So Hillary, it turns out, is Clintonian, too, and not just by marriage. In her first major event as candidate for the Senate in New York, the first lady had the Yankees over to the White House last week to celebrate their 1998 World Series victory, eight months after the fact. Well, better late than never. But the truly Clintonian aspect of the event was the whopper she told about her lifelong attachment to the Yankees.
The essence of a Clintonian whopper is a) that you have no compunction about telling it, even when the stakes are low and the political benefit is trivial; and b) that once you decide to tell it, you make it as convoluted and preposterous as possible, like a squid spreading ink in its wake. Thus Hillary to the Today show's Katie Couric: "The fact is [a nice rhetorical touch, meaning that what follows isn't factual], I've always been a Yankees fan."
Now it happens that millions of words have been written on the subject of Hillary Rodham Clinton, and to the best of THE SCRAPBOOK's knowledge, there has never been a hint of a longtime allegiance to the Yankees. We do know that she's a fan of her hometown Chicago Cubs (see inset photo above). Explaining that apparent contradiction is what a law degree is for: "I am [also] a Cubs fan. But I needed an American League team, because when you're from Chicago, you cannot root for both the Cubs and the Sox. I mean, there's a dividing line that you can't cross there. So as a young girl, I became very interested and enamored of the Yankees." Perhaps it depends on what the meaning of "enamored" is.