Hillary Clinton Researcher Uncovers Tall Tales

Hillary Clinton's claim that she wanted to be an Olympic athlete and NASA astronaut was part of an effort to humanize the New York Senator, says the editor of a controversial new quote book. What other tall tales has Hillary told?

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Olympic athlete. Astronaut. Doctor. Scientist. All dream careers for the young Hillary Rodham, or so she claims…dreams squashed because NASA “[didn’t] take girls.” While all children go through phases of wanting to do something exciting and glamorous, these reminisces sound unbelievable coming from Hillary Clinton. This according to Thomas Kuiper, editor of the new Hillary Clinton quote book “I’ve Always Been a Yankees Fan: Hillary Clinton in Her Own Words” The Associate Press published remarks by New York's junior senator at a symposium on Title IX, the federal law prohibiting gender discrimination in certain educational programs. "I wanted desperately to be an Olympic athlete," she is quoted as saying. "...[But] I couldn't jump, I couldn't run, I couldn't swim... So I wrote to NASA and said, 'How do I sign up to be an astronaut?' And they wrote back very politely and said, 'We don't take girls.'" While NASA did not have female astronauts when Hillary was a kid, Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto has pointed out that Sally Ride was only 3-1/2 years younger than Hillary when she became the first U.S. woman in space -- a revelation which calls into question the validity of this latest public claim by the former first lady. “This tall tale by Hillary was calculated not just to make voters feel warm and fuzzy about the senator, but to make specific points about her compassion and goodness,” claims Kuiper, whose quote book features over 500 provocative quotes carefully collected from 63 books and over 100 articles and news reports. “As the many fully attributed quotes in 'I've Always Been A Yankees Fan' demonstrate, she is constantly trying to manipulate her image through the press. Here, she’s trying to show that she’s ‘one of the girls,’ although nothing could be farther from the truth. “Hillary Clinton has a long history of telling whoppers," asserts Kuiper. "As I document in my book, she led people to believe that Chelsea was near the World Trade Center on 9/11, a claim which Chelsea herself disputed." On one occasion, she implied that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, but he climbed Mount Everest years after she was born. "She also said that she and Bill wanted another child, a maternal desire quickly forgotten after election time! Hillary is not just about pandering, but about rewriting history and her place in it." “There is not an ounce of authenticity to her public pronouncements," adds Kuiper. "Hillary is attempting to rewrite the past, but the truth is out there. My book uses dozens upon dozens of independent sources to paint a picture of the real Hillary -- a person who is often profane and always ambitious beyond justification. "It's no wonder that Hillary's spokesman tried to change the topic when the New York Times asked him about 'I've Always Been a Yankees Fan,'" Kuiper quipped.