't Call Her "Norgay"
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Tuesday, October 17, 2006

She Should Be Thankful Her Mom Didn't Call Her "Norgay"

Another Hillary Clinton myth is put to rest (h/t Michelle Malkin):
For more than a decade, one piece of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s informal biography has been that she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary, the conqueror of Mount Everest. The story was even recounted in Bill Clinton’s autobiography.
But yesterday, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign said she was not named for Sir Edmund after all.

“It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add,” said Jennifer Hanley, a spokeswoman for the campaign.

In May 1953, Sir Edmund and his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, became the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest. In 1995, shortly after meeting Sir Edmund, Mrs. Clinton said that her mother, Dorothy Rodham, had long told her she was named for the famous mountaineer.

“It had two l’s, which is how she thought she was supposed to spell Hillary,” Mrs. Clinton said at the time, after meeting Sir Edmund. “So when I was born, she called me Hillary, and she always told me it’s because of Sir Edmund Hillary.”

...But one big hole has been poked in the story over the years, both in cyberspace and elsewhere: Sir Edmund became famous only after climbing Everest in 1953. Mrs. Clinton, as it happens, was born in 1947.

As one commenter at Michelle Malkin put it, Hillary"s "peeps are clearing the debris field". Probably true. They don't want to be distracted by this stuff when the real '08 campaigning gets underway.

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