image A diagram, titled “’Branch’ Office of the President - ties that surprise”, showing how George W. Bush is related to a random assortment of figures ranging from Pocahontas to Obama to Tom Hanks - usually as 9th cousins, if not further. Of particular note, Vlad the Impaler is “32 generations removed” from Bush and 34 from John Kerry, and that Madonna and Celin Dion are marked as 9th Cousins, 2 times removed, but the only connection they have to the net is being “distant cousins” of Camilla Bowles, who is “[r]elated by marriage” to Princess Diana.
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…Yeah? Omigod, people are related to each other, even to famous people they’ve never met or who may have died a long time ago! What a twist!
Beyoncé and Queen Elizabeth shared an ancestor. Al Roker and Lenny Kravitz are cousins. Elvis and Jimmy Carter were related via colonial bloodlines. Jason Schwartzman and Nick Cage are cousins. Bonnie Bedelia is Macauley Culkin’s aunt. Tom Hanks and Fred Rogers; Madonna and Brittany Spears both share an ancestor with Hillary Clinton; Johnny Depp and Queen Elizabeth; Bradd Pitt and Barack Obama; George Clooney and Abe Lincoln; Robert Pattinson and Volvodoi Vlad III of Wallachia.
Dude just discovered geneology and acts like he uncovered the secret truth behind Orville Redenbacher and his nefarious control of our precious bodily fluids or something.
There is a non-zero chance that I am descended from the historical Baron Munchausen, through my maternal grandmother.
(Yes, he was a real person; no, he was not a fan of the book and actually challenged the author to a duel. As was the style at the time.)
People have families. Sometimes members of those families become famous. Sometimes members of those families go on to have families of their own, and their descendents go on to become famous, making two or more famous people related to one another. That’s how family and procreation and lineage works, holy shit.
This person thinks the Illuminati steals their shadow every time they turn out the lights.
I mean, duh. When you go far enough up the ancestry, everyone is related to everyone. Going by this ( https://isogg.org/wiki/Cousin_statistics ) it is to be expected that a regular person has about 590,000 8th degree cousins, and with 9th degree cousins, you’d be in the millions. So even assuming this diagram to be factually correct, it doesn’t really mean anything.
I did a bit of quick research, and it appears that most people average from 6th cousin to everyone in their local area (and their “remove” equivalents) if their family is from there and there’s not a lot of inflow of new people to that area, and an average of 14th cousin to everyone in the world. Rich, powerful, and famous white people aren’t exactly a fully open breeding group; 8th is hardly weird, and 11th would be unusually distant. Also it’s kind of funny how “related by marriage” (an in-law, in this case) somehow has a similar degree of whatever sort of genetic influence they’re claiming here.
This is probably the result of not understanding exponentials. Also even the Bible suggests that bloodlines don’t mean much beyond a 7th remove (and just plain cousins are at a 3rd remove).
Oh my god, can you believe that if you just start looking for extremely distant relations, you find everyone is practically related?
This is unbelievable! How could it possibly be? There’s not a chance that when you go out that far from someone’s family tree that someone else could possibly be related to them!
Do these assholes ever listen to themselves?
Diane Princess of Wales -related by marriage- Camilla Parker Bowles
You would think that the link of marriage - you know, George W. having once been the OMG-11th-Cousin-Twice-Removed-In-Law of the future king of Britain - than drawing an absurdly vague indirect connection - does “remarriage years after the first spouse’s divorce and death” even constitute a relationship by marriage? - to two random pop musicians. Especially considering that the Windsors are like the third favourite namedrop for an Illuminati bloodline?
Also, folly that it is to expect any consistency from a Flat Earther, but shouldn’t it be either “Diana Francis Spencer” or “Camilla Duchess of Cornwall” (assuming this to be pre-coronation)?
I don’t remember where, but I read once that everyone (as in every person on the planet Earth) is at least 50th cousins with everyone else. So yeah, what he’s saying is really nothing special or surprising, at all. Without any context, I don’t know what point he thinks he’s making by pointing out distant relationships between well-known people. I’m distantly related to both British and French kings, but that doesn’t mean anything in particular other than to say “haha, look at that, that’s kinda cool maybe”
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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