Seeing the name Hillary in a headline last week—a headline about a life that had involved real achievement—I felt a mouse stirring in the attic of my memory. Eventually, I was able to recall how the two Hillarys had once been mentionable in the same breath. On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995—the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy 'experience'—Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly introduced to the late Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest. Ever ready to milk the moment, she announced that her mother had actually named her for this famous and intrepid explorer. The claim 'worked' well enough to be repeated at other stops and even showed up in Bill Clinton's memoirs almost a decade later, as one more instance of the gutsy tradition that undergirds the junior senator from New York.
Sen. Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary and his partner Tenzing Norgay did not ascend Mount Everest until 1953, so the story was self-evidently untrue and eventually yielded to fact-checking. Indeed, a spokeswoman for Sen. Clinton named Jennifer Hanley phrased it like this in a statement in October 2006, conceding that the tale was untrue but nonetheless charming: 'It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add.'
Perfect. It worked, in other words, having been coined long after Sir Edmund became a bankable celebrity, but now its usefulness is exhausted and its untruth can safely be blamed on Mummy.
Tags: politics lies foreign-policy united-states celebrity new-york 1995 2008 1947 asia mount-everest bill-clinton 1953 2006 united-states-senate hillary-clinton united-states-elections-2008 first-lady first-lady-of-the-united-states edmund-hillary jennifer-hanley nepal tenzing-norgay
Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains.
Jeffrey RasleyTags: memoir philanthropy mountains biography mountaineering tibet nepal expeditions himalayas three-cups-of-tea trekking
If Nepal is to become a new Nepal, she must first become free from ethnic segregation.
Santosh KalwarTags: nationalism nepal ethnic
The Chinese say that there is no scenery in your home town. They’re right. Being in another place heightens the senses, allows you to see more, enjoy more, take delight in small things; it makes life richer. You feel more alive, less cocooned.
Jane Wilson-HowarthTags: travel travel-writing nepal
In Nepal, the quality of conversation is much more important than accuracy of the content. Maybe we get overexcited about information in England?
Jane Wilson-HowarthTags: conversation nepal
Travel is the discovery of truth; an affirmation of the promise that human kind is far more beautiful than it is flawed. With each trip comes a new optimism that where there is despair and hardship, there are ideas and people just waiting to be energized, to be empowered, to make a difference for good.
Dan ThompsonTags: inspirational peace travel discovery hiking nepal
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