The latest load of you-know-what that the First Lady would like us to swallow is truly a shameless one.

In an attempt to dupe New Yorkers into believing that she's really "one of us," Mrs. Clinton is now glomming on to some of the better New York sports teams and pretending to a lifelong fan.

Having declared herself an ardent Knicks fan -- after watching a little bit of one recent playoff game -- she is now acting like a bigger Yankees fan than most of the regular callers on WFAN.

Any day now, we can look for Suzyn Waldman to throw her support to Mrs. Clinton's campaign. (Real sports fans from New York will understand this reference.)

Having spent just about all of her life as a Cubs fan, HRC is now doing the patented Clinton Truth Two-Step, much as President Clinton has done since 1992 (his ever-changing draft status, whether or not he smoked marijuana, in which country he did it and whether or not he inhaled the reefer).

During her spousal unit's most recent State of the Union address, she proudly sat with Sammy Sosa and glowingly talked of being a Cubs fan.

So far, so good.

But as her impending (doom) Senate campaign moves along with alarming speed, so does her version of the truth.

Next, she tells a NY media outlet that she'd root for both the Yankees and Mets (no sane sports fan who lives in or has lived in New York can even think of rooting for both -- due to much bitter history between the Yankees and the other NY baseball teams over the years).

Then came the startling revelation that she's always been a Yankees fan. Her rationalization is that while growing up as a Cubs fan, she somehow felt the need to simultaneously root for an American League team and since she couldn't root for the local White Sox (but she'd now cheer for both the Yankees and Mets?!), she became enamored with the Yankees.

What's bothersome about this rather blatant and transparent bit of dissembling is that the First Lady is going out of her way to sustain a lie that is really unimportant in the grand scheme of things, other than trying to establish her phony credentials as a New Yorker.

Nobody in New York casts his or her votes on the basis of which team a candidate likes. Personally, I'm a devout Yankee-hater, and I also support Mayor Rudy Giuliani -- a REAL Yankees fan.

Why is she going overboard on this Yankees kick? Why all the time and effort wasted on propping up a lie about something of so little importance? Which version of her "truth" are we to believe? Does she really expect us to just blindly accept each new and improved version, forgetting all the others that came before?

Washington Post: "Hillary Clinton Toasts 'Home' Team, 6/11/99