Genealogical Society Reports Obama Related To Brad Pitt And Clinton Related To Angelina Jolie

Los Angeles, CA (CNS) - The presidential race is turning into one big soap opera, with everyone related to everyone else. According to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Obama is a distant cousin of Brad Pitt and Hillary Rodham Clinton is related to Pitt's girlfriend Angelina Jolie.

While looking for family connections among presidential candidates, they also found that Republican John McCain is a sixth cousin of First Lady Laura Bush.

Clinton, who is of French-Canadian descent on her mother's side, is also related distantly, as cousins, to Madonna, Celine Dion and Alanis Morissette.

Obama, who is the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, can call six U.S. presidents his cousins, including George W. Bush.

Genealogist Christopher Child said that candidates may focus on pointing out differences between them, some are more alike than we think. Child has spent the last three years tracing the candidates' genealogy, along with senior research scholar Gary Boyd Roberts, author of the 1989 book, "Ancestors of American Presidents."

Obama has a prolific presidential lineage that features both Democrats and Republicans. His distant cousins include President George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S. Truman and James Madison. Other Obama cousins include Vice President Dick Cheney, British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill and Civil War General Robert E. Lee.

Obama has been known to joke at campaign appearances about his cousin Cheney. Obama and President Bush are 10th cousins, once removed, linked by Samuel Hinkley of Cape Cod, who died in 1662.

Pitt and Obama are ninth cousins, linked by Edwin Hickman, who died in Virginia in 1769.

Clinton and Jolie are ninth cousins, twice removed, both related to Jean Cusson who died in St. Sulpice, Quebec, in 1718.