Senator Clinton “Remembers” Staten Island, Lets Ellen Degeneres In On The Secret

It sounds like the start of a bad joke — Hillary Clinton and Ellen Degeneres board the Staten Island Ferry, except it’s real:

U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton took talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres aboard the Staten Island Ferry yesterday for a quick trip to New York’s “forgotten” borough, fulfilling a promise she made on the comic’s show last month.

The world’s most famous junior senator waxed sentimental over the Statue of Liberty, touted Staten Island as “one of the best places to live,” and gave DeGeneres some history lessons about her adopted home state.

. . .

Many of the ferry riders burst into applause when DeGeneres and Clinton ambled onto the boat.

“It’s just classic,” said tourist Cali Alpert from Santa Barbara, Calif., who was visiting family in New York. “People were so excited.”

Her sister-in-law, Manhattan resident Barbara Alpert, was a little less star-struck.

“We see famous people every day — that’s the thing about New York,” she said.

Now that’s not fair — it’s one thing to see “famous people” on their way to, I don’t know, Bergdorf’s but quite another to see Ellen Degeneres and Hillary Clinton on the Staten Island Ferry. How jaded is that? No word on whether they enjoyed the ferry’s Budweiser tall boys however . . .