KEY POINTS:
On the eve of Super Tuesday in the United States presidential race, a curious New Zealand connection has come to light.
As recounted by Christopher Hitchens on Slate.com, when Hillary Clinton met Sir Edmund Hillary during a goodwill tour of Nepal in 1995, the then First Lady revealed that she'd been named after the great man. This charming autobiographical nugget was subsequently recycled for other audiences and recorded for posterity by her husband in his vast but otherwise unremarkable memoir.
Recently, someone registered that Hillary Clinton was born six years before Sir Ed scaled Everest.
When it was pointed out, a spin doctor conceded that what Hillary had publicly told Sir Ed and what Bill had put down in black and white was untrue, explaining that it was "a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add".
Which is as self-serving an excuse for a bare-faced lie as you're ever likely to come across. Hitchens, a trenchant critic, believes it merely confirms that truth is the first casualty when the Clintons go to work.
It has been an interesting process watching Hillary attempt to transform herself from the victim of one of the most public and protracted humiliations ever visited upon an individual into a politician of substance and potential president.
That she's largely succeeded is testimony to her doggedness and ability, the effectiveness of the political machine she inherited from her husband and America's strange fascination with its leaders' spouses.
While the implications of Hillary's candidacy make some Americans uneasy - if she is elected, the Bushes' and Clintons' continuous occupation of the White House will stretch to 2 1/2 decades, a disconcerting statistic for a nation founded on a rejection of bloodlines as the basis for determining who should lead the country - this focus on presidents' wives and families has virtually ensured the emergence of political dynasties.
The Kennedys' embrace of Barack Obama was an acknowledgement of their dynasty's decline and an attempt to revive it via a strategic alliance, much as European royal families used to do through inter-marriage.
Given that wretched clan's star-crossed history and propensity for scandal, Obama would be wise to escape from their needy clutches as soon as decently possible.
Rudy Giuliani was less successful in parlaying stature by association into electoral appeal. His candidacy was largely based on the proposition that being mayor of New York on September 11, 2001, made him uniquely qualified in international affairs and security matters. This is rather like claiming to be an expert on air safety by virtue of having survived a plane crash.
John McCain, 71, who now seems to have the inside running in the Republican race, did survive a plane crash only to spend years in a North Vietnamese prison camp.
As a result of his injuries and maltreatment, he can't raise his arms above his shoulders and therefore can't comb his hair.
McCain's age and history - he has also suffered serious skin cancer - has made his mortality the subject that dares speak its name. When he stormed back from the brink of oblivion to win the New Hampshire primary, a staffer described him as "too tough to die".
The glass half-empty view was put forward by "actor" Chuck Norris, a vociferous backer of rival Republican Mike Huckabee. Displaying the sensitivity that characterises his work, Norris warned that voting for McCain was tantamount to voting for his running mate - whoever he or she might be - because of the distinct possibility of the old boy dying in office.
Thankfully, the prospect of Huckabee, the sort of Christian who traces his family tree back to Adam and Eve and who appears to be every bit as much of a Southern-fried rube as his name would suggest, winning the nomination and thereby consolidating the noxious influence of the religious right seems to have receded.
If McCain goes on to win the nomination, it's to be hoped that he eschews the cynical option of putting Huckabee - or someone like him - on the ticket to shore up his conservative credentials. Apart from anything else, Dr Chuck might have a point.
