Our first black vice president...

...is Cheney, not Senator Token. Who knew?

Nyngan Observer: Obama related to Cheney, Bush

There's an old saying you can pick your friends but not your relatives.

But how must Democrat candidate and outspoken critic of the Iraq war, Barack Obama, feel about being related to its chief architect, Vice-President Dick Cheney?

The news that the two men share a distant ancestor took off in Washington after Mr Cheney's wife, Lynne casually dropped the bombshell into a chatty afternoon interview about her new book, Blue Skies, No Fences.

In an interview on Tuesday afternoon, Mrs. Cheney was asked about how she felt about Mrs Clinton as the first woman president. In what appeared to be a non sequitur, Mrs Cheney revealed that in the course of researching Mr Cheney's family tree, she had discovered a common ancestor eight generations ago.

"I thought I should admit this fact because perhaps it means I am not totally objective about Mrs Clinton," Mrs Cheney joked.

But seriously, kiddies, doesn't this story conjure words like aristocracy, oligarchy, and establishment?

"Think about this," Mrs Cheney said. "This is such an amazing American story that one ancestor, a man that came to Maryland, could be responsible down the family line for lives that have taken such different and varied paths as Dick's and Barack Obama's."

Reacting to the news, Senator Obama's campaign spokesman Bill Burton told CNN's Dana Bash with tongue in cheek, "Obviously, Dick Cheney is sort of the black sheep of the family."

No, kiddies, that is not racist. They cannot be racist by definition.

In fact Senator Obama enjoys blood ties to the two top figures in the administration: President Bush and Mr Cheney.

The Chicago Sun-Times broke the news in September that Senator Obama is also an 11th cousin of the president himself, but for some reason, it did not get picked up by the blogs in the way it did on Tuesday.

According to the Sun-Times, Mr Bush and Senator Obama share a 17th-century Massachusetts relative. That makes them 11th cousins.

The Sun-Times also came to the conclusion that the pair were ninth cousins once removed, via Mareen Duvall, a 17th-century immigrant from France.

The Sun-Times also uncovered another famous presidential relative of Obama: Harry Truman, noting in the course of its research that Obama's family tree spread across several continents, with relatives from Kenya, England France, the Netherlands, Germany and America.

Like many Americans who have deep roots in the US, Senator Obama's relatives include slave-owners, but the Sun-Times noted that unlike most African-Americans, he did not seem to have any ancesters who were slaves.

Hmmm...

Senator Obama's mother was a white American and his father was Kenyan. The family grew up in Indonesia and in Hawaii.