I hope my mom sees this: researchers have discovered that Brad Pitt is related to Barack Obama while Angelina Jolie is related to Hilary Clinton. Surprising? Apparently not, considering the rest of the findings by the New England Historic Genealogical Society. The presidential candidates are actually related to a whole mess of celebrities. For Obama, there’s Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S. Truman, James Madison, George Bush I & II, Dick Cheney, Winston Churchill and Robert E. Lee. For Clinton, it’s less political, more artsy; her relatives include Madonna, Celine Dion, Alanis Morissette, Jack Keroac and Camilla Parker-Bowles. And even John McCain has been included in the research. But he’s only connected to Laura Bush (his ancestry was more difficult to trace than the Democrats, however — because Republicans are so much shadier?).

Now I guess I can shrug off the fact that I’m an ancestor of the English monarchy (broken off, I believe, at Edward II). And to think I was actually beginning to get cocky about being a blue blood, despite my sitting here in a free t-shirt and writing on a four-year-old laptop that doesn’t completely work. Well, now I’m throwing out my DVD of King Ralph. I’m back to my argument, which my mom has heard from me many times, that if you go back far enough, we’re all related (whether via Adam and Eve or monkeys). I bet I’m even related to both Obama and Clinton, as well as McCain. Same as you. Fortunately, thanks to the revealed research, we can check our own ancestries for at least a few names: 17th century Cape Samuel Hinkley connects Obama to the Bushes; 18th century Virginian Edwin Hinkman links Obama and Pitt; and 18th century Canadian Jean Cusson unites Clinton and Jolie.