|
 In
an America fraught with class, racial, religious and sexual tensions,
genealogy may yet play a role in what is shaping up to be the nastiest,
and most most divisive elections in recent history. However, despite
their obvious differences in personality, political party, and speaking
style, the two men have a lot in common.  Scions
of wealthy eastern power establishment families, they both went to exclusive
private schools and
then to Yale, where they were fraternity brothers in the shadowy secret
society "Skull and Bones".
Now comes the astounding news that not only are these two great Americans
united by race, age, class, education and blood ritual, but that they
are actually blood relations! Distant cousins! Who knew? Check out Sam
Allis in today’s Boston Globe:
Last week, Roberts walked a reporter from La Stampa, one of Italy’s
major daily newspapers, through the blood connections between George
W. Bush and John F. Kerry. They are related through five kinships —
Henry Herrick of Salem, John Dwight of Dedham, the parents of the Rev.
Peter Bulkeley of Concord, Thomas Richards of Weymouth, and the Sherman
family of Dedham, Essex, England.
As a result, Bush and Kerry are anywhere from tenth cousins once removed
to twelfth cousins twice removed among the five lines. (Can’t you just
see the pair playing Frisbee at a family picnic?)
Who knew? Admittedly, if you go back far enough we are all related,
but this seems to make a mockery of our vaulted American diversity. Like
the Klitishenko brothers fighting for the heavyweight title. Like letting
CNN and Fox define the extremes of the American political spectrum. Don’t
get us started.
A bit deeper
into the Globe we discovered another genealogical gem.
John Kerry, it turns out, is one-quarter Jewish! Again, who knew?
John Kerry’s grandfather, Fritz Kohn, was born to a Jewish family in
the Austro-Hungarian town of Bennisch, now called Horni Benesov and part
of the Czech Republic.
Kohn moved to Vienna in the late 1870s, changed his name to Frederick
Kerry, and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1901. He arrived in the
United States with his wife, Ida, in 1905. Sixteen years later, he committed
suicide in a Boston hotel washroom. John Kerry’s father, Richard, was
6 years old at the time.
After
seeing him march in umpteen St. Paddy’s Day Parades in South Boston
most people naturally assumed the Senator was from the Kerry, Ireland
Kerrys. Who knew he was in reality from the Vienna, Austria Kohns? Actually,
he’s probably wise not to play up the Jewish angles, as big as we are
for racial and religious pride. Most Jews will undoubtedly vote for him
anyway, and there are certainly a bunch of racially retro citizens who
would never vote for ANYBODY with even a few drops of Jewish blood. Fortunately,
most of those people don’t come out from under their rocks to vote, sparing
them this year’s agonizing choice, for these two articles taken together
lead to the inescapable conclusion that both of the candidates are tainted.
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