On The Colbert Report last night, Jon Huntsman and Colbert had this exchange:
Stephen Colbert: We've been told that the more we get to know Mitt Romney, the more we're gonna like him. You're a fellow governor, fellow Mormon, fellow businessman — you've known him for years. What are the things that make you just love him as a person?
[Explosive laughter by the audience, Huntsman sits back in his chair, obviously amused and taken aback.]
Colbert: Top five.
Jon Huntsman: Well, I'd have to say that's a little bit unfair as a question, because I'm an insider. He's a relative. You're supposed to like your relatives.
[Colbert leans forward, obviously taken aback.]
Colbert: Are you related to him?
Huntsman: We share the same great great great grandfather — [Wait, what?]
Colbert: And you love everyone in your family?
Huntsman: — and this great great great grandfather had twelve wives. He was a polygamist — [Wait, what?! No wonder you're not in Tampa. Are you supposed to say that out loud where people outside Utah can hear you?]
Colbert: Really?
Huntsman: — and Mitt clearly came down from the wife with better hair.
So, absorb that chunk of awesome and then fill in the blank:
That makes them .
4 comments:
inbred.
I've been very well-behaved so far, not referring to Ann Romney as Mitt's main wife.
His New Hampshire wife, too.
The straight answer is fourth cousins, though since they have different great-great-great-grandmothers, you might think they were fourth half-cousins, which reduces to second cousins. You would be amusing, but wrong.
Actually, I'd think that would make them half-fourth cousins, which would not reduce but multiply to eighth cousins, which would also be amusing, but wrong, genealogically.
However, my favorite Adirondakian points out that chromosomally, that's actually right — half-fourth cousins share the same number of chromosomes as eighth cousins (assuming they are not also more closely related than that another way, which I do not assume about these two).
Science!
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