This genealogy crap is truly stupid. I mean, extremely stupid.

[Colobo]

Your 8th and 11th cousins are not your family. They are nothing. I mean, what's with the media trying to look for irrelevant and, in reality, inexistent links between politicians? I'm sure that if they did a genealogic study about my lines they could find I'm somehow "related" to half of the population of Puerto Rico or something. Still, I won't consider them my "family" just because of some common ancestor from 300 years ago.

The mainstream media finds amusing the most stupid things.

[saracat]

1. But aren't we all related to Kevin Bacon?Oh, wait that is 6 degrees of seperation! Snark!

[babylonsister]

2. Dammit, I agree. Obama connected to * and his evil twin Ch*?

I kind of like the fact that a black man is part of the rethugs' heritage, but that's me. And my GOD! A man who might have childhood connections to Islam?, while maintaining his christianity?! I think that makes him even better and more worldly.

[tkmorris]

3. I'm more closely related to my wife than that

I mean, even before we were married.

[gorekerrydreamticket]

29. Really? What part of Arkansas are you from?

:rofl:

[Mythsaje]

4. It's not stupid.

A lot of people find it extremely fascinating. It's no more "stupid" than Roots was back in the '70s. The mother of my two sons is actually my 18th cousin or some such, a fact she discovered when she was researching our family histories. Not really that surprising, since our ancestors come from Ireland.

Whether it means anything in this particular context is another matter.

[rusty quoin]

5. I do think it's funny.

[Lucinda]

6. I'm not sure why this upsets you?

I thought the black sheep comment from Obamas campaign guy was brilliant. And it's getting good press.
I havent heard the evening spin, but it was getting nice coverage earlier today...did it get weird tonight?

[liberalmuse]

7. Genealogy is like scrap booking.

Completely pointless. The Mormons do genealogy so they can baptize dead people into their church. They do scrap booking just to annoy living people. And that thing about Lynn Cheney being related to Obama? What was the harpy's point in coming out with that one, anyway? Honestly, some information is best left buried. I think the media might want to focus on researching facts to back up their news stories rather than wasting time dabbling in blood lines. Who cares?

[hfojvt]

8. I am glad you think so

because I am a 10th cousin to George W. Bush. My dad is an 10th cousin to Barbara Pierce Bush and a 9th cousin to George H.W. Bush. George W. Bush is also a 6th cousin 4 times removed of William Howard Taft.

I consider it a kinship connection, but I am also the kind of person who traces and documents those things. Really if the records existed probably all people with European ancestry are 20th cousins or less.

[madfloridian]

9. Genealogy is a wonderful thing.

I have researching my family for years, and my husbands' family.

We are back to the 1700s on much lines, and one is already researched way back to the 1500's.

We are Northern Irish, Swiss-German, and a little bit of everything else. Baptist preachers, Methodists leaders, and few others mixed in.

I have found distant cousins who have done wonderful things. Some have written books they have autographed and shared with us. Some are just very ordinary people like us.

But we built a community online at Ancestry, and you would think we had known each other for ever.

[rusty quoin]

11. Yes. It is enlightening to find out where you came from. It is history

and to me history is fun.

[Just-plain-Kathy]

10. Didn't "they" find that Bush and Kerry were related?

...Katz, I was thinking of you earlier tonight. Obama was on Jay Leno. He's very personable, very easy to like. If I weren't voting for DK during the primaries, I would vote for your guy. :)

[gateley]

12. I don't understand why Lynne Cheney was surprised. After all, aren't Adam

and Eve the parents of us ALL?

:sarcasm:

[JMDEM]

13. The math on Geneology is interesting

You have 2 parents
You have 4 grandparents
8 great grandparents
16 great-great grandparents
32 great-great-great grandparents
64 (6 generations back)
128 (7 generations back)
256 (8 generations back)
512 (9 generations back)
1024 (10 generations back)
2048 (11 generations back)
4196 (12 generations back)
8K (13 generations back)
16K (14 generations back)
32K (15 generations back)
64K (16 generations back)
128K (17 generations back)
256K (18 generations back)
512K (19 generations back)
1 million (20 generations back)

Now, given a very conservative estimate of 30 years per generation, this means that 600 years ago, you had over 1 million relatives feeding into your bloodline. ONE MILLION. In only 600 years. Think about it. If you can't believe it, just study the above numbers again.

Take it even farther, and 30 generations ago (900 years) you had over 1 BILLION relatives. There weren't even 1 billion people on the earth 900 years ago.

Everybody is related to everybody, if you go back far enough.

[dragonlady]

18. A lot of those people are double counted

As a simple example, suppose your father married his second cousin. Their great-grandfather is the same person. All of his ancestors back into the mists of history count only once instead of twice, as would happen if your father had married someone else. It's enough to give you a headache, isn't it?

[On the Road]

14. Genealogy is Stupid?

Of course, it's stupid. If you live in the present and are uninterested in any relation to the past. Or if everything useful comes out of a cash register. Or if you are a blank slate with no heredity. Or if you are a self-created individual who owes nothing to his forebears.

My mother's family are German immigrants who fled famine and the draft in Alsace to come to Cincinnati in the 1840s. My father's family was from the Netherlands and came to New Amsterdam with the original Dutch colonists. I have a few uncomfortable ancestors or close relatives: the conqueror of Mexico, a Confederate officer killed leading the resistance to a slave revolt, a missionary to China in the 1870s. As well as child laborers, schizophrenics, and those who died driving drunk.

Our ancestors and blood kin are part of who we are. It reminds us of how we are human, and that nothing human is foreign to us. It gives us things to relate to outside the scope of our daily lives.

The media is always shallow. The subject matter is not.

[Colobo]

15. What the media is doing with genealogy is stupid.

[On the Road]

16. It is Not Stupid. It is Only Being Handled in a Shallow Way

like everything else the media does.

I actually want to know more about the common ancestor and the different paths the families took.

[incapsulated]

32. I don't ever want this done for ME, lol

God knows who I'm related to, I DON'T WANT TO KNOW!!

[DemBones DemBones]

31. Well said. Genealogy is a lot of fun if you like history and puzzles and

research. If not, genealogy is probably not something you'll enjoy. You also need patience because it can be frustrating.

I think it's fascinating to learn about where and how your ancestors lived. It's gotten me interested in things I'd never been interested in before. You get all these little scraps of information and build a portrait of people in your family, try to imagine living their lives.

[fujiyama]

17. It's meant to be "light hearted"

Just about everything the media does is stupid.

But geneology itself is fascinating. I find it very interesting to know where I come from and see how far back lines can be traced. I find the Obama-Cheney "family ties" to be amusing.

Going back far enough, everyone is related to each other.

[MADem]

19. Aren't the Bushes and the Reagans related to the queen?

I think it's great, the whole Cheney thing.... and I liked the "black sheep" comment, too.

Imagine all the Cheney loving racists, with their little heads a-spinnin'!!!

[sandnsea]

20. It's comic relief

Anything not harmful that gives Obama some attention is a good thing. He's making a huge joke of it. Nothing to worry about.

[rusty fender]

21. Maybe, but if Obama was found to be related to...

...Abe Lincoln or JFK you'd be lording it all over everyone!

[Colobo]

26. Not at all. I don't give a damn about Obama's distant relatives.

And you don't even know me, so your predictions about what I would post are based on nothing.

[Catherine Vincent]

22. Not really.

But I don't blame you for being a little upset. If I found out my candidate was related to the Cheney's in any way, I'd be pissed. :)

[Colobo]

27. If Hillary and Idi Amin were somehow related, I wouldn't care either.

It doesn't matter. At all.

[XemaSab]

23. I think the ultimate lesson is you can't pick your relatives

:P

[dajoki]

24. I think genealogy is fascinating...

and fun. And I'll bet it bugs the shit out of Cheney. Obama seems to be having fun with it, so I don't see a problem.

[hedgehog]

25. I'm an ethnic and can trace all my relatives back to Ireland within 4 generations.

What really makes me laugh is people who proudly trace their ancestors back to the Mayflower or Jamestown as if that means they're some kind of aristocrat. Unless you can account for all 128 or 256 ancestors when you go back that far, the odds are that a couple of them were black or Indian. So much for racial purity! (BTW - I think I have some near African ancestry courtesy of the Spanish Armada!)

My Mother-in-law is big into genealogy since she's convinced she's connected to British nobility. She was proud to turn up a connection to someone who was a minor noble in the 19th century. I didn't have the heart to tell her that he was probably the shit heel who forced my my great, great grandfather to emigrate!

[Rosa Luxemburg]

28. Bush is related to the late Princess Diana

all sorts of strange relations. Please God I am not related to him?

[SergeyDovlatov]

30. Are you worried that Obama will drop in polls because of links to Cheney?

Nah. I don't think the public is that stup*d.

[Colobo]

33. Nah. I think it's just irrelevant information.

[youthere]

34. My husband and I recently had a conversation with a bat shit crazy fundy...

who is convinced Obama is the anti-christ (this wasn't heated rhetoric...she truly believes he is sent by satan). Anyway, we were watching the news the other night when the story came out the Obama was related to Cheney and my husband jokingly said, "Holy shit! Maybe Stacy was right!"

[LoZoccolo]

35. I agree with the person who said it's an intimidation thing a day or two ago.

It makes it look like the Cheneys have really really been researching Obama when they say that, and it's cloaked in these benign or even friendly terms. I don't know how it would fit into an overall strategy, though, because I don't think a lot of people pick up on that subtext. I didn't think about it myself until someone pointed it out to me. We all know that the right-wing is obsessed with digging up dirt on Hillary; why would they also want to establish that with Obama? And do it so weakly?