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January 26, 2005

Bush Related To Irish Warlord. Sort Of. [Say Anything]

The far-left British publication The Guardian is really scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to slamming President Bush.

The Guardian - It is perhaps not the best omen for US foreign affairs. Local historians in Wexford have discovered that George Bush is a descendant of Strongbow, the power-hungry warlord who led the Norman invasion of Ireland thus heralding 800 years of mutual misery.
With a long line of Scots Irish presidents including Woodrow Wilson, the Irish are normally quick to claim US leaders as their own. But, despite President Bush's large Ulster Scots vote in the American Bible belt, Ireland had let his family escape the genealogical microscope.

But now Ann Griffin Bernstorff, an artist working on a tapestry to commemorate Ireland's Norman heritage, has discovered what she claims is the Bushs' missing Irish link.

Ms Griffin Bernstorff was researching Strongbow's son-in-law, William Marshal, when she discovered the connection. A descendant of Marshal married Anne Marbury Hutchinson, a famous 16th century religious dissenter who had already been linked to Mr Bush.

"It is one of those bizarre developments," she said. "We traced the Bush genealogy through a Republican source in Chicago and found it was correct. People here are absolutely shocked. I'm not sure what the wider reaction will be, Bush has not been seen as a great friend of the Irish."

So Bush is related to an ancient warlord.

By marriage.

And this is supposed to provide us with some sort of meaningful commentary on the President and his administration? That's pretty pathetic. I'll bet the editors at The Guardian are cursing the fact that Bush isn't of German or Austrian heritage so they could trace a tenuous connection to Hitler and validate the complaints of moonbat protesters around the globe.

[Cross-posted at Say Anything ]

posted by Ace at 10:10 PM

Comments

S.A.--

Are you kidding me? The best line in that piece is the "Bush has not been seen as a great friend of the Irish."

By that measure, I should be sending fruit baskets to Warsaw. Maybe with some persimmons. Yeah, the Poles would like those.

Man, the Guardian sure is the gift that keeps on giving, day after day, huh?

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on January 26, 2005 10:16 PM

Not to mention, according to some genealogists, you surprisingly don't need to go as far back as you might think to find that anyone today can be linked back to a famous common ancestor.

The Atlantic Monthly, May 2002, had a great article about some genealogical researchers according to whose theories:

"The mathematical study of genealogy indicates that everyone in the world is descended from Nefertiti and Confucius, and everyone of European ancestry is descended from Muhammad and Charlemagne"

Posted by: Carl in N.H. on January 26, 2005 10:42 PM

I seem to recall that Bush is distantly related to the Queen of England. If he is, it's plausible that he is also related to the old German and Austrian royal families as the British royal family is related to them (as well as most of the other European royal families).

Posted by: Dave on January 26, 2005 11:03 PM

Oh just wait for chapter two, where they wear us out with how much his granddaddy thought "that Hitler might be onto something" in 1933.

It's coming.

Posted by: Dave in Texas on January 26, 2005 11:14 PM

You're right Dave in TX. The left has been circulating that crap for years--that Prescott Bush did business with the Nazis. It's a standard Bush-hating trope.

Posted by: Bob on January 26, 2005 11:34 PM

i'm just going to have to start making up my own stuff. i'm tired of the dhimmicrats getting all the good fiction.

Posted by: mlah on January 27, 2005 01:27 AM

A few months back a Portuguese magazine claimed Bush was related to the first Portuguese King, and, of course, national hero, D. Afonso (or Alfonso) the Conqueror.
It raised quite a ruckus.

Posted by: madne0 on January 27, 2005 06:58 AM

I remember reading how Kerry was somehow related to, or descended from Muhammad. That and a buck something will get you a bus ride.

Posted by: Ron on January 27, 2005 07:26 AM

You missed the best part, about W's other relative and his dietary habits ...

Posted by: Scott Burgess on January 27, 2005 08:12 AM

According to a model presented by Richard Dawkins, The last common ancestor of all Britons was only 23 generations ago, and in 1000AD, everyone alive was either the ancestor of all modern British or none. Besides that, the amount of DNA you get from Grandparents on up is an average, because DNA is being recombined in your parents. Bush may be descended from this guy and not have a single one of his genes - or everyone could be descended from this guy and have none of his genes. So this is pointless if you're looking for personality traits.

Posted by: Lollia on January 27, 2005 09:35 AM

Would you prefer

GEORGE WASHINGTON?

OR THOMAS JEFFERSON?

OR FDR?

I fear I my be the "Republican source in Chicago"

http://www.bradleyfoundation.org/Maite/marcus/index3.htm

Posted by: Machias Privateer on January 27, 2005 09:56 AM

I am the genealogist mentioned in The Atlantic Monthly, May 2002, article. The model of ancestry was not developed by Richard Dawkins but by other people. For full information see:

http://computing.dcu.ie/~humphrys/FamTree/Royal/ca.html

I have written about this ridiculous media story at my site:

The "Bush is descended from Strongbow" media flurry of Jan 2005
http://computing.dcu.ie/~humphrys/FamTree/Royal/famous.bush.strongbow.html

Incidentally, it's not "by marriage". Bush really is a direct descendant of Strongbow. But so are millions of people,
including, oddly, Richard Dawkins. Full details above.

And if you want Nazis and similar, Bush is in fact provably related to Hermann Goering, Wernher von Braun, Kaiser William II, The Red Baron, and possibly Napoleon.

Again, so are millions of people, including many other US presidents, Dawkins, and the Royals. For details see:

http://computing.dcu.ie/~humphrys/FamTree/Royal/famous.descents.html

Mark

Posted by: Mark Humphrys on January 31, 2005 01:41 PM

Ancestry of President Bush & Strongbow article in UK Guardian

How does this pass for news? Historians in Wexford finally “discover” what has been known for years and the UK press finds it newsworthy?

Since the last century anyone could have accessed the Family Forest to visually explore maps of generation-by-generation ancestral pathways that show President Bush is at least a 24th great-grandson of Strongbow, according to fully sourced ancestral history.

For more please see:
http://www.familyforest.com/
USPresident.html

Posted by: Kristine on April 18, 2005 07:12 AM

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In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
"It is a shock to the system," Nikku Madhusudhan, first author on the paper, told the New York Times. "We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal."

He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.

Artemis moon shot a go, scheduled for 6:24 Eastern time tonight
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What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
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Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

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[Hat Tip: Diogenes] [CBD]

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