Sick Children Barred From Mrs. Clinton's Hospital Visit -- 3/11/1997

NOTE: I've tried for years to find a nurse or administrator to go on record who was there. If anyone can find that person, you will be doing a great service to your country.

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It seems that Hillary, who's had her fingerprints found on all the new scandals that are breaking on a daily basis is trying to fix her public image.

So, to promote the new effort, showing how deeply Hillary cares about children, especially sick children in hospitals, Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington got a call. Hillary Clinton would be coming over soon with children's author Maurice Sendak.

Hillary's advance team would be showing up arranging the security and logistics. The team did show up. What they saw horrified them.

The kids in the hospital children's ward really looked sick! Some of them had tubes sticking out. Some had lost their hair to chemotherapy. Some were groggy because of the pain killers they had to take.

Hospital officials were quickly told this would not do. Hillary would look bad in a newspaper photo if she posed with sickly looking children. They were told. "No children that look drowsy, skip bald kids, sick looking kids, or kids with tubes sticking out."

So here's what the hospital actually did. They outfitted a hospital conference room with toys and kids decorations. They ordered hospital staff members to bring in their healthy children who would pose as sick children in photos with the great St. Hillary.

So, on January 10th, Hillary Clinton showed up to Georgetown University Medical Center and read to a bunch of kids with author Maurice Sendak. Had you read the papers or heard the news the next day, you might have been bowled over by her compassion. Actually she demonstrated the opposite. You see the real sick kids, who were originally told they would be visited by the first lady were originally extremely happy and excited at the prospect of her visit.

When they were later told, they were too sick looking to be with the great Hillary, some became deeply depressed. After all how would anyone feel not being good enough for Ms. compassion herself.

Of course the press published the photos of Hillary reading to the cute kids the next day. They just forgot to tell you that Hillary, in the quest of the perfect photo could not bring herself to be photographed with an actual sick child.

The phony mask of compassion that Hillary hides behind has slipped once again. Just around Purim time too!

New Clinton campaign out to show her likability
WZZM 13 News ^ | 12/17/07 | Jill Lawrence

Posted on 12/17/2007 2:28:58 PM PST by DWar

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, trying to warm up an image some voters perceive as cold, starts a drive Monday to showcase her personal side with testimonials from friends, associates and constituents she has helped.

The online and in-person campaign, complete with a website called TheHillaryIKnow.com, comes a day after Clinton won a key endorsement from The Des Moines Register and her chief rival in the Democratic nomination race, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, was endorsed by The Boston Globe.

The rush of endorsements comes as candidates angle for advantage in Iowa’s Jan. 3 caucuses and New Hampshire’s Jan. 8 primary. Weighing in on Iowa’s tight three-way Democratic battle for first place, the Register called Clinton “best prepared to confront the enormous challenges the nation faces.”

The Globe, circulated widely in New Hampshire, said Obama has “the leadership skills to reset the country’s reputation in the world” and “a healthy independence from the established order” at home. The freshman senator has surpassed Clinton in some Iowa polls and created buzz touring last weekend with Oprah Winfrey.

Clinton had an unfavorable rating of 50% in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll this month, compared with mid-30s for Obama and former North Carolina senator John Edwards. She was rated least friendly of the three in a recent Pew Research Center poll.

Taking steps to fix the problem, Clinton has brought her mother and daughter to Iowa and featured them in TV ads. One of Clinton’s constituents, Shannon Mallozzi of East Northport, N.Y., was on her way there Sunday as part of the new campaign. Mallozzi has a 6-year-old daughter with an incurable brain disease called hydrocephalus. As she waited to catch a plane to Des Moines for two days of campaigning, she said she spent a half-hour with Clinton several years ago to describe the disease and ask how to encourage federal research.

“She made me feel like it was just two mothers” talking in her car, Mallozzi said, then worked with her to get action on the disease and checked up on her daughter’s health. Mallozzi said she once viewed Clinton as aloof and remote, but “she’s anything but that.”

Mark Penn, a top Clinton strategist, said that’s the message: “It’s important for people to understand the depth of Hillary, the way she has helped people.”

Citing the Register endorsement, Clinton on Sunday said she’s “picking up momentum.” Edwards, who got the paper’s endorsement in 2004, appeared on three TV talk shows to discuss a rejection he made clear he knew was coming. The Register said Sunday that “his harsh anti-corporate rhetoric would make it difficult to work with the business community to forge change.”

“They have a position. I respectfully disagree with it,” Edwards said on ABC’s This Week.

The Register and USA TODAY are owned by Gannett.

Obama’s camp circulated the Globe endorsement and the Register editorial board’s published account of its deliberations. One editor said the choice amounted to FDR vs. JFK.

It’s unclear how much impact newspaper endorsements have on voters. At the very least, however, they offer candidates the appearance of momentum and something to brag about in ads, press releases and pitches for money.

A quick search of news archives from 1997 turned up this caption from the Washington Post, January 11, 1997 (sorry no access to photos from this source):

GRAPHIC: Photo, tyler mallory for The Washington Post, Hillary Clinton joins Jeremy Cockerham, Jewellianna Palencia and other children of staff members at Georgetown University Medical Center for a reading by popular children’s author Maurice Sendak.

So it sure looks like the part about children of staff being used as props is accurate. Even the most hardened Hillary defender has to ask the question: Why go all that way to a children's hospital to meet with healthy children of staffers?

Did the photographer (Ron Edmonds) stray from the script?

(Is he still alive? <- joke)

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